Boxerbrand | Recipe for Success

Eight years after opening its doors in the burgeoning city of Portland Maine, the Kon Asian Bistro has remained relevant in the face of a restaurant revolution. The once-quiet restaurant scene now brims over with hundreds of pubs, diners, and eateries. It has become such a mecca that the Boston Globe newspaper declared in 2014 that a “boom” was taking place in the small city. And what was once an undiscovered fishing community was suddenly a big draw for foodies…

Read More Read More

From a humble, even checkered past, to reinvention as one of the finer southern-fare restaurants in Beaumont, Texas, Suga’s Deep South Cuisine & Jazz Bar lights up the downtown with old-fashioned cream sauces and crawfish, and the cool strains of live jazz. For the past 11 years, the fine-dining restaurant has paid homage to its past – Suga’s website in fact lays out the history of the 1914 red brick building it inhabits, from days as a 1940s barbershop to…

Read More Read More

A white-tablecloth, destination restaurant in Staten Island, which serves classic Italian fare to celebrities and special-occasion crowds, recently took their culinary vision to the shopping mall circle. In January, the elegant Angelina’s Ristorante opened a second, more casual location near the Staten Island Mall. The goal of the new Angelina’s Kitchen, says owner Vincent Malerba, is to bring the same high-end quality to pizza, chicken Parmesan and other popular dishes served up in a high-traffic location populated by chain restaurants. The 6,000…

Read More Read More

An iconic, eight-sided building where farmers and butchers hocked their wares in the late 1800s, only to stand dormant years later like a brick-and-mortar time capsule, re-opened its doors last month in a flourish of optimism driven by an award-winning restaurateur. Frits Huntjens, a James Beard Award finalist, and one of the visionaries behind the effort to restore and revive the 1879 octagonal farmers market building in the heart of Petersburg, Va., has been smiling ear-to-ear since he opened the…

Read More Read More

Six friends from Italy with a passion to share culinary treasures of their northern homeland, made famous by Barolo wine and truffles, recently flung open the doors to their first American restaurant. Last February, far from the soaring Alps of Turin, the warm and rustic San Carlo Osteria Piemonte restaurant took its place beneath the towering skyline of Manhattan’s SoHo district to pay homage to the sophisticated tastes of an important northwest city. “Turin is our hometown,” says Moreno Cerutti,…

Read More Read More

When Hurricane Sandy swamped The Inlet Café in 2012, flooding the 49-year-old New Jersey eatery beneath five feet of water, the second-generation owners did what their parents had taught them to do in the face of disaster—they rolled up their sleeves and got to work. Like their parents had done in 1975 after a fast-moving fire leapt from a neighboring hotel and reduced the family business to rubble, siblings and co-owners Robin Lentz-Sundstrom and Douglas Lentz refused to be knocked…

Read More Read More

Salvatore Scarlata’s motto is “cooking with passion.” The native of Sicily, who demonstrated a flair for traditional Italian cooking as a young boy, chopped and diced his way through a lifelong pursuit of creating the “perfect dining experience” for his guests; a cozy environment where they could reliably find perfect atmosphere, food and service. After moving to the U.S. to expand his cooking repertoire, and logging in many hours apprenticing at local five-star restaurants, he realized his dream of restaurant…

Read More Read More

In a trendy corner of Cajun country Louisiana exists a gateway to Hemingway’s Spain via a red door in the stucco edifice of Pamplona Tapas Bar and Restaurant. Launched in 2007 by British chef William Annesley, the private chef for Gwen Stefani and Quentin Tarantino, and his wife Karina, the moody little restaurant that exudes all the ambience of the storied bullfighting passion of Spain is a crowning achievement for the couple. Rich in appearance, a room designed “from the…

Read More Read More

Nestled amid the rolled-gold hills of Carmel Valley, Calif. sits the stone and terracotta landmark Holman Ranch, a sprawling facility that embraces classic California and Mexican architecture, while offering the most modern conveniences in a broad swath of services at its vineyard: wedding and meeting venues, stables, a new restaurant and a hotel. On the sprawling 400-acre estate, guests step back in time as they drift into rooms accented by oak-beamed ceilings, or out onto grounds replete with vineyards, and…

Read More Read More