Have a knife day

Ladies and gentlemen, sharpen your knives. The participants in the 2008 Ultimate Chef competition were announced in early March. This year’s battle, sponsored by the Greater Bangor Convention and Visitors Bureau, pits a pair of Bangor eateries – the Sea Dog restaurant against Opus – on April 14 and 21. The next round features Dedham’s Lucerne Inn and Millinocket’s River Drivers Restaurant on May 12 and 19. The executive chefs from each venue will go fork to fork with a special, secret ingredient. The final round is planned for September. Tickets for each meal are $90, and include a world-class four-course meal from some of the area’s finest chefs – and the diner gets to rate the food on originality, taste and presentation. To reserve your spot, call the visitors bureau at 947-5205.

La dolce vino

The Silver Lane Bistro, run by husband-and-wife team Doug Korach and Natalie Gelman, is a fine bistro-style restaurant, operating out of a converted sheep shed in the middle of a cornfield in Warren, just off Route 1. Unorthodox location, sure, but wonderful food and atmosphere. Silver Lane offers an eight-course Italian wine dinner at 6:30 p.m. Friday, March 28, featuring two white and three red Italian wines, and a menu that includes a blood orange, fennel, onion, arugula and ricotta salad, stuffed manicotti in a vodka sauce, seared scallops and Lartigiano chocolate cakes with raspberry gelato. Reservations are $80; to save a seat, call 273-6464.

More fun for the family

The Chase family is at it again. Terri, Lowell and Stephen Chase, all members of the Bangor clan who for decades ran Paul’s Restaurant, and later Evo Italian Brickoven, have purchased the old West Side Restaurant on 1575 Hammond St. It has reopened as Chase’s Family Restaurant and Hide-Away Lounge, and offers seafood, lots of sandwiches and appetizers, and a full bar. The ultimate Maine comfort food, outside of perhaps whoopie pies, is probably fried shrimp or fried clams, and that’s a Chase family specialty. For more, call 947-0030.

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