If you've spent any time at all reading this blog over the years, you know one of my favorite summertime activities in Maine is to visit Crown Jewel on Portland's Great Diamond Island. I first visited in 2018 when Chef Rocky was at the helm and then featured it the following year for Down East magazine. In 2020, we enjoyed some takeout and cocktails from then-chef Sara's menu on our friend's boat, as it was mostly serving to-go during the pandemic. Then in 2021, we tried it both as a pop-up at Little Giant and in July for our friend's 50th birthday. 2022 brings a new chef, Chef Jef, formerly of Sur Lie, so of course I booked a reservation for my family's visit last week. We ended up going for brunch, which due to the available reservations, happened to be on a rainy Sunday, so it was a pretty chill afternoon in the restaurant. I started with one of their fantastic cocktails, but virgin because #aging. The Run the Jewel is typically gin, rhubarb shrub, Campari, and yuzu, but with some magic they made it into a fantastic brunch mocktail. There's always been great deviled eggs ($8 for 3) on the menu and this iteration is no exception—with bacon jam holding a fingerling potato chip on top. I really struggled not to order so many things but kept it restrained with the oysters Rockefeller, crunchy and herby with butter, green Chartreuse, and breadcrumbs ($24 for 4). I must insist you try the snap pea salad ($9) which I mostly ordered like "fine, a vegetable" but it was perhaps my favorite dish of the visit. It was just crispy snap peas tossed with miso and sesame and then showered with ricotta salata. So fresh, salty, and savory. The whitefish over corn and tomatoes with chimichurri ($24) was delicious, summery, but still great for the dreary day we had. There were so many other tempting options, from the seared scallops to the eggs and crab on the brunch menu. My mom and sister both had the Spanish French toast, making an excellent substitution for the Dutch baby that everyone was looking forward to. It's soaked through with a creamy custard, and then caramelized on the outside and piled high with Maine blueberries. We never pass up pudding for dessert, this one topped with a marshmallow fluff and some graham cracker crumbs, giving it a S'mores vibe. And that was another great meal at Crown Jewel! I love that owner Alex Wight mixes it up every few years. While the incredible experience that is boating to an island for a meal alone would be enough to make the trip every summer, I also love to see how Alex and the new chef work together to create the perfect island escape—even on a glum June day. Crown Jewel | 255 Diamond Ave, Great Diamond Island, ME | 207.464.2829

