Bread & Friends on an evening in September. The bakery/cafe serves dinner several days a week. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Over the past eight years, I’ve watched two very different stories of wasted potential play out at 505 Fore St. Success chased both restaurants, but they were always faster.

First, the boisterous, occasionally inspired Zapoteca, followed quickly by Pizzarino, with its oddly dogmatic menu restrictions. Portlanders seemed eager to embrace both businesses, warts and all, but something (legal troubles, indifferent cooking, respectively) kept getting in the way.

Spend five minutes chatting with Bread & Friends’ co-owner and Director of Operations and Business, Maggie Rubin, and it becomes obvious that she and her fellow “double-husband-and-wife” partners intend to write a very different ending to their own 505 Fore St. story.

“We’ve taken this slowly, from when Tanner (Rubin) started his micro-bakery at a farmers market in the Bay Area, to all of us pitching in to help when we were all out of work because of COVID, to moving out here and starting business the same way, at the Cumberland and Falmouth farmers market,” she told me. “We rented space from Forage on Washington Avenue and baked at night. We worked that market, then Brunswick-Topsham as well as the Brunswick Night Market for two years. It’s been a slow build.”

This might be the biggest understatement of the year. During 2021, the quartet’s first year in Maine, market customers inevitably asked some variation of “Are you going to open a shop?” as Tanner and Maggie Rubin, and executive chef Jeremy Broucek and his wife, Director of Service and Beverage Jess Rattey, slung loaves, pastries and superlative coffee in Falmouth. The answer was always, “We hope to. Soon.”

Heirloom tomato carpaccio with grilled Jimmy Nardello pepper-almond romesco and aged gouda. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

After the foursome found and rented their future Portland digs, they undertook a seismic overhaul – adding an open baking kitchen, spiffy new restrooms and a Mey & Co.-designed mid-century inspired dining room. The extensive renovations took time, but these four would not allow themselves to be rushed. I could almost taste the anticipation with every “When are you going to finish construction already?” I overheard at the farmers market.

Brunch service and takeaway baked goods were unveiled in April 2023, and once again, Bread & Friends took their time, observing how customers liked to eat (sharing plates seemed to be most appealing) and which dishes made them swoon. When dinner service debuted late last year, and then rebooted this June, the evening menu showcased the owners’ deliberate approach and eagerness to expand diners’ perspective on the business.

Some plates stitched together threads the restaurant was already weaving in its brunch and bakery offerings, like a dessert of maple-syrup-drizzled, custard-soaked brioche French toast piggybacked with a scoop of homemade smoked-rosemary ice cream ($14). A glorious treat inspired by two wildly popular brunch dishes, this dessert highlights the restaurant’s commitment to what Maggie Rubin calls the “synergies between the bakery and the restaurant, and (to) seasonally inspired, nostalgic flavors.”

During a recent dinner, I took a thorough look at the unhurried evolution of Bread & Friends, and concluded that the delays have been worthwhile. Much of that payoff arrives through Broucek and Tanner Rubins’ relationships with local farmers and purveyors. Nearly to an ingredient, Bread & Friends sources everything for its from-scratch menu locally.

The sunflower hearts à la barigoule with fresh cranberry beans, petal-and-seed pesto and tomato water. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

You can see it all on one plate if you order the extraordinarily inventive sunflower hearts “a la barigoule” ($22), an entrée fashioned around an entire sunflower blossom (or “face,” as our server called it), stripped of its seeds and petals, then braised in a fennel-and-garlic stock. The artichoke-like texture of the flower’s tender flesh creates a meatiness in the dish that’s accentuated by brothy local cranberry beans and offset by a dainty sweetness and tang from tomato water. Practically everything on this plate, save for wine, coriander seeds and capers, comes from area farmers.

Or try the Mediterranean-inspired tomato carpaccio ($19) an artful, loosely composed appetizer of sliced Bumbleroot Farm heirloom tomatoes layered with aged Gouda, basil and spoonfuls of a romesco sauce of almonds and local Jimmy Nardello peppers. There’s a little heat here from house-made habanero hot sauce, as well as some crackle, courtesy of croutons shaved from leftover loaves of the restaurant’s own country loaf.

If you’d prefer to sample that same bread as part of your meal, there’s a pricey miniature version of the loaf on the appetizer menu. $14 is hard to justify for a four-slice bread course, even when it’s served with superb, scratch-made butter seasoned with local dulse (seaweed). Perhaps I’d have felt better about it if the plate’s second spread, a frothy onion soubise with a runny, smoked egg yolk, had delivered more flavor and less tongue-coating fat.

Sweet corn agnolotti with littleneck clams, crispy potatoes and bacon floss. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

I also encountered unbalanced flavors in the clam-and-pork agnolotti ($27). The pasta itself was dazzling – thin sheets of khorosan wheat (an ancient grain nearly identical to kamut) dough that remained supple after cooking. So too, the crisp, homemade bacon floss and bubbly clam-stock foam portioned over the pasta parcels. But inside the agnolotti, I encountered almost no clam, only a pudding-like corn filling that was sweet enough to be part of a dessert course. I’ll admit: I was a little down about this dish.

