Sasha Brouillard
Age: 36
Hometown: Castine, Maine
Profession: Restaurant owner
Bar of choice: Cuties
Drink of choice: Cold brew or bartender’s choice martini
One of the newest and, yes, cutest entrants to Portland’s food-and-drink scene, Cuties is a uniquely Gen Z-coded establishment. The young staff work in a bright and colorful room that’s kinda retro, kinda kitschy, and extremely self-aware. Since opening in the spring of 2025, this “All-Day Bar” on Market Street — open from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., midnight on weekends — has built a reputation as a not-so-serious place to get a seriously good coffee or cocktail, and has attracted regulars like Sasha Brouillard, who co-owns and runs a restaurant nearby.
“Sasha’s the best,” said Cuties co-owner Garrett Lenderman. “She comes in, she knows everybody. Everybody knows her. … She gets the concept of the bar.”
How long have you been coming to Cuties?
Since day one. I also got some little sneak peeks when they were setting stuff up in here, which was cool.
What keeps you coming back?
I love, first of all, the staff. Everyone’s super friendly and nice. Also, I feel like they’re some of the most well-seasoned hospitality professionals in the city. I love that it’s a very casual atmosphere, and that it’s kind of an all-occasion place. I come here in the morning and do computer work and have a coffee a couple days a week. Sometimes I’ll pop in and have lunch. Whenever I have friends in town and they want to go for a night out, this is one of the places that we come for a fancy cocktail. And sometimes after work, it’s like a great place to come and have a beverage before I head home at the end of the night. So, it kind of checks every box, which I think is really cool. Not a lot of places can do that.
What is the clientele like?
Super varied, which I think is why it’s such a cool space. I mean, I’ve come in here in the morning and there are families in here having coffee with their kids. You’ll catch people in the afternoon grabbing a happy hour drink before they go out to dinner. On the weekends at night, there tends to be a little bit more of a younger clientele. I think there’s something for everybody, depending on what you’re looking for and what time of day you come in, which I think is super cool.
What do you do for work?
I am the co-owner and general manager of Crispy Gai. My parents owned a restaurant my entire childhood and into my adulthood. They had it for, I think, a little over twenty-five years. So, that was a big part of my childhood and upbringing. I said that I wasn’t going to work in restaurants, and I ended up going to college for communications/new media, but somehow I still always found side-hustle restaurant jobs all through college. It’s something I had a really hard time staying away from. I feel like when you’re a hospitality person, you just kind of gravitate towards the chaos and the busyness and the thinking on your feet. Yeah, it’s kind of addicting and fun.
What was the impetus for starting Crispy Gai?
Before the pandemic, Cyle, my business partner and head chef of Crispy Gai, was working in Thailand for three years. Back in Maine, we started doing pop-ups around town at different restaurants under the name Carbon. It really started to take off, and we kind of decided after doing that for a while, like, maybe there’s something here. So, we kind of went all in, and during the middle of the pandemic released Crispy Gai, which was a little bit of a scary step, because at the time there was still no indoor dining allowed. But we leased the space hoping that we would eventually be coming out of that. We just turned five, which is great.
Can you tell us a little bit about your involvement with the community?
I think being a business owner, we’re stewards of our space, and we have an obligation to the community to do what we are able to. We’ve done a lot of different things at the restaurant. We’ve hosted community dinners, which were fundraisers. Each month, we highlight a local community organization. We donate one dollar [of the price] for a selected item on our menu each month to one of those organizations. We have done big fundraisers for Planned Parenthood. We’ve given free community meals in conjunction with Wayside Food Programs. We’ve done free delivery meals for Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve with CarHop.
This winter there was a public case of one of your employees getting abducted by ICE. Can you tell us more about that?
It’s been a very challenging year for our team. One of our staff members was abducted and detained illegally on his way to work. He was transferred from Maine to Massachusetts, Massachusetts to Arizona, Arizona to Louisiana, and Louisiana to California. As a team, we really banded together and tapped every resource that we had. I was not above shamelessly tapping regulars on the shoulder who I knew worked in the legal system or in immigration and asking them for advice or resources. And I feel because of that, we were able to hire an immigration attorney who ultimately was able to bring our staff member back after a month of detainment all over the country. We did some crowdsourcing and were able to cover all of his legal fees, which I feel super fortunate that we were able to do. It was a long and very hard month for our employee, of course, and for the team, too. Sometimes there were days when I didn’t have information as to where he was or what our next steps were, and that was hard. That was really hard.
I think as a manager and a business owner, it’s toxic to include the words family, and it’s important to create boundaries where you never feel like those lines are blurred between you and your staff members. But that being said, I feel responsibility to my team, and I feel like it’s really important for me to acknowledge that there will always be people in my building who don’t have a support system beyond the four walls of the restaurant, so I feel an obligation in that regard to do everything in my power to support the people who I work with.
How did it feel to get him back?
We got the news that he was coming home at the ICE protest. We had closed the restaurant. Our whole team all got together at the restaurant, made signs together, and we all walked up and protested together. As I was standing there with my team, I got a phone call that he was being released and was on an airplane headed home the following day, which was really incredible.
The world is a scary place right now, and people are frightened to come to work, people are frightened to leave their homes. I think in Portland, we’re feeling a little less of the presence than we were in January, when Signal chats were going off every thirty minutes about people pulling people off the streets. It was really hard to be on your phone at that time. But it doesn’t mean that I feel like the situation is any better or safer for anyone.
Given your experience, is there anything people could be doing to support the immigrant community?
I think being educated. Educated on what your rights are, what your staff members’ rights are, and sharing that information. I think if people want to get involved, there’s a ton of amazing volunteer opportunities in town. I think if you’re able, there’s a lot of crowdsourcing and fundraising that’s happening right now, too, and I think that’s really important — that we’re supporting people who are raising money and making sure that it’s going to the people who need it. It’s important that those of us who have the privilege of being able to leave our houses are showing up and making a stand.
Know an interesting bar regular? Send them our way at theregularsmaine@gmail.com.
