Norimoto’s rhubarb danish. “I tend to get anything that’s super seasonal,” said chocolatier Kate Shaffer. “(Baker Atsuko Fujimoto) really likes it when you can look at a pastry and see the season.
‘Oh this is seasonal. It has rhubarb right on it.’ ” Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer Any Mainer with eyes and a sweet tooth already knew that we were living in the golden age of bakeries in Portland.
We didn’t need celebrity chef and cookbook author Amanda Freitag to tell us so. “Well, it looks like Portland, Maine, might be vying for pastry capital of America,” Freitag told the industry crowd attending the James Beard Awards gala at the Lyric Opera House in Chicago on Monday, where both Zu Bakery and Atsuko Fujimoto of Norimoto took home James Beard Foundation Awards , for Outstanding Bakery and Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker, respectively. “OMG! This is HUGE!! HUGE!!” ConcernedMainer commented on the Press Herald story’s about the wins, summing up how many of the rest of us feel.
Beyond those two, a by-no-means comprehensive list of shockingly great local bakeries includes Standard Baking, Tandem, Belleville, Bread & Friends, Onggi Ferments and, slightly farther afield, Night Moves and Scratch in South Portland, Fika in Saco and Solo Pane Pasticceria in Bath. And we haven’t even touched on the terrific bagels here. In a proud, preening, celebratory #PortlandMaineYesLifesGoodHere mood, we called an assortment of eaters, bakers and food industry fol.
