Food Factory Miyake is a tiny brick building on a quiet block on the edge of Portland, Maines West End. Bring your own beer or sake and walk inside, past the few tables and chairs and over to the sushi bar. Masa Miyake will be there. It is his restaurant (129 Spring St., 207-871-9170) and he is always there, usually by himself, greeting everyone with a warm, shy smile and putting together piece after perfect piece of sushi and sashimi with seafood from both Maine and around the world. Miyake thrives on exotic ingredients: uncured sea urchin roe from Lubec, pork belly and feet and intestines, sweet Maine shrimp, all kinds of mini sardines, sea pineapple, wild salmon roe. The list is long and gets longer all the time as the chef eschews sushi bar staples like miso soup and seaweed salad in favor of the stranger stuff. Right now running the restaurant is all Miyake can handle, but someday soon he would like to raise pigs and chickens for his menu and make wood-fired pottery on which to serve the food. I want two acres and a farmhouse, he says. I want the real Maine life.