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Ed. note: Wolfpeach has since closed. Originally published in Maine magazine, August 2022.I’m sitting at the six-seat bar in the 190-year-old building that now houses Wolfpeach, a new fine-dining restaurant in downtown Camden. My back is to the historic brick hearth that doubles as makeshift wine storage, and I’m enjoying a few deviled eggs and an intriguing terrine made from eel and pork. I finish the last of a flight of four house-made soft drinks— kombucha and kefir flavored with various tree saps and herbs—then turn to the cocktail list for my next drink. As I decide on a gin and tonic made with Blue Barren Distillery gin brewed in nearby Hope, a casual remark from owner Gabriela Acero makes me completely reevaluate the experience of my meal up until that point.As she prepares my drink, Acero tells me that she doesn’t use lime as a garnish: would I like a pickled carrot instead? That’s when I realize that nearly all the food and drink served at Wolfpeach is grown or made in Maine. That seems easy enough to accomplish with dishes like smoked herring and crispy potatoes, but the owners’ goal also extends to less visible but crucial ingredients, like sunflower oil and apple cider vinegar. I take another look at the beverage list and see that the wine selection is exclusively from New England and Canada, while Maine beer and spirits fill out the beverage offerings. And, naturally, that means there are no lime wedges.Wolfpeach, which takes its name from the Latin word for tomato, opened in December 2021 after Acero, who grew up in Waterville, and her partner, Derek Richard, bought the building once occupied by the Drouthy Bear, a Scottish pub. The two had met when they helped to open Oxbow Beer Garden in Oxford, where Richard developed the sourdough pizza recipe and Acero was the general manager. Richard, who is originally from New Jersey, worked in the kitchens of Blue Hill at Stone Barns and then at Barley Swine, a fine-dining hyper-local restaurant in Austin, Texas, before moving to Maine. At Wolfpeach Acero and Richard use locally grown and foraged ingredients to create what Richard describes as “just really good, simple food.” He pauses before he adds, “Well, seemingly simple.”The menu’s short descriptions belie complex flavors that Richard and his crew create through days and even months of effort. A robust fermentation program produces flavor-packed ingredients, like the vinegars that replace the acidic element typically provided by lemon juice, and a fish sauce called garum that is made from various seafoods and salt. Between the kimchi, garum, miso, and vinegars, Wolfpeach’s kitchen is full of bubbling containers of fermented condiments to amplify each dish. “All our ferments are funneled into the sauces, just helping with flavor,” Richard says.All that behind-the-scenes effort is apparent in my entree, a smoked pork loin. Its preparation started a week prior, when Richard dry-aged the pasture-raised pork, then rubbed the meat with a fermented tomato powder before it went in the wood smoker. Before dinner service, Richard warmed the meat in a bath of liquid smoked pork fat, a trick he says he learned during his time in Texas, and then seared the chop to order. The thick slice of bone-in pork arrives, perfectly tender with a blackened, crispy edge, in a dark puddle of jus, the result of a multi-day process of reducing pork stock and a bottle of red wine from Cellardoor Winery into a rich, sticky sauce.Dishes are served à la carte at Wolfpeach. A side of tender, charred collard florets complements the smokiness of the pork loin. The slight bitterness of the greens is offset by a silky house-made aioli that delivers a salty kick from the addition of a few raw oysters that were blended in. Richard says his goal is for the menu items to complement each other—and ideally be enjoyed with a side of his signature sourdough bread. He uses Maine Grains whole wheat flour, which results in loaves with a tender interior and a nutty, hearty crust. The butter, also made in-house, is mixed with locally grown kelp and then fermented for a few days, making it salty and slightly tangy.Richard has a deft hand with pasta dough: he is filling thin sheets with spinach and a tangy cow’s- and goat’s-milk cheese. He flavors the mixture with a maitake mushroom miso and then serves the stuffed pasta in a browned butter sauce. He tells me he felt the dish needed to be finished with Parmesan cheese, so he bends his rules to include the Italian import. Of the exception, Acero says, “We’re not trying to make any aggressively hard-and-fast rules. At the end of the day, if we think the food needs something, we will use it.”As I enjoy my dessert—a scoop of honey-thyme ice cream made by a local farmer—I’m left thinking that so often the discussion of a meal made exclusively with Maine foods focuses on its limitations—no lemon, no olive oil, no French wine. It’s a testament to Richard’s skill in the kitchen and Acero’s natural hospitality that you can be halfway through the meal at Wolfpeach before it occurs to you that anything might be missing.Wolfpeach | 50 Elm St., Camden | 207.230.8315No Tips, PleaseWolfpeach operates on a no-tipping model. Servers are paid $20 an hour, with the goal of everyone reaching $25–$35 an hour. Although the idea is not without its detractors, Acero says customers are receptive to it despite the higher prices. She’s quick to say that she knows the model doesn’t work for many small businesses: due to several factors Wolfpeach has “a deep freedom to do things the way we want.” (Although the prices initially seem higher, the total cost of the meal ends up comparable to that of a tipped fine-dining restaurant.)

