A 28-year-old chef who studied culinary arts at Southern Maine Community College and worked for a stint as a cook at the Portland-based Ri Ra Irish Pub and Restaurant is combining two unlikely trends for his latest business venture — food trucks and the back-to-basics tiny house movement.
Chef Matthew Glatz’s 90-square-foot Saltbox Cafe is outfitted with all of the tell-tale signs of a rural home, including a cedar porch and metal roof, but inside the chef is whipping up gourmet eats that would feel more at home inside one of Portland’s countless gourmet eateries.
Items on Saltbox’s menu include a gruyere crab cake and fried egg sandwich on a croissant with Swiss cheese and red onions covered in a lemon, ginger béarnaise.
“I worked on getting the sauce right for months,” Glatz told the Bangor Daily News.
Other options include a pulled-pork breakfast burrito and an open-faced toasted English muffin with Ducktrap salmon, capers, onions and dill Neufchâtel.
Saltbox has already had success at a soft opening at Sunday River this winter and marked its official opening last weekend at Portland’s Eastern Promenade.
Now Glatz will be taking his tiny house on wheels — which was built in seven-and-a-half weeks by Gorham carpenter Nick Rofe — to spots around Portland Thursday through Saturday.
“I’d like to start doing pop ups and invite Portland chefs to take over the kitchen for a day,” Glatz told the BDN.
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