DETAILS: Pastry Chef Ilma Lopez and Chef Sansonetti recently opened The Ugly Duckling Luncheonette and Bakeshop in Portland’s West End and are excited to be showcasing a Portland Wine Week Dinner featuring magnums of Frank Cornelisson's 'Susucaru' from Mt Etna and course after course of Sicilian-inspired food channeling their beloved Italian restaurant Piccolo that closed in 2020. You can count on lots of local ingredients, fish, meat, house made pastas, and dessert. Guests will be seated around the horseshoe to enjoy this delicious and exciting night.
Limited to 16 people.
6 wines + 6 courses + prosecco welcome toast (out of magnum, of course)
COST: $110 plus tax and gratuity
RESERVE: email reservations@chavalmaine.com
LINKS: The Ugly Duckling
Before Chef Damian Sansonetti was the acclaimed chef de cuisine at the uber-French Bar Boulud in New York, co-owner Damian Sansonetti grew up savoring his mother's and grandmother's cooking from handmade pasta to grilled fish to learning how to cure meat and make sausages with his grandfather. A career in food was practically his birthright. After graduating from the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute, Sansonetti worked at Nantucket’s Brant Point Grill and Pittsburgh’s Steelhead Grill, moving to New York to open Heartbeat in the W Hotel. Sansonetti met Daniel Boulud while working at Shallots in Midtown and eventually took a position at Boulud’s DB Bistro Moderne. Sansonetti was a 2022 finalist for the James Beard Award, Best Chef Northeast.
Chef Ilma Lopez has worked in some of the most demanding and rewarding kitchens in the industry, such as DB Bistro, Corton, Tailor, El Bulli, Café Boulud, and Le Bernardin. When she left New York City to the quieter reaches of Maine, Lopez found a new terrain she couldn’t resist. Arriving with a mastery of colors, flavors, textures, and spices—and a seasoned ability to work under pressure—Lopez makes classic dishes her own, with attention to micro-detail and thoughtful twists. For her work, Lopez earned a 2014 StarChefs Coastal New England Rising Star Pastry Chef Award, Has been a multiple-time James Beard top-Chef finalist, and you may have seen her name in the September issue of Bon Appetit Magazine highlighting her incredible talents when naming Portland, Maine as their pick for Restaurant City of The Year. You can find her daily at their new bakeshop and luncheonette The Ugly Duckling.