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Originally published in Maine magazine, November 2021.I am sitting at the side bar of Crispy Gài, the new Thai restaurant from chefs Cyle Reynolds and Jordan Rubin, and space is growing tight. I’m surrounded by several small plates and a woven basket containing sticky rice. The server brings another round of dishes, and my companion and I are momentarily stumped about where to put them. I combine a few items, and offer up the empty plates, making room for more pastel-colored melamine dishes on the skinny bar top.I pull a clump of rice free and use it to swipe up some the thick, salty glaze pooled under a wok-fried morning glory, a minerally green wilted by the wok’s intense heat. A forkful of the waterfall salad, made with cilantro, mint, shallots, and seared flank steak, contains a hidden slice of bird’s-eye chile, the heat from which soon makes a single tear run down my cheek. The sticky rice, a type of rice that clings together when steamed, comes in handy to cool my palate after the spicy salad. Later, Reynolds will inform me the same dish in Thailand would be prepared with at least three times the spice.Our overflowing table at Crispy Gài in Portland echoes a memorable experience Reynolds relates from his time in Bangkok. Reynolds, who lived in the Thai capital for two years, took a group of visiting friends to his favorite street food market and ordered dishes from every vendor. General manager Sasha Brouillard, who was one of those friends, recalls the pleasure of drinking light lager with ice to counter the heat as they dipped sticky rice into the variety of tangy, salty, and sweet sauces on the many dishes crowding the table.Reynolds says his time in Thailand, which began as a vacation but turned into a two-year stay after he skipped his return flight, was one of the most influential times in his cooking career. He worked in a high-end restaurant but frequented street food stalls with the Thai cooks after their shifts, enjoying noodles, fried chicken, and spicy salads. “The flavors were all very punchy, bright, and loud,” Reynolds says. “I love that kind of food.”Back in Maine in early 2020, Reynolds’s plan to open a restaurant in Castine stalled due to the pandemic. Then Reynolds and Rubin, who also owns the sushi bar and cart Mr. Tuna, had a lightbulb moment over another shared meal. Reynolds served Hainanese fried chicken, a Chinese dish popular in Thailand, and Rubin declared it the best fried chicken he’d ever had. A few hours later they had sketched out the concept for Crispy Gài (gài means “chicken” in Thai).The star of the menu at Crispy Gài is indeed the Thai-style fried chicken. The chicken is marinated in a flavor-packed paste that includes cilantro, fish sauce, and white pepper. Then it’s dipped in a thin batter and fried twice. The second fry crisps up the coating so it delivers a delightful crunch on first bite. Chicken wings are adorned with either fried shallots, red curry paste and lime leaves, or Sichuan peppers, which add a mouth-numbing tingle.Reynolds fills out the rest of the menu with popular Thai street food staples like green papaya salad, grilled pork skewers, and fried rice. Pad krapow gài, a dish of stir-fried chicken and long beans, is coated in a rich glaze of oyster sauce, soy sauce, palm sugar, and wilted holy basil, which adds a sweet, peppery flavor. Another stand-out is savory raw scallops that come in a shallow pool of chilled coconut-curry broth topped with fried shallots, Thai basil, and lime zest.Behind the bar, Arvid Brown, who spent two years in rural Thailand teaching English, shakes up cocktails befitting a tropical clime, with bright flavors, tall fluted glasses, and garnishes that touch your nose when you take a sip. My favorite is the Mai Pen Rye, whose name references its mai tai origins but also means “no worries” in Thai. Tinted blue from curaçao, the drink is sweet and tart with nutty and smoky undertones from cashew orgeat and a spritz of scotch.Brown’s bar program is infused with tropical elements, using pineapple skins, lemongrass, and chile peppers in cocktails, just as Rubin and Reynolds have filled their restaurant with nods to Thailand. Lush palm wallpaper evokes steamy nights, and neon accents lend a big-city glow to the dining room. Repurposed Thai fishing traps hang as basket lights above diners crunching through baskets of fried chicken. The lively ambiance, flavorful cuisine, and inventive drinks combine to create a delicious homage to Thai street food at Crispy Gài.Crispy Gài | 90 Exchange St., Portland | 207.536.1017Shine BrightAs soon as Crispy Gài opened, diners began posting selfies taken in its bathroom to social media—dark shots reflected in a large mirror with a hot pink glow emanating from the background. Drawing inspiration from neon signs in Bangkok, Reynolds commissioned artist David “Neon Dave” Johansen to light the bathroom with a single tube of neon edging the ceiling. The walls are covered in a shiny black tile that sends the electric light careening around the small room. While Reynolds says it wasn’t his intention to provide a place for selfies, “it doesn’t hurt to have a photogenic bathroom.”

