Beech Ridge Barn 917-536-8828 • www.beechridgebarn.com 21 Beech Ridge Road, Scarborough Hungry Eye 58 p o r t l a n d monthly magazine with fellow classic Portland restaura- teur Dana Street, wasn’t even mentioned. (Full disclosure: I had my wedding lunch at Scales, and I would happily get married again just to repeat the experience.) I moved to Portland in 2011. Before that, I lived in Brooklyn for 20 years. Dur- ing that time, I watched the colonization of Williamsburg and Greenpoint—first by artists, then hipsters, then poseurs, and, most recently, tech millionaires and oli- garchs. As the neighborhood gentrified, the restaurant scene, which had started out as a homegrown, local movement of young, exciting chefs, over time became just that, a ‘scene’—flashy, overpriced, thronged, with little connection to the roots of the place itself. The same thing, regrettably, seems to be happening in Portland. That is, at least, if you believe the hype. Look deeper, though, and you will find a permanent food scene in this town—scene in the sense of com- munity: a rooted, sustainable ecosystem of chefs and purveyors, local fishermen and farms, and an ethos of authenticity, honest quality, and pragmatism. In the years since I moved to Portland, I have developed a chauvinistic pride in its real food scene. Meanwhile, I’ve watched new restaurants rise, flounder to gain a foothold, then fade away—dozens, it seems, each year. But the old stalwarts haven’t lost any of the magic that made them successful in the first place. You wouldn’t necessarily know this from reading Bon Appétit. The piece is mainly focused on the new- est hot spots on Washington Avenue, Port- land’s newest “restaurant row.” I’d nev- er heard of half of them. Andrew Knowl- ton, the writer of the piece, appears to have thrown in Fore Street as a tip of the hat, and he mentions Ruski’s (Ruski’s!) to prove his in-the-know hipster Portland street cred. To be clear, I love Ruski’s as much as the next person. But let’s just say that its inclu- sion on the list of great Portland restaurants made me burst out laughing. As did the breathless tone of the piece: T-shirts! Tote bags! All these new places I’ve never heard of! I can’t help wonder- ing how many of them will still be here in three years… To be sure, Portland is a place with a rich and thriving food culture, but it’s not a ‘scene,’ and it’s not dependent on newer,