Inside Sissle & Daughters on Forest Avenue. Photo courtesy of Sissle & Daughters

Sissle & Daughters, an all-day café, wine bar and market on Forest Avenue, opened last Friday.

The business was launched by Mary Chapman-Sissle and Will Sissle, who also own Sissle & Daughters Cheesemongers and Grocers (formerly The Cheese Shop of Portland) on Washington Avenue.

The 23-seat café, at 634 Forest Ave., features coffee from Precipice Coffee in Ellsworth, including espresso drinks, drip coffees and cold brew, along with other beverages like chai tea. The morning menu offers house-baked goods such as blueberry coffee cake, cookies, brownies and a rotating daily frittata.

The coffee bar switches to a wine bar from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m., where customers can choose from 14 wines by the glass, three draft beers and non-alcoholic options. The food menu features small plates, cheese plates, and in-house charcuterie like pâtés, rillettes and chicken liver mousse.

Joe Gaudet is the chef at Sissle & Daughters. He’s cooked at restaurants around the country, including Portland’s Big Tree Hospitality group and Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the Sissles also worked. Gaudet is trained in charcuterie and butchery.

The market inside Sissle & Daughters offers cheese, and take-and-heat prepared foods, including meals like chicken Provençal, lasagna, mac and cheese, pasta salad and wheatberry salad, and sides like mashed potatoes or Rancho Gordo beans.

The price ranges, from $12.99 for a large (1-2 servings) portion of lasagna to $39.99 for four servings of Beef Bourguignon. “We’re providing convenience, but at restaurant quality,” Chapman-Sissle said.

Sissle & Daughters is open seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Two Fat Cats Bakery new café and market at 175 Spring St. opens Saturday. Photo courtesy of Two Fat Cats Bakery

TWO FAT CATS OPENS IN NEW LOCATION

Two Fat Cats Bakery opens its new café and market in the West End this Saturday.

The 2,600-square-foot venue is located at 175 Spring St., next to Chocolats Passion in the former Mercy Hospital building. Owner Stacy Begin said it’s a little smaller than their Lancaster Street bakery – which will remain both a retail and production facility – but provides office space.

Two Fat Cats in the West End has table seating for 18, with additional seating on couches and plush chairs. The shop will sell pastries, pies and cakes, as well as sandwiches and salads made to order or grab-and-go, a soup of the day, and for breakfast, breakfast sandwiches, overnight oats and yogurt bowls.

Begin is especially excited to offer New England brown bread on a bread board with homemade marmalade and jams. “I’m hoping people will get to know brown bread again and love it as much as we do,” she said.

Two Fat Cats will be open Tuesday through Saturday from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

CARGO PIZZA COMING TO FOREST AVENUE

The owner of Cargo Pizza Company food truck aims to open a brick and mortar pizzeria before the end of the year on Forest Avenue.

Cargo Pizza will be going into a 1,200-square-foot space at 1053 Forest Ave., previously home to Falafel Time. Owner Gregory Mihos said he hopes to launch in December.

The 20-seat venue will be “takeout and delivery oriented,” Mihos said, featuring pizza he calls a blend of “neo-Neapolitan” and New Haven-style, cooked at over 700 degrees with a thin, crisp crust “that has integrity and doesn’t flop on you.”

The pizzeria will also offer smash burgers and a selection of fried foods. “I’m going to be doing all the food in the restaurant, as opposed to buying everything from Sysco,” Mihos said. “I want to avoid the preservatives, artificial flavorings and fillers that are endemic in our food supply these days. I want to offer people’s favorite foods, but with ingredients we can all understand and you can feel comfortable feeding to your kids.”

Though the schedule is not finalized, Mihos would like to open Cargo seven days a week, possibly from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.; in the morning, he’d offer a streamlined breakfast menu.

Mihos launched his food truck in 2019. His father, Dimitrios, owns Romeos Pizza in Scarborough and Topsham, and Mihos said he has worked at Romeos for most of his life.

Mihos said he liked the traffic at the Forest Avenue location. “It’s a good spot to make my first steps in the business world in the Portland community, because it’s a pretty populated, dense area where a lot of the working class people of Portland live,” he said. “It’s just been my upbringing, serving food to blue-collar people.”

GRITTY MCDUFF’S CLOSING IN FREEPORT

Gritty McDuff’s Brew Pub will close in Freeport at the end of the month after 30 years in business at the location.

Owner Ed Stebbins said Gritty’s 30-year land lease expires this year, but he was unable to purchase the 187 Lower Main St. property.

