Update your address book and enter Woodford Food and Beverage.  It’s the first new restaurant of the year.  The official opening date is Wednesday, January 20, at 660 Forest Ave. at Woodford’s Corner. But the restaurant has been holding friends and family nights all weekend long, and I was fortunate to have attended one of the dinners.

The sleek dining room is both family friendly and date night chic

Essentially it’s an American bistro serving stylish fare prepared by Chef Courtney Loreg whose resume includes a four year stint at Fore Street, 2 years at the former Bresca and several years at Wente Vineyards in California, before moving back to Maine.

The food is fantastic, unfussy but beautifully prepared. Think roast chicken, braised lamb shanks, baked oysters, fried Brussels, steak tartare and much more.

Some of the dishes I had included a wonderful roast chicken, a perfect negroni, steak tartare and baked oysters

sprouts, steak frites—the kind of American bistro cooking that’s so easy to like.

Husband and wife team and seasoned restaurateurs Birch Shambaugh and Mary Fayth Preyer have created a terrific space: a kind of moderne décor that has lots of energy and style.  It’s a new neighborhood for dining, too,  at this otherwise inauspicious location, once home to Valle’s Steakhouse. And it’s a natural progression from the equally exciting goings on along Washington Avenue’s burgeoning restaurant row (i.e., Terlingua, Roustabout) and a relief from the Middle Street clique of dining sturm und drang.

Roasted beet salad with radicchio and goat cheese mousse; gingerbread cake with caramel and poached pears

No matter where you live in Greater Portland, go for it.  It even has onsite parking, a few spaces adjacent to the restaurant and the much larger lot at the Woodfords Club down the street.

See Friday’s First Look review of Woodford Food and Beverage.

Woodford Food and Beverage, 660 Forest Ave., (207) 200-8503  www.woodfordfb.com