Portland, Maine, Is One of many Greatest Meals Cities within the U.S.—Here is Easy methods to Eat Your Approach By means of It

The minute I crossed the Piscataqua River Bridge connecting New Hampshire to Maine, I felt a gnawing in my stomach. The climate was traditional coastal New England: chilly, moist, and foggy. At 3:30 p.m., it was a bit of late for lunch. However the scent of the ocean and the sound of the seagulls advised me, a born-and-raised New Englander, two issues: that I used to be house, and that I wanted a lobster roll. 

Once I was a baby, my dad and mom had summer time homes in Ogunquit and, later, York—two seaside villages that embody the “Vacationland” motto nonetheless printed on Maine license plates. Between my mom’s clam chowder and the native candy corn, we felt no must enterprise north to Portland, even to go to the childhood house of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (due to his time at Harvard College, we Bostonians declare him as one of our personal).

So on this October day, I used to be lastly going to Portland. However first I took a detour to Chew into Maine, a meals truck in Fort Williams Park, simply south of the town. I ordered the “picnic”: the freshest lobster in a toasted roll, doused in melted butter from a silver teapot. Portland Head Lighthouse and a fleet of charcoal clouds had been my backdrop as I ate it at an out of doors desk within the rain.

Portland is nicely established as probably the greatest meals locations in the USA. Trawlers within the harbor accumulate the day’s catch for the town’s eating places—of which there’s one for each 200 folks, even earlier than the vacationers arrive. Maine has the nation’s oldest natural state growers’ affiliation, and the Portland Farmers’ Market has been working repeatedly since 1768, promoting the best high quality cheese, berries, flour, meat, and greens, together with each different conceivable ingredient, to space residents and cooks.

A few of these are natives; others have landed within the metropolis from elsewhere and blended Down East flavors with new culinary types. “Is there any metropolis our dimension on this nation that has one Eritrean restaurant? And I’m asking ’trigger we have now two,” stated Dugan Murphy, who runs Black Historical past Strolling Excursions. (Portland was a middle of the Abolitionist motion and a cease on the Underground Railroad.) 

My base within the metropolis was the Longfellow Lodge, which sits among the many Victorian mansions of the leafy, residential West Finish. Co-owner Tony DeLois, a fourth-generation Mainer, got here again to lift his household after working for Danny Meyer’s Union Sq. Hospitality Group in New York Metropolis. Recognizing the necessity for a resort that was directly trendy, fashionable, and historic, DeLois and his brother Nate opened the Longfellow in Might 2024. As I stepped right into a foyer that one way or the other channeled Paris and Copenhagen—and but, with its partitions hung with seafaring work, felt a hundred percent Maine—it was clear he had succeeded.

Proper subsequent door to the Longfellow is Tandem Espresso Roasters, the place I lined up for breakfast together with what appeared like half the town. As a style of epicurean adventures to come back, I had the banana bread, which got here crusted with toasted sesame seeds, topped with a pillow of cream cheese and garnished with olive oil and black pepper. 

Portland’s id as a culinary capital will be traced again to 1996, the yr Sam Hayward opened his seminal Fore Avenue restaurant. “Earlier than that, Portland was a tough fishing city, the place folks stopped on their method to summer time camp or their island home,” stated Don Lindgren, proprietor of Rabelais: Positive Books on Meals & Drink. That each one modified with Fore Avenue, which, together with Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, and New York’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns, joined what we now name the farm-to-table motion within the U.S. Connoisseurs started to fly in for dinner, and phrase began to unfold. “They advised folks that Portland was a spot for gastronomy,” Lindgren stated. Hayward and some different pioneers created fertile floor for a restaurant tradition, and commenced a practice of investing in expertise—sending younger cooks to apprentice elsewhere, then inviting them again to Maine with sharpened expertise and recent visions. 

Portland’s alternatives had been what drew Jake Stevens, chef-owner of Leeward. Stevens, who creates Italian dishes with hyperlocal components, was a semifinalist on this yr’s James Beard Awards. It’s exhausting to seek out a wonderful bucatini alla gricia, even in Rome, however his was excellent, full of roasted guanciale. “In 2017, once I first moved right here, the price of opening a restaurant was rather more accessible in contrast with New York, San Francisco, and even Portland, Oregon,” the latter being his hometown. (Stevens acknowledged that is altering: business rents, together with all Portland actual property costs, are rising sooner than the nationwide common.)

