Bacchus lives!
The Wentworth by the Sea Hotel is hosting a six-week long Winter Wine Festival from Jan. 16 through Feb. 26. The festival will feature an extensive series of events, including Grande Vintner’s Dinners, food and wine pairings, rare vintage tastings, an art show, cooking classes, weekly champagne and jazz brunches, and educational wine seminars.   For the vintner’s dinners, notable wine makers, vineyard proprietors and wine experts team with celebrated chefs for multi-course food and wine pairings. Saturday, Jan. 21 will feature Italian wine expert Riccardo Legnaro and chef Melissa Kelly, co-owner of Primo Restaurant in Rockland Maine, for an Italian themed Grande Vintner’s Dinner, while Saturday, Jan. 28 will showcase the talents of Wentworth by the Sea executive chef Dan Dumont and Kendall-Jackson Winery chef Justin Wangler in a Dueling Chefs Dinner hosted by Kendall-Jackson’s master winemaker Randy Ullom. For the meal, each chef will present a culinary interpretation of the flavors found in selected wines, with guests determining a winner by ballot. Other dinners will be hosted by the likes of Justin Vineyards co-proprietor Deborah Baldwin and celebrity chef Paul Prudhomme, just to name a few.

Michele Duval, executive director of the festival, says she is pleased with the growth the festival has achieved in just one year.

“Last year, it was only one week and we knew right away that we wanted to expand it,” she says.
Duval’s goal is to make the festival as Seacoast-oriented as possible by bringing local winemakers, chefs and cheese makers on board, while maintaining the national and international caliber of the event with Californian and European luminaries.

Local and regional participants include Dave Campbell, owner of Ceres Street Wine in Portsmouth, who will co-host a Piedmont wine tasting, and Winn Rhodes, owner of South Street and Vine Market, who will pair Italian artisinal cheeses with a library tasting (a series of non-consecutive vintages) of rare Bertani Amarone wines. Clark Frasier and Mark Gaier, of Arrows Restaurant in Oqunquit, will prepare the Feb. 25 Sakonnet Vineyards Grande Vintner’s Dinner, while Maine cheese maker Jennifer Betancourt of Silvery Moon Creamery in Scarborough will be just one of a handful of local artisans whose cheeses will be featured in the weekly Moet and Chandon Bubbles and Jazz brunches.  To check out all of the festival’s happenings (and the happenings are extensive), and to check prices or make reservations, visit www.winterwinefestival.com or call 603-373-6566 or 603-422-7322.

freed Robert’s
On Tuesday, Nov. 29, at the Blue Mermaid in Portsmouth, Bob’s Clam Hut owner Michael Landgarten officially celebrated the resurrection of his plans to build Robert’s Maine Bar and Grille on the site of the former Quarterdeck Restaurant in Kittery.  It’s been almost one year since Landgarten first announced those very plans, only to have them dashed by a construction-halting lawsuit, filed by Weathervane Seafood Restaurant owner Terry Gagner, who claimed Landgarten had been illegally granted permission to demolish the old Quarterdeck building after the site was found to be structurally unsound. 

At the gathering, Landgarten credited the efforts of a grassroots coalition known as “Free Roberts” with effectively ending the lawsuit by enlisting public support through pickets, T-shirts, mass-e-mails, and numerous letters-to-the-editor to the Portsmouth Herald.

The coalition, which was founded by and made up of Landgarten’s friends, colleagues and employees, was spearheaded by Bob’s Clam Hut employee Donna Dionne and by local resident Denise Wheeler, who volunteers alongside Landgarten on the committee for Share Our Strength Seacoast, a hunger fighting organization. 

Addressing the crowd, Landgarten spoke with emotion about the positive impact the coalition had, saying that without their efforts, Robert’s Maine Bar and Grille would have been “dead in the water.” At one point, Landgarten gestured to his attorney and said with a laugh, “He wants to hire you guys for all his cases.”

Now that the ordeal is over and construction is in full swing, Landgarten says, “it feels good to be doing the work I had imagined.”  He adds that, financial losses aside, the forced slow down had some positive repercussions.

“Slowing down often can mean that you’re smarter,” he says, and adds, “The result is an improvement both in the design of the building and in the way we’re planning to open and manage the establishment.”  The basic concept for the restaurant, which Landgarten described back in February as an updated version of a Maine classic with the focus on indigenous Maine foods, remains unchanged. As for his relationship with Gagner, Landgarten says, “I’m excited to put it behind us, shake hands, and be good neighbors.”