The flourish and fanfare that swirled around the opening day of the Portland Patisserie and Grand Cafe last week—with many of the city’s serial foodies assessing and inspecting–doesn’t even begin to show the depths of this French-inspired grand café. Classic breakfast fare like croissants or almond-topped brioche breads are part of the lineup in addition to all the Euro-style pastries and cakes, sablés and cookies, salads, soups, quiche,  crepes and sandwiches on house-baked baguettes or focaccia for lunch or light suppers.  It’s all prepared in the long narrow kitchen in the rear of this corner retail space on Market and Milk streets in the Old Port.

The cafe is abuzz with activity as patrons clamor to try spectacular pastries and savories

The cafe is abuzz with activity as patrons clamor to try spectacular pastries and savories

The café is the brainchild of Michelle and Steve Corry of Five Fifty-Five and Petite Jacqueline renown and their presiding pastry chef is pâtissiére Catherine Cote-Eliot, whose husband is none other than chef de cuisine Frederic Eliot of Petite Jacqueline.  Cote-Eliot’s top-notch resume includes years at Portland’s Standard Baking as well as Financier in New York.

The café was carved out of a perennially vacant retail space in a vintage brick building, giving the place instant provenance as though it’s been there for years.  Café tables and chairs are placed around the room in attractive groupings to capture the picturesque scene through large plate-glass windows fronting on the cobblestone cuteness of the streetscape.

Cases filled with the cafe's fine pastries

Cases filled with the cafe’s fine pastries

I stopped in last week for lunch and chose a very well prepared panzanella salad, a mix of crisp lettuce leaves with buttery croutons, goat cheese, Nicoise olives, tomatoes, pickled onions and red peppers in a bracing vinaigrette.  The crepes that day were filled with confit of duck, but I haven’t had the chance to sample those yet or many of the pastries.

Panzanella salad and duck-confit crepe

Panzanella salad and duck-confit crepe

What’s vitally  unique about the café is that it’s open from early morning to dusk, making it ideal for the business district–and tourist trade–at breakfast and lunch or as a stylish spot for afternoon or pretheatre. Aside from serious dining or the plethora of sandwich shops in the area, Portland Patisserie fills a definite niche in our burgeoning gastroscape of dining well.