BIDDEFORD

Portland Pie coming to city’s Pepperell Mill

Portland Pie Co. has announced plans to open its seventh location. The new 130-seat restaurant is planned for the Pepperell Mill building and is scheduled to open – “hopefully,” says the press release – before the end of the year. It will join the company’s existing restaurants in Portland (opened in 1997), Westbrook and Scarborough, as well as two locations in New Hampshire and one in Massachusetts.

“Establishing restaurants in downtown locations, creating lasting ties to the community and rehabilitating historic properties is part of Portland Pie Co.’s core mission,” co-founder and president Nat Getchell said in a press release, “and we’re thrilled to bring that effort to the city of Biddeford.”

UNITY

MOFGA event celebrates history of Maine apples

Apple Day, an annual event sponsored by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, Fedco and the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, celebrates “the history, flavor and tradition of Maine apples while honoring the importance of a diversified, perennial agriculture,” according to a press release. Attend hands-on kitchen workshops, take an orchard tour, sample rare and heirloom apples, enjoy apple treats and drinks and listen to talks and panel discussions. And if you’ve got a mystery fruit you hope to ID, “a dream team of Maine apple identifiers will be on hand to help,” the press release says.

Apple Day is Oct. 25 from noon to 4 p.m., rain or shine, at MOFGA’s Common Ground Education Center in Unity. The cost is $2 for MOFGA members and $4 for nonmembers. For more information, go to mofga.org.

PORTLAND

New noodle restaurant planned for Middle Street

Early next year, the owners of Hugo’s and Eventide Oyster Co. will open a “non-denominational” noodle restaurant, as they describe it in a press release, to be named “The Honey Paw.” Like their existing restaurants, the new one also will be located on Middle Street. The new space also will allow owners Arlin Smith, Andrew Taylor and Michael Wiley to add production and storage space to their existing restaurants, which badly need the room.

“It won’t be a pasta joint or a noodle house per se, we don’t want to be beholden to tradition or cultural idiom,” Wiley said in a press release. “We’ve joked that it is properly going to be a gelatinized starch joint.” Former Hugo’s sous chef Tom Pisha-Duffly, a veteran of Boston’s East Coast Grill, The Butcher Shop and Sportello, will join the new venture.

Try Five Fifty-Five’s new bourbon-based cocktail

Join Five Fifty-Five restaurant for its “Triple Nickel” Bourbon & Bacon Bash, an evening celebrating the release of the restaurant’s house-crafted “Triple Nickel” cocktail. Bartenders have been aging the bourbon-based drink in an oak barrel from “our friends” at Maine Craft Distilling since July, according to a press release, and will be pouring it for the first time Oct. 23 from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m. For $20, eat all the hors d’oeuvres you like and enjoy one Triple Nickel straight from the barrel. Reserve online at eventbrite or buy tickets at the restaurant, 555 Congress St., either in advance or at the door (space permitting).

Cocktail hour at Cabot among co-op month events

It’s National Co-op Month, and Cooperative Fermentation, a new Portland-based organization founded by Jonah Fertig with the mission “to transform the Maine food system through growing cooperatives,” has been celebrating with events in Maine communities intended to spread the word about cooperatives.

Upcoming events include a Co-optail Hour at the Cabot Cheese Annex, 163 Commercial St. in Portland, on Oct. 29 from 5 to 7 p.m. with Cabot cheeses, Allagash beer and fermented foods. The following week, on Nov. 2, Fertig and several others will give a presentation at MOFGA’s Annual Farmer to Farmer Conference in Lincolnville on “Cooperative Farms and Food Systems.” For more information, go to www.cooperativefermentation.org.

What are you waiting for? Drink rare wine tonight

Vignola Cinque Terre is hosting the first of a series of “Cru Nights” on Wednesday. Among the wines, the dinner features Falesco’s 2011 Montiano Merlot from the restaurant’s vineyards in Lazio, Italy. According to a press release, “This is one of the most sought after wines from central Italy, and we will be pouring it by the glass.” The wines will be paired with a four-course tasting menu that uses many ingredients sourced from the restaurant’s Grand View farm in Greene. The price is $50 per person. Dinner service at the 10 Dana St. restaurant begins at 5 p.m. Reservations are recommended. For information, visit vignolamaine.com.

– Compiled by Peggy Grodinsky, food editor.