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Visit our Wiki site, Food & Wine Across America, and tell us about the restaurants, shops and other food destinations you love most.
When I landed at Maine’s Portland International Jetport recently, the girl at the rental-car desk told me she’d moved there from Portland, Oregon, and that she thought the East Coast Portland was just as cool. I found that hard to believe. One city has a reputation for great food, wine and bars, and the other has a reputation for great…lobster.
To be honest, Portland wasn’t exactly a culinary wasteland before. Chef Sam Hayward’s 11-year-old Fore Street (288 Fore St.; 207-775-2717) is one of the Northeast’s great restaurants; at Hugo’s (88 Middle St.; 207-774-8538), chef Rob Evans (an F&W Best New Chef 2004) prepares a truly avant-garde menu. And then there’s Browne Trading Company (Merrill’s Wharf; 800- 944-7848), the seafood supplier to many of New England and New York’s best kitchens.
But after my weekend in Portland, I realized that its food scene has gotten all-around terrific. Over at Five Fifty-Five (555 Congress St.; 207-761-0555), chef Steve Corry has spent the last four years perfecting dishes that emphasize local ingredients, like fennel-crusted Casco Bay monkfish. Chef Abby Harmon of Caiola’s (58 Pine St.; 207-772-1110) is obsessed with grains, and I had an addictive dish of grano (pastalike pearled wheat) and carrots in a creamy tomato sauce there. Caiola’s also pours Greek wines by the glass, which are hard to find even in Manhattan. On Munjoy Hill, a once-dicey area that has become the city’s new restaurant epicenter, there’s the one-year-old Bar Lola (100 Congress St.; 207-775-5652). Co-chefs Josh Potocki, Christian Kryger and Guy Hernandez serve everything small plate-style, from warm bread salad to Maine shrimp on soft polenta.
But the biggest surprise I found in Portland might well be its emerging cheese scene, especially since The Cheese Iron (200 U.S. Rte. 1, Scarborough; 207-883-4057) opened last summer. Launched by Vincent Maniaci, who apprenticed at England’s legendary Neal’s Yard, and his wife, Jill Dutton, the sunny store has a small aging cave and an excellent selection, from local Kennebunkport Dry Jack to a European favorite of mine, nutty Tête de Moine. It also carries good-looking sandwiches, sterling silver cheese knives, about 200 wines and even hard-to-find charcuterie like lachsschinken, a German cold-smoked pork. One of the few things the Cheese Iron doesn’t have? Lobster. —Kate Krader
For many years, Providence’s most exhilarating culinary experience was on Federal Hill, where you could slurp spaghetti next to members of the Cosa Nostra. Then, in 1980, Johanne Killeen and George Germon opened Al Forno near the waterfront (577 S. Main St.; 401-273-9760), launching a new era of ambitious cooking with their wood-fired Northern Italian cuisine.
Today, the most exciting restaurants in Providence are scattered about town and run by a network of ambitious young chefs. One of them is Derek Wagner, the lanky, soul-patched chef-owner of the upscale diner Nicks on Broadway (500 Broadway; 401-421-0286). Wagner prepares every dish with the same earnest execution and loyalty to local ingredients, which I notice as I eat a juicy pulled pork-and-cheddar sandwich and watch him struggle to please his toughest customer of the day: the grade-schooler who’s sent back his bagel for the second time. "One lightly toasted bagel!" Wagner yells to one of his cooks, flashing a grin to his finicky friend. A man at the counter requests his hotcakes extra-thin; I follow suit. We’re rewarded with sublimely spongy flapjacks. Next I head to La Laiterie (188 Wayland Ave.; 401-274-7177), the year-old restaurant attached to Matt and Kate Jennings’s cheese shop, Farmstead. Matt handles the savory offerings, which include macaroni and cheese with a golden crust and a molten center; Kate makes the desserts, like the perfect espresso-cream cheese brownies. My sweet tooth is sated, but I still stop at Garrison Confections (815 Hope St; 401-490-2740), where veteran pastry chef Andrew Shotts creates new, artfully decorated chocolates each season, like one made with poached pear. Where do local chefs go on their night off? Chez Pascal (960 Hope St.; 401-421-4422), where Matthew Gennuso, who bought the place in 2003 (and runs a hot dog cart across the street in summer), makes charcuterie for a meat-lover’s menu of French classics, matched with an oenophile’s wine list full of under-$40 finds.
Most restaurants here are closed on Sundays, but I find the lights are on at Gracie’s (194 Washington St.; 401-272-7811), an eight-year-old spot that moved to its new location in 2005. Joseph Hafner, a Johnson & Wales cooking-school grad, offers three tasting menus and two dozen à la carte options, like sweetbreads with leeks and garlic puree. I eat my seven-course meal in an otherwise-empty room. It makes me feel like a mob boss. —Nick Fauchald
Vermont road-trippers stop in Burlington for its crunchy college-town vibe and its beautiful location on Lake Champlain, not necessarily for its food scene. But over the past few years, chefs and artisanal producers have been using the state’s exceptional ingredients to turn Burlington and its outskirts into a bona fide restaurant destination.
In 2005, chefs Eric Warnstedt and Craig Tresser opened Hen of the Wood in Waterbury, 25 minutes from downtown (92 Stowe St.; 802-244-7300). The two alums of Burlington classic Smokejacks do wonderful things with local produce. I loved the zingy salad of Vermont-grown beets from Pete’s Greens and the lamb shank from nearby Winding Brook Farm, served with a spiky, slightly sweet relish of parsley and Meyer lemon.
Inside city limits, Kathi and Kevin Cleary opened L’Amante Ristorante (126 College St.; 802-863-5200) in 2003, with a bar offering some of the town’s best cocktails, like a Clementini made with fresh clementine juice and a lemony riff on a Cosmopolitan that’s called, intriguingly, the Mistress. Chef Kevin Cleary adds subtle twists to Italian classics, as in his juicy roast half-duck with a fricassee of artichokes and potatoes and his arancini (rice balls) stuffed with mozzarella from Maplebrook Farm in Bennington, Vermont.
Burlington’s farm-to-table ethos also thrives in smaller spots, like Viva Espresso (197 N. Winooski Ave.; 802-660-8482), which opened last summer in the up-and-coming North End. Viva’s nutty, mellow-tasting coffee is made with fair-trade, organic beans from Vermont Coffee Company; the pastries come from nearby bakeries, like the chewy Montreal-style bagels from Myer’s.
Before I headed home, I stopped at the five-year-old City Market (82 S. Winooski Ave.; 802-863-3659) to take a little piece of Vermont back with me. The shop is loaded with local breads, coffees, maple syrups and cheeses (so many cheeses, it’s no wonder the American Cheese Society has picked Burlington for its meeting this coming August). Ben and Jerry may be Burlington’s most famous sons, but at City Market I found what everyone in town has been raving about: the exquisite ice creams from nearby Strafford Organic Creamery (61 Rockbottom Rd., Strafford; 802-765-4180). The Fresh Mint flavor is made with herbs from a wild patch on the farm. The shop doesn’t carry ice creams from Lake Champlain Chocolates, so I made one last stop at the chocolatier’s Church Street shop (63 Church St.; 802-862-5185) for a cup of its ultra-Vermonty maple syrup-flavored butter-pecan. —Emily Kaiser
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