“Here, have a sip of this. It’ll reset your expectations for the next course,” my dinner guest instructed me, refilling my glass from our bottle of Il Campo Rosso, a red blend from Paso Robles, California ($56). Aromas of citrus peel and smoky tea leaves, and a mouth-filling, stone-fruit sippability brought me back to my senses. What’s one off-kilter dish in a meal of otherwise excellent cooking?

I decided to distract myself further by asking our occasionally friendly, sometimes standoffish server about the booze situation at Bread & Friends. “No full liquor license so far, and I’m not sure we’re going to do it,” she told us. When I spoke later to Maggie Rubin, she confirmed the restaurant’s intention to stay away from cocktails and liquor, at least for the moment. Space constraints – the bakery’s display counter resides where a bar might go – as well as the co-owners’ shared philosophy lead them in a different direction, toward local beers and wines made by “producers who aren’t necessarily making wine in the natural style, but who approach what they make with care, people who have a story to tell.”

Affordable local ciders and beers, like Sacred Profane’s crisp pale lager ($5/12 oz.) abound on the beverage list, as do cordial-sized portions of (internationally sourced) vermouths, sherries and amaros ($8-$11). The eclectic, New- and Old-world wine list tends toward the spendy side, with glasses ranging from $11-$17, and bottles starting at $52, but there are a few relative bargains, like a propulsively aromatic Viognier from Illahe in Oregon’s Willamette Valley; $56 might not sound like a deal, but that’s less than twice the wine’s retail price. And in a time when many restaurants routinely mark up wine 300% or more, this represents great value for money.

Nobody is arguing that Bread & Friends is inexpensive. But its prices reflect the restaurant’s thoroughgoing, from-scratch ethos. Here’s a perfect example: a terrifically juicy, wood-grilled Broad Arrow Farm pork chop, unburdened from its bone and sliced across the meat’s grain. Broucek serves the pork (and its expertly cleaned bone, “perfect if you want to get in there and do some gnawing,” as our server suggested) dotted with shaved Hakurei turnips, tangy lacto-fermented cherries, tiny teaspoon-sized blobs of house-pickled mustard seeds, and a shower of peppery local tatsoi leaves.

Nearly half of the components of this remarkable and generously portioned dish take hours, sometimes days or weeks, to create, including a miso-like rye “cream” that transfers its autumnal graininess to the shio-koji crust and char on the pork. Broucek and his three business partners seem to understand implicitly that moving slowly, with an unremitting sense of purpose, gives them the best chance of letting success catch up to them. I have no doubt it will.

In good weather, Bread & Friends can seat customers at a few tables in front of the restaurant. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

RATING: ****

WHERE: 505 Fore St., Portland, 207-536-4399, breadandfriendsmaine.com

SERVING: Dinner: 5:30-9 p.m. Thursday to Saturday. Brunch: 8:30 a.m. – 1 p.m. Friday-Tuesday. Bakery: 8 a.m. – 4 p.m. Friday-Sunday, 8 a.m. – 1 p.m. Monday-Thursday.

PRICE RANGE: Appetizers: $10-$21, Entrees: $22-$42

NOISE LEVEL: Deli counter at a neighborhood market

VEGETARIAN: Many dishes

RESERVATIONS: Yes, recommended

BAR: Beer and wine only

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No

BOTTOM LINE: If you know Portland’s Bread & Friends exclusively as a brunch destination or a bakery whose crusty country loaves and airy khorosan-wheat baguettes are among the city’s finest, it’s time to catch up. Since June of this year (and for a few months at the tail end of 2023), the entirely from-scratch restaurant has been serving dinner at the end of each week. The quartet of Bay Area transplants who co-own and operate Bread & Friends have been deliberate in adding dinner service only when they’re ready, and that caution has paid off tremendously. Standout dishes include executive chef Jeremy Broucek’s wood-grilled Broad Arrow Farm pork chop with miso-like rye cream, pickled mustard seeds and lacto-fermented cherries; and a remarkably meaty, braised sunflower blossom plated up with brothy local cranberry beans and capers. Head baker Tanner Rubin gets a turn in the spotlight, too. His dark-and-crusty mini country loaf with homemade cultured dulse butter is a winner, just like his brunch-meets-dessert riff on custardy, house-baked brioche French toast that arrives sticky with Dunn Family Maple syrup and a scoop of smoked rosemary ice cream. Pricey perhaps, but completely worth it.

The country loaf with cultured seaweed butter, onion jam and egg yolk. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Ratings follow this scale and take into consideration food, atmosphere, service, value and type of restaurant (a casual bistro will be judged as a casual bistro, an expensive upscale restaurant as such):

* Poor
** Fair
*** Good
**** Excellent
***** Extraordinary

The Maine Sunday Telegram visits each restaurant once; if the first meal was unsatisfactory, the reviewer returns for a second. The reviewer makes every attempt to dine anonymously and never accepts free food or drink.

Andrew Ross has written about food and dining in New York and the United Kingdom. He and his work have been featured on Martha Stewart Living Radio and in The New York Times. He is the recipient of seven recent Critic’s Awards from the Maine Press Association.

Contact him at: andrewross.maine@gmail.com
Twitter: @AndrewRossME