LEWISTON — Forage Market in Lewiston is opening a new location in Portland at 123 Washington Ave., the same building complex that houses an oyster bar and a craft distillery.
The market is actually a bakery and cafe that makes breakfast and lunch sandwiches to order, pastries, soups and salads. The staff bakes a variety of breads, mostly for the cafe’s use, but loaves are sold to the public as well.
Forage is perhaps best known for its hand-rolled bagels prepared the old-fashioned way and baked in a wood-fired oven. A writer for Saveur magazine last year called Forage Market bagels “one of America’s best.”
Owner Allen Smith said the new space on Washington Avenue is about 4,000 square feet. Forage’s neighbors will be The Shop, which is an oyster bar and retail shop run by Island Creek Oysters, and Maine Craft Distilling.
“We’ve been interested (in Portland) for quite a while, and we got serious maybe a year ago,” said owner Allen Smith. “The space that we were looking at fell through. We just waited until we found a place that we felt would work really well for us.”
Smith said he hopes to open in Portland in the spring, after a new wood-fired oven is installed.
Allen Smith, left, co-owner of Forage Market on Lisbon Street in Lewiston, shows U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Dallas Tonsager the market’s wood-fired, brick oven bread baking operation in 2012. (Sun Journal file photo)
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