New Restaurants in South Portland, Maine Near Clarks Pond

"You won't find just anywhere else." That's how Sai Guntaka described the goal for the menu at Cobblestone Coffee & Company, the café he opened this summer at 200 Gorham Road in South Portland. The pastry case backs him up. It holds a tamarind kouign amann, a chai palmier and a coconut croissant, set beside an avocado toast with chaat masala and coriander-mint chutney.

Taken alone, Cobblestone is a good café. Seen with the restaurants around it, it's one piece of something larger. Within a short stretch of Gorham Road and Clarks Pond Parkway, one restaurateur now runs morning coffee and an Indian dinner room, and has an Italian restaurant expected this month. Each new place has moved into a space connected to the last one. The café's profits are pledged to a program that hands out free hot meals at the front door of the flagship.

The building where Taj started now opens at 6 a.m.

Taj has served Indian food in South Portland since 2012. For most of that time it sat at 200 Gorham Road. In August 2024 it made a short move to the Clarks Pond Shopping Center, into a larger room near the old location. The new space has roughly 70 seats, an 11-seat bar, more room for the buffet, and Indian-inspired cocktails that the old building didn't have. Taj now lists its address as 333 Clarks Pond Parkway. Its website names lamb vindaloo among its signature dishes and notes that the restaurant was a James Beard Award semifinalist in 2025.

Guntaka didn't sell or sublet the old building. He reopened it. According to Portland Food Map, Cobblestone opened in late June in the building that was Taj's first home. It's a café and bakery of about 40 seats, open daily from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The menu carries the old tenant's roots into a new hour of the day. Baristas Zack Treadwell and Tyler Land pour the usual coffee and espresso drinks. They also serve an Irani chai in the style popular in Hyderabad, where Guntaka's family is from, flavored with cardamom, rose petals and a mix of spices. Tandem Coffee Roasters produces a special coffee for the café using single beans sourced from India. Chef Adam Williams runs the kitchen with sous chef Remington McGuire and bakers Lucie Beau and Angela Young. Lunch reaches as far as a braised lamb bowl on cracked rye with a vada pav crumble.

WGME reported that the shop also sells artisan furniture, pottery and décor from Maine and India. The Portland design firm Woodhull designed the room. Carlos Acosta built it, and the neon sign behind the counter is by David Johansen, known as Neon Dave.

Where the café's money goes

What links the two buildings is a commitment, not a shared menu. Guntaka plans to send all of Cobblestone's profits to his outreach program, which provides free meals to people in need.

The visible part of that work sits in the entryway at Taj. Last November the restaurant installed a food warming cabinet stocked with free meals for anyone who needs one. Guntaka had first planned a refrigerator. He switched to a warmer so the food would be hot and ready to eat, after federal cuts to SNAP benefits prompted the idea. In January the Portland Press Herald reported that Taj would keep the cabinet stocked year-round. Guntaka said area residents take at least 100 meals a day from it.

The reporting doesn't say whether Cobblestone's profits pay specifically for the cabinet's contents. What it does show is that one owner runs both the free-meal effort and a café built to support it, on neighboring roads. That's what makes this corridor different from a strip of unrelated openings near the mall. A breakfast sandwich at 200 Gorham Road and a hot meal in the entryway at 333 Clarks Pond Parkway are part of the same operation.

Il Forno fills in the evening, a few doors from Taj

The next piece goes into Taj's own building. Guntaka and his business partner Jim Baldi have leased a space a few doors down from Taj at 333 Clarks Pond Parkway for Il Forno, an Italian restaurant. The Press Herald described the space as the former 1,500-square-foot Port City Nutrition suite. The two men already co-own Silver Street by Taj in the Old Port.

The crew brings experience from several well-known Portland kitchens:

• Ron Medlock, chef, formerly the chef at Bar Publica
• Jim Fitzgerald, chef, who worked at the Regency Hotel
• Ruth Connelly, pasta chef, who has worked at Evo, Via Vecchia and Papi
• Nick Shanley, running the bar, from the bar team at Evo

The planned menu includes baked polenta with gorgonzola, sage and honey, fresh pasta like cacio e pepe and rigatoni alla vodka, pizzas, salads, and entrées such as grilled strip steak. The bar will serve cocktails, local draft beer, and wine by the bottle and glass. Woodhull is designing this room too. It will seat 50 inside, with a deck for another 15 to 20 guests in warmer months.

Il Forno is expected to open in October. As of early October, Portland Food Map still lists it as under construction with an October target, and the reporting so far gives no opening day, hours or reservation details. The restaurant's Instagram, @ilforno_maine, is the likeliest place for an opening date to appear first.

The same few roads, from morning to night

Once Il Forno opens, a west-side resident can plan a whole day without leaving a short loop. Other new places on the surrounding roads fill in the gaps:

1. 6 a.m. or later: Irani chai or the India-sourced Tandem coffee at Cobblestone, 200 Gorham Road.
2. Lunch: Maine Jamaican Kitchen at 85 Western Avenue, which took over the former Elevation Burger space this spring. Portland Food Map lists jerk chicken wings, fried plantains and a chickpea-and-cabbage stir-fry.
3. Afternoon: Gong cha's first Maine store at 200 Running Hill Road in the Maine Crossing shopping center, run by franchise operators Tafari and Nhi Thomas. It opened in June.
4. Dinner, now: lamb vindaloo at Taj, with a seat at the 11-seat bar.
5. Dinner, soon: fresh pasta at Il Forno, a few doors down.

Three of the five stops share an owner. They also follow a clear sequence. The original building took on a new job, the flagship moved to a bigger room, and the second restaurant is opening under the flagship's roof.

Fall weekends when the west side is the easy choice

The rest of South Portland has a busy fall calendar, and some of it affects parking and walking routes across town. Here's what the city has posted:

• October 17 and 18: The Lobster Pot Ultimate Frisbee Tournament takes over Wainwright Athletic Complex. Parking is limited to athletes and organizers from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., spectators can take shuttles from Pleasant Hill Road, and the Greenbelt stays open.
• October 24: Mongrel Mash runs from 10 a.m. to noon at the South Portland Community Center, 21 Nelson Road. That same morning, Uncharted holds its grand opening at 517 Maine Mall Road, with doors at 9 a.m. The store is the next version of The Paper Store and has been in its soft opening since September 26.
• October 31: The city calendar lists Trunk-or-Treat at the Community Center from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The fall brochure appears to show an earlier date, so check with Parks & Recreation before you go.
• November 7 and 8: The South Portland Craft Show is at South Portland High School, 637 Highland Avenue, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free.
• November 14: The NCAA cross-country regional championships come to Wainwright. Parking is for event attendees only from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., and Greenbelt users will be detoured onto Highland Avenue between Gary L Maietta Way and the transfer station driveway at 929 Highland Avenue.

On the two Wainwright Saturdays, parking near the complex is restricted until 1 p.m. Cobblestone, at 200 Gorham Road, is open every day from 6 a.m.

If you live on the west side and want to know how new businesses like these are changing the area around Clarks Pond, Dambrie Garon Real Estate Advisors follows these corridors closely and is always glad to compare notes. Let's talk about your next move.