{"id":15321,"date":"2018-09-28T09:44:57","date_gmt":"2018-09-28T13:44:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=15321"},"modified":"2018-10-03T10:41:03","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T14:41:03","slug":"love-bites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/love-bites\/","title":{"rendered":"Love Bites"},"content":{"rendered":"

October 2018 | view this story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

While we appreciate the accolades, Portland\u2019s chefs and restaurants need no introduction.<\/span><\/h3>\n

By Kate Christensen<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Hungry-Eye\"T<\/span>he best thing about the much-ballyhooed recent Bon App\u00e9tit<\/em> piece that names our sweet Little Easy (my nickname for Portland) the 2018 Restaurant City of the Year is that none of my favorite places was named and therefore wrecked forever. But that may also be the worst thing about it.<\/span><\/p>\n

While it\u2019s great to see Portland\u2019s culinary embarrassment of riches praised and singled out, it is equally bewildering to be praised for having a hopping food scene when the true diehard originators who made that scene possible are passed over in favor of newcomers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong. I have nothing against Little Giant<\/strong> or Chaval<\/strong>, but come on. Fore Street<\/strong> barely gets a mention\u2014Fore Street! Sam Hayward, who brought farm-to-table and sea-to-plate dining to Maine, is arguably the father and grandfather of every restaurant on the list. Let me go out on a limb and extend that to just about every good restaurant up and down the coast.<\/span><\/p>\n

And Scales<\/strong>, Hayward\u2019s latest (several years old, but still newish) venture, along with fellow classic Portland restaurateur Dana Street, wasn\u2019t even mentioned. (Full disclosure: I had my wedding lunch at Scales, and I would happily get married again just to repeat the experience.) <\/span><\/p>\n

I moved to Portland in 2011. Before that, I lived in Brooklyn for 20 years. During that time, I watched the colonization of Williamsburg and Greenpoint\u2014first by artists, then hipsters, then poseurs, and, most recently, tech millionaires and oligarchs. 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 \u2018scene\u2019\u2014flashy, overpriced, thronged, with little connection to the roots of the place itself.<\/p>\n

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\u2014scene in the sense of community: a rooted, sustainable ecosystem of chefs and purveyors, local fishermen and farms, and an ethos of authenticity, honest quality, and pragmatism.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the years since I moved to Portland, I have developed a chauvinistic pride in its real food scene. Meanwhile, I\u2019ve watched new restaurants rise, flounder to gain a foothold, then fade away\u2014dozens, it seems, each year. But the old stalwarts haven\u2019t lost any of the magic that made them successful in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n

You wouldn\u2019t necessarily know this from reading Bon App\u00e9tit<\/em>. <\/span><\/p>\n

The piece is mainly focused on the newest hot spots on Washington Avenue, Portland\u2019s newest \u201crestaurant row.\u201d I\u2019d never heard of half of them. Andrew Knowlton, the writer of the piece, appears to have thrown in Fore Street as a tip of the hat, and he mentions Ruski\u2019s<\/strong> (Ruski\u2019s!) to prove his in-the-know hipster Portland street cred. To be clear, I love Ruski\u2019s as much as the next person. But let\u2019s just say that its inclusion on the list of great Portland restaurants made me burst out laughing.<\/span><\/p>\n

As did the breathless tone of the piece: T-shirts! Tote bags! All these new places I\u2019ve never heard of! I can\u2019t help wondering how many of them will still be here in three years\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

To be sure, Portland is a place with a\u00a0<\/span>rich and thriving food culture, but it\u2019s not a \u2018scene,\u2019 and it\u2019s not dependent on newer, flashier places. It\u2019s a small city with a network of chefs, interdependent and interconnected. Fred Eliot, who used to cook at Petit Jacqueline, is now running the kitchen at Scales, and wherever he goes, I will follow him. Masa Miyake of Miyake <\/strong>and Pai Men Miyake<\/strong>, Steve Corry of 555<\/strong> and Petite Jacqueline<\/strong>, and David Levi of Vinland<\/strong> all have very different visions, but they are equally rooted in Maine ingredients and classic cooking techniques. And Dana Street is the seasoned magician of local seafood.<\/span><\/p>\n

