However, the Starboard & Sandbar ($16) is the real winner, upgrading the Deco-era, scotch-and-cherry-flavored Sandbar by exchanging syrupy stone fruit for citrus and complex, herbal Ramazzotti amaro. His Table Mountain Negroni ($14), a rooibos-infused gin version of the bar standard is light and a little astringent – not necessarily an improvement on the original, but quite pleasant. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographerīar manager Jack O’Brien has done well with his take on the current trend of tweaking classic drink formulations. The Starboard & Sandbar at Bistro Leluco. The couple searched for a Portland-side location for a new restaurant, but instead decided to jump at purchasing the converted Cottage Road bungalow because, “We live in South Portland, our kids and their friends love it here.
We teamed up as operations people for the Almond Bistro group, and then we’ve been in Maine almost five years with our three children, Luca, Leo and Coco (whose names are the inspiration for the restaurant’s name),” Rappazzo said. “We met in Manhattan, in the hustle and bustle of the restaurant industry. Sometimes they figure things out after a year, and sometimes they just disappear.īistro Leluco co-owners Michele Trizzino and Antonio Rappazzo, on the other hand, have hit the ground sprinting. I’m no tri-stateophobe, but, like most of you, I’ve witnessed NY/NJ/PA restaurateurs arrive in Maine and struggle to adjust their expectations and practices to suit life in our sparsely populated, yet food-mad state. Indeed, a heads-down, unassuming approach is probably not what you might expect from two New Yorkers with the accents to prove it. It’s also the way Leluco’s mostly French and Italian-themed menu offers evidence of connections and relationships with farmers that frequently take chefs years to build. Partly, it’s the easy way this South Portland bistro slipped into the hermit crab shell left behind by Enio’s, renewing the space from floorboards to ceiling without making a show of it.
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