“We had big plans for the property, but unfortunately the owners tell us it’s not for sale, so we don’t really have much choice. We’ve got to close the business down,” Stebbins said. He noted that a new, shorter-term lease might have been possible, “but at this stage of my life and career, I was not interested in leasing.”

Gritty’s last day in Freeport will be Nov. 30. Gritty McDuff’s original Old Port location – which opened in 1988 – and its 18-year-old Auburn location will remain open.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Stebbins said. “I feel terrible for my employees who have put so much work into the place. I feel terrible for the community because we’re a big part of Freeport. And it’s tough for our business, for Gritty’s. But we don’t have a whole lot of wiggle room.”

Stebbins said he gave his employees 30 days’ notice of the closure, which will affect a little more than 20 staffers at this point in the year. The Gritty’s team has offered them jobs at the other two locations and help finding employment elsewhere if they choose, Stebbins said.

ELSMERE BBQ CLOSING

The owners of Elsmere BBQ in South Portland announced on social media recently that the 11-year-old restaurant will close for good this Saturday.

“Saturday, November 9th will be the last day Elsmere BBQ & Wood Grill will be open,” begins an Instagram statement from Adam Powers, co-owner of Elsmere with Jeremy Rush. “We will carry with us fond memories of creating and testing all the wonderful recipes that became the backbone of Elsmere, of learning the subtleties and nuances of Mama, our big beautiful smoker, and of staying up until 3:00 AM painting the dish room so we could get our food license in time to open the next day on August 17th, 2013.”

The Cottage Avenue-based barbecue joint opened a Portland location on Stevens Avenue in 2018, which closed four years later. Noble Pizzeria & Barbecue is expected to launch in the same Portland space soon.

The owners could not be reached for information about why they have decided to close.

FORK FOOD LAB AWARD

Fork Food Lab was recently awarded the 2024 New England Food Vision Prize from the Henry P. Kendall Foundation, receiving $193,369 to support its work upcycling broccoli byproducts.

The funding allows Fork Food Lab to create a line of upcycled broccoli products for 14 colleges serviced by Sodexo, including the University of Maine system. The new line of food includes soups, broccoli tots and sauces, using byproducts from Maine-grown broccoli sourced through Harvesting Good.

Production will take place at Fork Food Lab’s South Portland facility, supporting Sodexo’s commitment to sourcing 30% of its university dining program ingredients from within the state by 2030.

Fork Food Lab officials say by addressing food waste and providing local farmers with additional revenue streams, the project “represents a step forward in Fork’s commitment to sustainable food practices, innovation, and community impact.”

The New England Food Vision Prize was launched in 2018. The Boston-based Henry P. Kendall Foundation awards grants of up to $200,000 to projects that enhance resilience, capacity and relationships within New England’s institutional food system.

NEW OWNERS FOR PACIFICO

Two staffers have bought Pacifico, an upscale Latin restaurant in Saco, as the previous owners turn their focus to their other properties.

Carolina Tovar, formerly Pacifico’s assistant manager, and her husband, Pacifico Chef Luis Munoz, bought the restaurant in October. Tovar said the previous owners, Carlos Guzman and Alejandra Herrera, wanted to turn their attention to their Quiero Cafe restaurants in Saco and Portland.

Pacifico, shown in 2022. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

Tovar and Munoz, who’ve worked at Pacifico for two years, don’t plan to make broad changes to the restaurant. “We really love the vibe and the space it’s created in the community, we want to keep that,” Tovar said. “We are looking to do more events and utilize the space a little more.”

The menu, which changed seasonally, will soon include a set of core dishes offered year-round, in addition to seasonal dishes. Tovar said they expect to offer a new craft cocktail menu as well.

For now, Pacifico will continue to be open Tuesday through Saturday from 5-9 p.m.; eventually, the couple aim to keep the restaurant open seven days.

FAT KID PARTNERS WITH DEFINITIVE

Definitive Brewing has partnered with Fat Kid Culinary Productions to make it the permanent food truck at their Industrial Way brewery.

Fat Kid offers comfort-based foods like grilled cheese, mac & cheese and noodle dishes, as well as some Asian-inspired creative takes on ramen, dumplings, bao buns, spring and egg rolls. The Fat Kid truck will operate at Definitive Thursdays and Fridays from 2 to 8 p.m., Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m., with more days to come next spring.

“We hope this partnership makes us a destination for beer and food lovers alike,” said Katrina Matthews, Definitive’s marketing manager, in a news release.