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Rosemont Market and Bakery
(207) 774-8129
559 Brighton Avenue, Portland
Open Monday through Saturday 8-6, Sunday 9-4.
Best source for local produce in the area by far, if you can't get to the farmer's market
John Naylor and Scott Anderson run this fabulous market, opened in January 2005. Anderson's work stocks the bakery, its bread cupboard shelves filled with high-quality breads, like the whole wheat scala, a tender crumb loaf with a nutty flavor, perfect as toast; and the rustic torpedo, a chewier, crustier loaf with some whole wheat that makes wonderful sandwiches. All-butter croissants and pain au chocolate are flaky and tender. Semolina rolls, pizza, and focaccia are a few more of the breads, in addition to pies and cookies, baked by assistant Erin Lynch. She takes advantage of the seasonal produce appearing in the front of the market, making strawberry-rhubarb pie in summer, blueberry, and in fall, pumpkin, apple-cranberry, and pecan. Her cookies, like the hermits and blondies, are another treasure.
But wine and produce, meat, cheese, and deli products like white bean spread, guacamole, and pesto, make this place the only place anyone needs to shop at-except the fish store.
The range of local cheeses, from Hahn's End creamy Blue Velvet to aged goat cheeses from Sunset Acres Farm to the fresh cheddar curd and butter and crème fraîche from Silvery Moon Creamery, will inspire much gratitude for the pastures of Maine.
Wine tastings are held on one Friday of each month and are often real parties, with the market's terrific focaccia to munch on for free, or someone else's handmade chocolates; call for times.
Naylor prides himself on his well-priced wines. The big cupboard facing the front of the store is filled with inexpensive and delicious choices-"good value wine buys," Naylor calls them, mostly under $10 and often from France and Italy. Other shelves around the back walls hold niches of Portuguese and South African wines, as well as German, Austrian, Argentinean, and American wines, all well worth trying. If it's sold in Maine, it tastes good, and doesn't cost the moon, you can bet on encountering it here, often for a dollar or two less than elsewhere.