The following morning I drove to the Deering Middle neighborhood to satisfy James Beard Award winner Atsuko Fujimoto at her small however magnificent Norimoto Bakery. Standing in her toasty kitchen, her apron blotched with flour, Fujimoto advised me how she had moved to Portland from Japan in 2001 along with her now-husband to work as a journalist, however rapidly switched course. She received a job at Fore Avenue, the place Hayward put her to work within the pastry division, then moved to the Commonplace Baking Co., which is owned by the identical firm. 

As we chatted I attempted Fujimoto’s Danish pastry, made with Maine butter and speckled with cranberries; after that got here a taste bomb of a Chinese language mooncake. Her model, she says, is much like a wealthy gâteau basque, however not like its French counterpart, it’s full of savory adzuki beans. Mixing European and American methods discovered at Hayward’s institutions with Japanese flavors and Maine components provides as much as one thing Fujimoto known as “deeply Portland.” 

In spite of everything that pastry, I wanted a stroll—not least as a result of I had plans to go to three eating places for dinner. (“It’s the way you do Portland,” one acquaintance stated. “A few bites at a time.”) Within the late-afternoon sunshine, the three-mile path round Again Cove delivered postcard views at each flip, and ready me for my first meal, at Calafia Cantina y Fonda, the place the recent, brilliant flavors are impressed by Baja California. Co-owner Dominique Gonzalez, a San Diego transplant, opened the restaurant in 2024, and it dovetails her Mexican roots with New England’s seafood bounty. Instances in level: crisp, savory churros made with Jonah crab and a tostada with Maine bluefin tuna, chili broth, and avocado. If I lived in Portland, I thought, I would eat right here each evening. 

Subsequent I took an Uber to newcomer Magissa. Nancy Klosterides, who co-owns the place, advisable I strive the whipped ricotta with rosemary, walnuts, pistachios, and Greek honey, then a dish known as Paros hen, baked and crunchy, that was served with a mustard velouté. Every little thing tasted sensational, and the ambiance was as festive as a Greek island taverna in summertime. 

Final cease of the evening was Twelve, positioned on the waterfront within the middle of city. In current a long time, the canneries and warehouses have been polished to haute New England refinement. Twelve is an elegant area with minimalist artwork positioned simply so and a wide-open, immaculate kitchen. 

Chef Colin Wyatt went to school in Maine, his spouse’s house state, and spent a number of years within the kitchen at New York’s Eleven Madison Park. He returned to Portland through the pandemic and opened Twelve in 2022. “We needed to create all the advantages of tremendous eating, with out the stuffiness,” he stated. “If this had been in New York, it could most likely not be thought of a fine-dining restaurant.” I disagreed: the attentive service and serene ambiance offered a suitably elevated backdrop for the marvels from his kitchen. I went all-in for Maine: a brown-butter lobster roll served on a croissant created by his pastry chef, Georgia Macon, and, for dessert, an ice cream sandwich made with corn and blueberries. 

A couple of minutes’ stroll from the Longfellow Lodge, I discovered Burundi Star Espresso, began by André Nzeyimana and Jocelyne Kamikazi. The couple emigrated from Burundi in 2006 and now supply all their beans there. Each had been born into coffee-growing households, and so they not too long ago returned to reclaim and revitalize their household farms. As I sipped my mocha, Andre pointed to a carved aid of East Africa on the wall. “Each time somebody comes contained in the store, we present them the map of Burundi, so they know the place it is,” he stated.

Later I met Barak Olins at ZU Bakery, within the West Finish. We sat down on a bench to speak, and I discovered myself pondering, This is able to by no means occur in New York—sitting within the solar speaking to a 2024 James Beard Award winner, who simply spent the day on his toes doing one thing he loves. Olins moved to from St. Louis to Maine after school 35 years in the past to construct boats, however then opened a small restaurant and fell in love with making bread. Regardless of the eye final yr’s award delivered, his mission stays unchanged: a neighborhood bakery the place folks should purchase a croissant and eat it whereas it’s nonetheless recent and heat. 

My final meal in Portland was at Sur Lie, a tapas-centric restaurant in a brick constructing within the metropolis’s downtown, owned and operated by James Beard Award–nominated restaurateur Krista Cole. My pan-seared Maine sea scallops, adopted by spaetzle with lamb ragù, put me in a gratified daze. In my pocket book, I wrote, “THIS IS THE BEST THING I’VE EVER EATEN.” And at that second—till my subsequent meal in Portland—it was the reality. 

A model of this story first appeared within the September 2025 problem of Journey + Leisure beneath the headline “Recent Catch.”