The American economic bubble expanded and collapsed on the backs of the hard-working and underpaid lower classes. In post-bubble America the workers will likely be more suspicious and assertive. This could be the case in Portland's restaurants as well — as suggested by a recent labor protest outside the Front Room. It was sad to hear allegations this summer that workers were being profoundly mistreated at the South Portland restaurant Great Wall — constrained to slum-dormitory conditions, paid illegal wages, and threatened with deportation if they complained. It is inspiring, however, that the workers managed to organize and protest despite these threats.
The last decade saw Portland become a terrific food town thanks to talent, hard work, and good fortune. If Portland's restaurant scene has achieved heights no one would have predicted, the next few years will likely bring some predictable complications. At the top of the bubble things can get pretty weird, and there will likely be many folks opening restaurants that they simply shouldn't. Anyone who does will confront an online community of food-obsessives who have sometimes gotten downright ugly this year — with personal attacks, off-kilter rants, and ill-advised opening-night reviews. In such an environment, and with so many great restaurants already established in our small city, it's a wonder anyone has the guts to open another. They will though. They always do. In the meantime, even if Portland's food scene has peaked, let's do our best to enjoy ourselves (and be fair to each other) on the way down.
Brian Duff can be reached at bduff@une.edu.
Related:
Photos: Gross Thanksgiving food to avoid, Ghost stories, Winged migration, More 
- Photos: Gross Thanksgiving food to avoid
Thanksgiving is a time for gorging on food and hanging out with family, but really it's mostly about the food. There are some dishes that take it too far, however, and we are here to help you steer clear of those.
- Ghost stories
For all of the excitement that surrounded Wilco on the Maine State Pier or Sufjan Stevens at Port City Music Hall or the various sold-out Ray LaMontagne shows of the past year, there is no question that last Sunday's Phish show at the Cumberland County Civic Center was the biggest thing to hit our fair city in a very long time.
- Winged migration
Since their start in the middle of the decade, Brown Bird have been one of the region's go-to chamber-folk outfits, with a couple of dark and stormy albums earning them a following in various nooks of New England. The release of their latest album, The Devil Dancing , feels like both an ending and a new beginning.
- Being Scrooge
Over the 33 years that Trinity Rep has been staging A Christmas Carol , many actors playing Ebenezer Scrooge have growled and grumped, cantankered, and curmugeoned around the stage.
- Christmas present
Christmases come and Christmases go, as psychedelic wrapping paper gives way to orderly Republican stripes, as sweet little Jimmy grows into gruff Uncle James.
- Hot for teacher
MECA faculty re-imagine the natural world and play with nostalgia
- Wanting more
After its triumphant traversal of the complete Béla Bartók string quartets at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Borromeo Quartet was back for a free 20th- and 21st-century program at Jordan Hall, leading off with an accomplished recent piece by the 24-year-old Egyptian composer Mohammed Fairuz, Lamentation and Satire.
- Injustice for all
Scott Sturgeon loses his train of thought a couple of times during this interview. He's loopy from jet lag — which is unavoidable after a 20-hour flight from New Zealand (halfway around the planet from his non-residency at a squatted apartment building in New York City), where he's just finished a tour with his claim-to-fame band, Leftover Crack.
- Coffeenomics
In 50 states and 49 countries, the experience is the same: a placid sense of place, air suffused with the rich aromatics of fresh-brewed espresso. Customers dollop cream and sprinkle brown sugar into their drinks. Behind the counter, green-clad baristas grind beans and steam milk, smiling as they take orders in a made-up language.
- Group hug
Things aren’t always what they’re called — we know that flying fish don’t fly and starfish aren’t even fish.
- Alternative universe
In the 1930s and '40s, Boston painters developed a moody, mythic realism. They mixed social satire with depictions of street scenes, Biblical scenes, and mystical symbolic narratives, all of it darkened by the shadow of the Great Depression and World War II.
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