A celebrated local bartender and his business partner are edging closer to opening their “elevated dive bar,” called Room for Improvement, on Wharf Street this spring.

Located in a 1,000-square-foot space at 41 Wharf St. – former home to the German pub, Jager – Room for Improvement will be able to host almost 40 people. Co-owner Arvid Brown, bar manager at Crispy Gai, said contractors are installing equipment behind the venue’s bar counter this week.

“We thought it was the perfect environment for the bar we needed to open,” Brown said of the space.

Brown said he and his partner, Nick Coffin, signed the lease for this venue in September. They hope to open by March.

“I wanted to do a bar that felt very casual, unstuffy and unpretentious, but still maintain an emphasis on quality,” said Brown, who also helped shape the bar program at the former Baharat restaurant. “In Portland, you either have one end of the spectrum or the other: Dive bars where you only want to drink domestic bottled beer or Jell-O shots and there aren’t a whole lot of other options, or your very nice, higher-end cocktail bars that miss the more casual aesthetic.”

Brown said along with bottled domestic beers, Room for Improvement will feature creative reworkings of classic cocktails like martinis, negronis, gimlets and old-fashioneds. The new bar will also offer a limited food menu, with items like soft pretzels with dipping sauces, red snapper hot dogs, and tinned fish with crackers.

“I was very wary of signing up for a space on Wharf Street,” Brown conceded, noting how Wharf has had a “party street” reputation as a strip full of bars catering to twenty-something drinkers. “But the more time I spend here, the more I find to like about it. I think Wharf Street is doing a lot of growing up right now.”

NIGHT MOVES BREAD COMING TO SOPO

Artisanal bread fans, rejoice – esteemed baker Kerry Hanney is moving her beloved Night Moves Bread to South Portland, and expects to finally reopen this spring.

Night Moves’ new, nearly 1,500-square-foot space at 695 Broadway, a former motorcycle repair garage, is being renovated to serve as a production facility with a small retail space. “It needed a lot of work to become a bakery,” Hanney said. “It’s being totally gutted, right down to the studs.”

Night Moves had been closed in Biddeford since November 2021. Hanney, who signed the lease on the new space last March, said she’s done a little wholesale business with a few area restaurants in the meantime, but has otherwise stayed focused on making the move happen.

“I’m so excited to be settled in a place,” said Hanney. “I really miss my job, and the regularity of touching the dough everyday. I love the rhythm of bread baking so much.”

Night Moves will feature an “extended” breads program compared with its former Biddeford location, along with pastries and coffee beverages. A new grain mill will allow Hanney to grind flour for her breads and sell fresh-milled flour to retail customers.

Hanney said while she was open only one day a week for retail in Biddeford, she expects the new location to be open four days for retail sales, though the schedule hasn’t been finalized.

Night Moves Bread opened in Biddeford in July 2018. “The Biddeford space gave me room to grow the business, and we grew fast. In 2019, our production quadrupled,” she said, comparing the sudden business boost to “drinking from a fire hose.”

By 2020, Hanney’s breads and baked goods were receiving raves not just around Maine, but nationally as well, making lists of America’s best bakeries compiled by Food Network and Food & Wine magazine.

VERMONT WINE SHOP EXPANDS TO PORTLAND

Dedalus, a Vermont-based wine shop, plans to open a Portland location on Marginal Way later this year.

Dedalus has leased a more than 3,000-square-foot space at 127 Marginal Way. Dedalus owners could not be reached Tuesday for details on their opening timeline.

Founded in Burlington in 2007, Dedalus has additional Vermont locations in Stowe and Middlebury. The company expanded its reach to Colorado in 2021, adding a location in Boulder. They also bought property in Brooklyn, N.Y., in August for another location.

TAR COFFEE OPENS IN PUBLIC MARKET

A new coffee shop, Tar Coffee Company, opened late last month in Portland’s Public Market House in Monument Square.

For now, the shop is using beans from North Berwick’s Carpe Diem, but plans to roast their own beans in the future. Tar also offers a menu of scratch-made items, including more than a dozen different pastries, like strudel, beignets and cinnamon rolls ($3.50 to $8), deli sandwiches ($10.95-$12.95), salads ($10) and breakfast sandwiches ($7.25-$8.25).

Tar is open six days from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., and closed Wednesdays. Tar owners could not immediately be reached for comment.

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