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Customers chat with co-owner Simone Burdet around a full bar at Rise Pizza & Pub in May. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer Around 2018, just as the NBC television show of the same name hit its viewership peak, a friend began referring to her favorite Portland restaurant as “The Good Place.” I started keeping tabs on their social media and would ask my friend for her opinions on any recent changes or new menu items.

That is, until one day, when she steered the conversation to another local restaurant she called “The Better Place.” I kept up as we added “The Better Place 2.0” and “The Even Better Place” to the list.



All four have since closed and reopened as new businesses, but none of the newcomers seems to have impressed her enough to earn a nickname. “If it’s going to become a ‘Good Place,’” she told me, “It has to serve food I think about all day when I’m at work, plus it has to be warm and friendly.” Listen to Rise Pizza & Pub chef/co-owner Rocco Marzilli describe his new Cumberland restaurant, and it’s clear he intuitively understands my friend’s typology.

“Every step of the way, (co-owners Tobey Moulton and Simone Burdet) and I have tried to create an environment here that’s fun, vibrant, light and welcoming to everybody,” he said. “And the food is pub food – clearly a lot of Italian food since it’s got ‘pizza’ in the name, but I’m trying to have food your grandmother could sit down and enjoy. But also, someone else i.

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