The Wrap: The Continental and The Clam Bar open in Portland - Press Herald

The Continental, a British-style pub on Brighton Avenue in Portland, has opened. Photo by Jessie Banhazl

The Continental, a polished, dark-paneled British-pub style restaurant, has opened in the Oakdale neighborhood in Portland, about a year after the owners had originally hoped to be open. Partners Michael Barbuto and Kevin Doyle opened the restaurant on Thursday. It's located on Brighton Avenue in a building that briefly housed an international grocer.

Barbuto, who with Doyle also owns Portland restaurants CBG and Nosh, has blamed earlier delays on a cascading series of problems: The city required more from the partners than they'd understood they needed to do, and meeting those requirements monkeyed with their timing for hiring, as well as their contractors' construction timelines. When such hiccups happen, Barbuto said, "they're committed elsewhere. You have a short window with signed contracts. The timing can really start to unravel the whole thing."

The problems continued until the last possible second. The Continental was scheduled to open at 4 p.m. Thursday. Barbuto said he and his partners were busy doing "1,000 things," when suddenly – with excited new customers already lining up to check out the place – the point-of-sale system went kaput. "It was one of the most stressful moments of my entire life," Barbuto said. To add to the pressure, his parents showed up unexpectedly – their idea had been to lend support – from Braintree, Massachusetts. The Continental finally opened two-plus hours late, at 6:15 p.m.

"I think it's me. I'm the cursed person," Barbuto said, maybe not entirely jokingly.

For now, The Continental is open 4-11 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Within the next month or so, when the restaurant is able to hire a few additional people, the hours are expected to expand to seven days a week, and for lunch, starting at 11 a.m. The menu, with British pub favorites like fish and chips (the biggest seller thus far), French onion soup, Scotch eggs and shepherd's pie, also will grow, Barbuto said. He is looking to add menu items for vegetarians, vegans and children, as well as "a proper English breakfast."

CLAM BAR OPENS ON COMMERCIAL

The Clam Bar also has opened after a big renovation (and, like The Continental, after some delays), the project of restaurateurs and married couple Garrett Fitzgerald and Tegan Curry, also of the Bar Harbor Lobster Company.

The spot, at 199 West Commercial St., encompasses a beer garden and Royale Kitchen food truck as well as the shack. The Clam Bar menu features such items as steamers, lobster rolls, oysters, fried clams, fish and chips, smash burgers, loaded red hot dogs, draft beer (technically at the spot's Tap House), wine and cocktails. Curry described the menu as a mashup of classic seafood offerings with items that have a South American twist.

The parked food truck – open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily – offers coffee drinks, bagels and breakfast sandwiches.

The restaurant, located in the former home of Benny's Famous Fried Clams, is open from 11 a.m. to 8 or 9 p.m. every day but Wednesday for now, weather permitting, though future plans include indoor seating; for now, it can seat about 200. A spot for family games is also in the works.

"This property screams for people to hang out here," Curry said. "There is lots of energy here."

In the winter, The Clam Bar will sell Christmas trees and transform into a winter market of sorts.

VENA'S CHANGES COURSE

Vena's Fizz House will not be opening a new retail shop after all.

From 2013 until January 2021, Vena's Fizz House operated a mixology business in the Old Port, selling vintage cocktail barware and glasses, as well as bitters and cocktail mixers. A bar inside the shop served imaginative craft cocktails and mocktails. When the physical location closed, owners Steve and Johanna Corman moved the business offices and mixology classes to Westbrook, but they planned to reopen in a former church in Portland, which they were renovating.

"However, we have come to realize that much has evolved since we last closed our doors on Fore Street," they wrote in a post on Instagram. Their own priorities have shifted, they wrote. "The transition to an ecommerce business has provided us with the opportunity to achieve a healthier work-life balance."

Steve Corman said a combination of staffing issues, the success of their online and wholesale business – "It's grown immensely since the pandemic" – and a general rethinking of their priorities drove their decision. "I am almost 67, and Johanna asked me, 'Do you really want to own a bar?' At my stage of life, no," he said.

The 1889 church that the Cormans had purchased, originally the Church of Christ, soon will be on the market again, Corman said. It's located at the corner of Weymouth and Congress streets.

CAMDEN'S WOLFPEACH CLOSES

Wolfpeach in Camden has closed.

The restaurant, which was opened during the pandemic by husband-and-wife team Gabriela Acero and Derek Richard, had several iterations. It began as a pop-up, staffed solely by Richard in the kitchen and Acero overseeing the beverage program and front of the house. Later, it became well-known for what Acero called "Wolfpeach 1.o," which served a New American hyper-local menu and earned a nomination for a James Beard Award.

Its final iteration was as a pizza restaurant, serving artisanal pizza made from naturally leavened dough. Acero said that she and Richard had been most interested in running a neighborhood, community restaurant and that Wolfpeach 1.o had been pigeonholed as fine dining. Pizza today, the two felt, occupies a space that nicely straddles neighborhood and fine dining.

Acero said the restaurant is closing for personal, not business reasons.

"It has been a pleasure serving this community for the last couple of years and we are grateful for the support we've had from so many lovely people through our various iterations," they wrote on Instagram.

Vintage Maine Kitchen is based in the former North Pownal General Store, just a hop, skip and a jump from Sebago Lake. Photo courtesy of Andrew Hanscom

A SWEET (AND SALTY) TALE

The small-batch Maine potato chips made by Pownal-based Vintage Maine Kitchen, owned by husband-and-wife team Kelly and Scott Brodeur, got a sweet surprise last week. Here's how the story unfolds, according to their Facebook account.

"A van pulls up to Vintage and a few people enter the space and say they came to buy some chips and bring us our prize?!?! Is Ed McMahon in your van? What is happening?

"'You won, we brought you a trophy' he says. Maine Maple won BEST OUT OF 128 different chips!'"

The account goes on to say that Darius Shahinfar was celebrating a family reunion on Sebago Lake. For fun, the family held a potato chip tasting, with brackets, of more than 125 varieties of chips. After many rounds, the dark horse Vintage Maine's Maine Maple chips took the prize. When the family realized that the winning brand was based so near by, they hunted down a trophy, "inscribed" it with the winner in magic marker on its marble base, and hand-delivered it to the company.

Shahinfar gives his own funny, heartwarming play-by-play of the event, with photos, on his Facebook account. "Maine Maple rode a wave of strong support for its chip goodness + subtle sweetness to overcome the other side of the electorate which felt savory, salty, spicy and bold flavors were better," he wrote in part.

If you're looking for a good news story, this is it.