LEWISTON —
Those who stop in at the tented mini-pub being set up next weekend at the Lewiston Jazz Festival by The Lewiston Village Pub restaurant may be surprised at some of the upscale food choices.
The festival, where organizers take pride in providing food that is as interesting as the music, is featuring 21 food tents, many providing foods not often seen at typical festivals.
Owners of the three-year-old Village Pub on Center Street, noted for it’s extensive offerings of imported and artisan beer, plan to showcase their newly enhanced pub menu, which has matured far past pizza and wings.
Guests are often surprised when they stop at the pub to eat, owners say, and they hope attendees of the jazz festival will feel the same sense of pleasant surprise when they taste what the restaurant is offering at the festival.
“We still have people that live in Lewiston come in, have an unbelievable meal, and then say ‘I thought you guys just had pizza and wings,” said Ken Scibetta, former manager of the Left Bank in Buffalo. Scibetta, who met his partner Ed Webster when both were working at the Water Street Landing in Lewiston, said that the pub now offers about 90 menu items.
“We now have a huge emphasis on lobster,” Scibetta noted, adding that people wait in lines that go out the door on Fridays to enjoy the weekend “Lobster festival,” with fresh lobsters flown in every Friday. The restaurant charges $10 for a pound-and-a-half lobster.
The Pub will be among more than twenty restaurants at the Jazz festival, being held on Center Street Friday and Saturday and featuring 170 musicians and 40 performances.
Inside the Village Pub’s mini-pub, attendees will be able to choose from a variety of items including a Woodchuck Cider Slider burger featuring a ground sirloin patty on a mini-bun topped with a Woodchuck Draft Cider reduction, Granny Smith apples, Applewood smoked bacon, sautéed onions and crumbly gorgonzola cheese. There will also be a smoked gouda mac and cheese and a Shrimp Three-way of skewered jumbo shrimp, each with a different restaurant-made sauce.
Other unique offerings at the festival include:
Gigio’s Café with polenta and Italian sausage; Wine on Third with shrimp and scallop black fettuchini and tomato fennel sauce, crab cakes, calico slaw and Creole remolade and Kahlua tirimisu; Fortuna’s with greens and beans; Lake Effect Ice Cream with 8 oz.. containers of gourmet ice cream; Artichoke French with deep fried artichoke hearts; Water Street with clams, pot stickers and bread pudding; Casa Antica with rice balls and banana peppers and Brio with spinach and feta pizza and chicken finger pizza; Macri’s eggplant rolatini and more.
Other restaurants include: Syros; The Country Popper, Holy Crepe, Billy’s Beef, The Silo, Melloni’s Meats, The Steelhead; the Brickyard, Bandanna’s.
The jazz festival acts will provide entertainment in numerous restaurants and pubs throughout the Village of Lewiston, as well as a variety of indoor and outdoor sites along Center Street on Friday evening, August 27 from 5-10 p.m. and all day on Saturday, August 28 from noon–10 p.m. While the festival ends Saturday evening, select Lewiston restaurants will offer entertainment as part of a jazz crawl. There will also be outdoor performances on Sunday at Academy Park in Lewiston.
The Friday evening headliner will be the West Point Band’s Jazz Knights from West Point, New York.
The Saturday evening headliner is Curtis Stigers who will take the main stage at 8 p.m. According to Jazz Times, “If voices, like wines, had noses, Curtis Stigers would be dusky oak with hints of Willie Nelson, Harry Nilsson, Ray Charles and Matt Dennis. It’s a voice that’s at once young and old, tender and tough, warm and inviting as a caress, yet sturdy as a firm handshake.”
Stigers was recently honored as “Best Male International Jazz Singer” at the German Echo Awards, the German equivalent to the American Grammy Awards.
Features
Related Photos
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The Lewiston Village Pub will be serving a variety of upscale menu intems at the Jazz Festival, including Three-way shrimp, left, and a Woodchuck Cider slider, shown at right.
Jazzy food for a jazzy festival in Lewiston
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