As of this week, the Market Basket homepage has a banner that reads "NOW HIRING, Scarborough, ME," with open interviews Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. To show applicants where the store is, the banner says "next door to Allagash Bungalow." The store's own location listing still calls store #96 at 70 Market St. "Coming Soon."
That banner sums up The Downs in October 2026. A taproom is the landmark because almost nothing else in the town center is serving customers yet. In the meantime, the restaurants that did open in Scarborough this year went into storefronts another tenant had already used, on Route 1, Gallery Boulevard and Gorham Road.
Three new kitchens, three former tenants
Each of this year's food openings replaced a business that came before it.
| Restaurant | Location | What's on the menu | Previous tenant | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TASTE ME | 680 US Route 1, Dunstan Corner | Bánh mì, sandwiches, burgers, pastries, coffee, matcha | Terra Cotta Pasta Company | Open by June 1, 2026 |
| Coastal Curry | 300 Gallery Blvd., Unit B | Curries, tandoori, vegetarian dishes, street food, naan | Clean Eatz | Soft opening Aug. 15, 2026 |
| All Grill Restaurant | 238 Gorham Road, by the Payne Road Hannaford | Arepas, patacones, burgers and fries | A hibachi restaurant | Reviewed as new, Oct. 1, 2026 |
TASTE ME, next door to the family restaurant
In February, the Portland Press Herald reported that Chananyu Phijarnwanit planned to open TASTE ME in the former Terra Cotta Pasta space on Route 1. Phijarnwanit also manages his family's Chaba Thai, the restaurant next door. He was aiming for March. The lunch menu he described included Thai basil burgers and orange chicken sandwiches, and breakfast would be baked goods, coffee and matcha. By June 1, Scarborough Living had published a review of the shop, so it was open by the start of summer.
The new place sits right beside a restaurant the same family already runs, which makes this an expansion more than a debut.
Coastal Curry, in a space that sat empty for years
Clean Eatz closed at 300 Gallery Blvd. in December 2022. The unit didn't get its next food tenant until this summer, when Mainebiz announced that owner Kiran Kumar Vellanki would open Coastal Curry on Saturday, Aug. 15. The Press Herald later confirmed the soft opening on that date. The menu covers curries, tandoori, vegetarian dishes, street food and naan, for dine-in or takeout.
So the gap between one food business and the next in that unit ran more than three and a half years.
All Grill, by the Payne Road Hannaford
All Grill is a Venezuelan restaurant in the former hibachi space at 238 Gorham Road. Scarborough Living's October review describes a new-looking, clean room with gray marble-look floors and big garage doors that open to the breeze, with heat in the winter. There's a window from the entryway into the kitchen so you can watch the cooks, plenty of big TVs showing soccer, and Latin pop playing. On its own site, the business calls itself a family project that started in Orlando in 2021 and says it has operated in Orlando and Cape Elizabeth.
Put the three together and you get the same picture each time: a small owner with ties to the area, a space a previous tenant had already used, and a road Scarborough drivers know well.
What's actually serving at The Downs right now
The town center at The Downs has drawn far more attention than any plaza on Gorham Road. Within the Town Center and Market Street area, the one public food and drink spot confirmed open is the Allagash Bungalow at 10 Market St. Its page lists service hours, and the food comes from Bite Into Maine. The Bungalow opened on Saturday, Aug. 2, 2025, according to Mainebiz. Alluxe Nails & Spa shares the address at 10 Market St. #102 and is listed as open by The Downs.
Most of the rest is still announcements:
- Market Basket is planned as an 80,000-square-foot supermarket at Market Street and Scarborough Downs Road, with 300 jobs. A July 15 Press Herald report said it was expected to open later in 2026. As of Oct. 10, no opening date has been announced, and the company is still interviewing for jobs.
- InterMed is expected to open a medical office building at The Downs later in 2026, according to the same July report.
- Verizon, NBT Bank and Maine Community Bank have signed on as Town Center tenants. Verizon's storefront is planned for The Breakaway building, and both banks plan branches. Mainebiz didn't give opening dates.
- Café Luna is moving its original Route 1 café to the ground floor of The Breakaway. Owner Juliann Joy told the Press Herald she expects to open by May 2027.
The most recent dated reporting on the Town Center tenants is from mid-July. So the dates above are forecasts. Nobody has confirmed openings.
Pine Point shows a familiar building doesn't guarantee anything
The same summer that brought in Coastal Curry also saw one of Scarborough's longest-running restaurants close. Bayley's Seafood Restaurant at 165 Pine Point Road opened in 1995. A burst pipe caused serious damage, and the restaurant was closed from 2022 until it reopened in fall 2025. It closed for good after service on Thursday, Aug. 20, during its first summer back. The owners posted their farewell on social media:
"This has been an incredibly meaningful chapter, and we are so grateful to everyone who supported us, shared a meal with us, celebrated with us, and made memories inside these walls."
Mainebiz noted that Ken's Seafood, just up Pine Point Road, is still a busy destination, with lines often forming in the summer.
Bayley's had decades of history in its building and still closed. The new openings on Route 1 and Gorham Road had something different going for them. Each came from an operator already working nearby or with restaurants elsewhere, and each took over a space where a business had recently been.
The next old storefront is already on the calendar
Café Luna's move will finish the pattern. When it heads to The Breakaway, the café's current Route 1 space will be empty. The new Downs location will be 2,600 square feet, a bit larger than the current one, with a garage-style door that opens onto a patio. That's the same feature the All Grill review mentioned on Gorham Road this fall.
So the town center's first café will come from a Route 1 business, and the Route 1 space it leaves behind will be ready for whoever comes next, the same way Terra Cotta's, Clean Eatz's and the hibachi restaurant's spaces were this year. The Downs isn't drawing restaurants away from the older corridors. For now, its food scene comes from the same set of local operators who keep turning over Scarborough's existing storefronts.
A fall week around the new spots
Here's one way to try everything that opened in 2026 before Market Basket opens and changes traffic on Market Street:
- Weekday breakfast at TASTE ME, 680 Route 1, for pastries, coffee or matcha. Chaba Thai is right next door if you'd rather come back for dinner.
- Takeout night from Coastal Curry, 300 Gallery Blvd., Unit B, for tandoori, a vegetarian curry and naan.
- Weekend lunch at All Grill, 238 Gorham Road. Order arepas and patacones and grab a table with a view of the kitchen window or the soccer on TV.
- An evening at the Allagash Bungalow, 10 Market St., with food from Bite Into Maine. Afterward, walk past 70 Market St. to see how far the Market Basket building has come.
- A drive down Pine Point Road to Ken's Seafood, which is still open now that Bayley's has closed.
Once Market Basket, the banks and Café Luna open at The Downs, Scarborough's Route 1 and Gorham Road corridors will change too, and so will the streets near them. If you own a home near either one and want to know how these changes could affect your sale, the team at Ashley Fearon keeps track of every opening on this list. Book your free seller strategy consultation and we'll go through the timing with you.
