Local Happenings

If you're not escaping to Nevis, or some other warm destination in the next few weeks, here are few events happening locally (Portland, Maine) to help get you through the end of the long snowy winter...

Paul Virant of Vie Restaurant in Chicago is teaming up with fellow Food & Wine 2007 Best New Chef Award winner, Steve Corry to prepare a 7-course tasting menu on Monday, March 24th. There is only one seating for this event, held at Five Fifty-Five, which I suspect will sell out. $150pp for 7 courses paired with wine.

If you love Hugo's tasting menu, plan a dinner there before March 22, the last night they are serving before their Spring Break. They won't re-open until May 2nd, at which time they are promising "big changes and a new menu." I just hope they bring back the lobster parfait!

The "utterly cosmopolitan yet utterly unpretentious” Pink Martini will be performing at Merrill Auditorium on Friday, March 7th. Eclectic, the band "is like a romantic Hollywood musical of the 1940s or 50s – but with a global perspective which is modern".

If you feel like heading south from Maine, Boston's "Restaurant Week" starts Sunday, March 9th and runs through Friday, March 14th, and again Sunday, March 16 through Friday, March 21st. Restaurant Week is an excellent way to sample some of Boston's best restaurants, without breaking the bank; 3-course Prix-fixe Lunch Menus are $20.08, while the 3-course Prix-fixe Dinner Menus are $33.08 More than 150 restaurants participate, including some well-known fine dining establishments such as Les Zygomates, Icarus, L'Espalier...and a few of my personal favorites, Pigalle, (have the Tempura-Fried Tuna Roll and the Tuna Martini) Sibling Rivarly and the Elephant Walk.