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.
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
Well worth your time, Portland!! Woodford F&B is all about sharing good times and good food, at your pace, with old and new friends. Their menu covers all tastes and types from the mile-high burger (unhinge those jaws, people) to roasted chicken served over wilted greens and cauliflower and bathed in a reduction sauce with red pepper zing, to pork, lamb shank, hake, oysters (raw and baked), vegan options and on and on. Eclectic choices, electric preparations. The food and beverage menu raises a glass to salute the old and to ring in the new. It’s appropriate that they are opening within the first few weeks of 2016.
This new bistro redux is situated at Woodford’s Corner as you head off of the peninsula in the old Valle’s Steakhouse building. The ambiance is light, with music courtesy of maitre d - no, that’s not a rap handle for the house dejay. There’s a turntable at the entrance, spinning tunes from the 70’s and 80’s to make the place that much more cool. The owners know how to entertain and they’ve arranged the layout to ensure just that. This is a restaurant where you will want to mingle a bit, while you’re having your new favorite dish. Welcome to town, Woodford’s F&B. So glad you’re here.