A<\/span>s I learned from living in north Brooklyn, it\u2019s the nature of a thriving, healthy city to change and evolve. Restauranting is a tough business, and new places come and go as, do hotspots. Three years ago, Restaurant Row was arguably on Middle Street: Eventide<\/strong>, Duckfat<\/strong>, Hugo\u2019s<\/strong>, and the Honey Paw<\/strong>. Three years before that, in my memory anyway, Restaurant Row was Longfellow Square: Pai Men Miyake, Petit Jacqueline, Boda<\/strong>, Hot Suppa<\/strong>, and Local 188<\/strong>. Forest Avenue had a moment about a year ago, when a flurry of new places added to the luster of the tried-and-true ones. Central Provisions<\/strong> had its red-hot moment in the sun, crowded every night with out-of-towners and cruise-ship passengers.<\/span><\/p>\n

What matters to me in a restaurant, though, lies beneath the dazzling surface of trend and novelty\u2014namely consistency, integrity, and longevity, along with food that genuinely satisfies. So many of the good older places are all still going strong, and they\u2019re all as good as ever\u2014Portland\u2019s solid go-to neighborhood joints. Salvage<\/strong> serves fantastic barbecue and sides. You almost always have to wait for a table at Empire<\/strong>, but it\u2019s worth it, because their dumplings and noodles are insanely good. Micucci<\/strong>, Otto<\/strong>, and Bonobo<\/strong> have been making great pizza for years. Holy Donut <\/strong>is my chosen place of worship, though it hardly needs any more attention, and Emilitsa<\/strong> is a paradise of modern Greek cuisine. Asmara<\/strong> serves Ethiopian food that\u2019s as good as any I\u2019ve ever had anywhere.<\/span><\/p>\n

I could, and will, go on: Lolita<\/strong>, the Blue Spoon<\/strong>, and Union<\/strong> have never let me down. When I\u2019m feeling raw and blue, I can always count on the chicken tacos with a side of bacon at the Front Room<\/strong> to cheer me up. The Parisian-feeling outdoor caf\u00e9 at the Regency <\/strong>is a nice place for a lunch date on a balmy day. And whenever you get a hankering for top-notch homey German food (and who doesn\u2019t?) there\u2019s nowhere like Schulte & Herr<\/strong> for bratwurst and sauerkraut. As for sushi, no one does it better than Masa Miyake. But Benkay<\/strong> and Yosaku<\/strong> are damned good, too. As for Vietnamese, whether you\u2019re Team Thanh Thanh<\/strong> or Team Saigon<\/strong>, it\u2019s okay\u2014they\u2019re both great.<\/span><\/p>\n

U<\/span>ltimately, I\u2019m glad that most of my favorite places weren\u2019t mentioned. Let the crowds from Boston and New York buy up all the baked goods at Tandem, throng the sidewalks of Washington Avenue, book seats at Drifter\u2019s Wife<\/strong> and Little Giant months in advance, and follow Mr. Tuna<\/strong> wherever his truck goes. While the hordes demand vodka tonics and chili dogs at Ruski\u2019s, I\u2019ll have a quiet rye and soda with loaded potato chips at Bramhall<\/strong>. Let them eat fried clams at DiMillo\u2019s<\/strong>\u2014more twin lobster specials at the Porthole for the rest of us.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m starting to feel a bit out of breath, and I\u2019ve neglected to mention so many other places. For a small city, Portland is ridiculously rich in restaurants that serve truly good and beautiful food on a daily basis. And I do realize that, in arguing with the premise of Bon App\u00e9tit\u2019s<\/em> choices, I\u2019ve just proved their point.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, this is a great restaurant city. The magic of Portland is that there is a restaurant for every mood, budget, appetite, and aesthetic.<\/span><\/p>\n

My hat is off to the original chefs who made this town what it is, like Sam Hayward, Dana Street, Masa Miyake, and Steve Corry\u2014the originators who paved the way for these ambitious young upstarts. Thanks to these brilliant trailblazers, there\u2019s room for everyone. <\/span><\/p>\n

Kate Christensen is the author of seven novels, including The Great Man<\/em>, which won the 2008 PEN\/Faulkner Award for fiction, and, most recently, The Last Cruise<\/em>. She is also the author of two culinary memoirs, Blue Plate Special <\/em>and How to Cook a Moose<\/em>, which won the 2016 Maine Literary Award for Memoir. She lives with her husband and dog in Portland, Maine.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October 2018
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