Originally published in Maine magazine, October 2021.In the thirteenth century, Albertus Magnus, philosopher, theologian, and alchemist, reportedly witnessed the transformation of an ordinary metal into gold. This magical process was believed to be crucial to discovering the philosopher’s stone, which would impart immortality to its owner. Over 700 years later, the insatiable curiosity of the medieval German thinker has inspired the four owners of Magnus on Water, a cocktail bar and restaurant in downtown Biddeford.While it won’t deliver everlasting life, a meal at Magnus on Water does offer transformation. There, seasonal and foraged foods are converted into fine cocktails and simple, ingredient-focused fare. As a result of a chance meeting in a bar, Magnus on Water was opened by Brian Catapang, Carmen Harris, Julia Russell, and Brittany Saliwanchik in January 2020. Saliwanchik, Magnus’s wine director, tells me, “When we built this place, it was with everyone in Biddeford in mind. We want to have Red Stripe and shots of Jameson if you want it. We also want to have really high-end burgundy. This needs to be a place for everyone.”The star of the bar program is Catapang’s inventive cocktail menu. A short list of nine original cocktails contains versions of familiar drinks, such as the Crowd Surfer, a riff on a margarita. Catapang constructs his classic sour with mezcal or tequila (for a “smoking” and “nonsmoking” version), fresh citrus juices, and dry curaçao, then tops it with a salted pineapple-poblano foam. “I’ve always found that bartending has a lot of feel in the natural world, and then uses a little bit of science to get to the end result,” Catapang says.From the juicy rum-blackberry-lime highball to the mouth-wateringly savory gin martini made with watercress, peppercorns, and ramp oil, Catapang’s cocktails are full of foraged ingredients. Wild berries, herbs, and greens parade through the cocktail menu as the seasons progress, disappearing as they fade from the forest floor. Both Catapang’s cocktail list and Saliwanchik’s wine menu reflect their infatuation with fleeting essences that are gone as soon as customers become accustomed to seeing them.Chef Ben Jackson joined Magnus on Water this April. Jackson is known for his time at Drifters Wife, the acclaimed Portland wine bar that closed in July 2020. At Magnus he delivers his signature cooking style that places high-quality, seasonal ingredients at the forefront of a dish. His menu changes frequently—it is tweaked daily as Jackson mulls over the best way to represent the food available at the farmers’ markets he frequents.Jackson’s food feels elevated but approachable, not fussy or needlessly complicated. “I cook the way I want to eat,” he says. “It’s very seasonal. It’s just the only way that I know how to do it.” Bluefin tuna, harvested locally in the summer and fall, comes as a tartare with petite cubes of fish dressed simply with olive oil and lemon juice. After a few nights of preparing one version with a bed of sliced cucumbers, Jackson tinkers with it, substituting in smashed cucumbers. He strips away the excess additions until he feels a dish is in its purest, elemental form.Jackson steams meaty littleneck clams that were harvested in Brunswick in Amontillado sherry with green garlic until their shells pop open. They arrive piled high in a bowl with crispy slices of toast that soften when dipped in the rich broth. The heavy char on thick slices of summer squash is offset by fresh goat cheese, torn basil, and a drizzle of agrodolce, a sweet, tangy sauce of reduced vinegar. A thick slab of rich country pâté is complemented by a zippy mustard and lightly pickled cucumber slices.The night I dine at Magnus on Water, two friends and I sit outdoors on the expansive patio during a break from near-daily thunderstorms. As a few plastic pink flamingos peer at us from within the surrounding lush plantings of hydrangeas, ferns, and grasses, I savor my entrée: perfectly flaky hake hidden under a mound of warm cherry tomatoes scattered with basil leaves.To end the evening, server Minx Gordon delivers dessert, a layered caramelized honey cake from baker Victoria Nam. Between the warm hospitality, Jackson’s food, and the strong drink in hand, it feels like we’ve struck gold in the heart of Biddeford with this meal at Magnus on Water.Magnus on Water | 12 Water St., Biddeford | 207.494.9052Brian Works His MagicMagnus’s beverage director Brian Catapang loves to introduce wary customers to his innovative drink menu. He lures Scotch drinkers in with smoky mezcal and convinces “old-school Biddeford guys” to try pink drinks by the end of the evening. A group of ladies regularly came in for lemon drop martinis until Catapang turned them on to the Happy Camper, a bourbon drink with blood orange and vanilla. He says, “Watching people change, [have] that ‘ah-ha’ moment, is so rewarding.” Then he laughs. “It’s like, ‘I got you. No more Long Island iced teas for you!’”

Episode 79 Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features RotoGraphs editor Eno Sarris. We discuss the effects of a signing in Tampa Bay and the third base crop. Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @mikepodhorzer or @enosarris on Twitter and tweet us any fantasy questions you have that […] Source

Episode 32 Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features RotoGraphs contributor Chad Young. We discuss surprising batted ball distance leaders & laggards and some Ottoneu strategy. Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @mikepodhorzer or @enosarris on Twitter and tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may […] Source

Episode 58 Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features FanGraphs injury guru Jeff Zimmerman. We discuss what else, injuries! And also some stuff from Jeff’s website Baseball Heat Maps. Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @mikepodhorzer or @enosarris on Twitter and tweet us any fantasy questions you have […] Source

Whenever I find a recipe dedicated to hair growth I get just a tad bit intrigued. If you are into mixing oils then this recipe is just right for you. I have followed Curly Proverbz for about a year now and she is known for her super long thick hair. Along with great hair practices, […] The post A Super DIY Hair Growth Oil Recipe That Isn’t For The Faint Of Heart appeared first on Black Hair Information.

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Episode 55 Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features RotoGraphs contributor Colin Zarzycki. We discuss a trio of men returning from injury and perhaps the next step in player projections. Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @mikepodhorzer or @enosarris on Twitter and tweet us any fantasy questions you […] Source

California lawmakers Assemblymember Chris Ward and State Senator Steve Padilla called for the removal of a Day of the Dead display at Balboa Park's Centro Cultural de la Raza, which the cultural center defended as a sacred right to mourn all loss of life.

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