There’s a good and a bad side to Portland’s being named 2018 restaurant of the year by Bon Appétit magazine. On the one hand, it’s long overdue recognition of an evolving foodie culture that’s an increasing draw for tourists and transplants from away keen to get away from bigger, busier and pricier cities. But being in the national spotlight also has its drawbacks, like big crowds on weekends during the prime tourist season.
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There’s a good and a bad side to Portland’s being named 2018 restaurant of the year by Bon Appétit magazine.
On the one hand, it’s long overdue recognition of an evolving foodie culture that’s an increasing draw for tourists and transplants from away keen to get away from bigger, busier and pricier cities.
But being in the national spotlight also has its drawbacks, like big crowds on weekends during the prime tourist season.
“It’s a good problem to have,” says David Turin, the chef-owner of David’s and David’s Opus Ten on Monument Square and David’s 388 in South Portland. He’s been in the business for more than 35 years.
“When I opened my first place in 1983, it was a standard for most restaurants to be busy on Fridays and Saturdays, and if you could do half a turn the rest of the week you were doing OK,” he says. “You couldn’t survive on that level of business now.”
Turin moved David’s to its current location in 1997 when the area further up Congress Street from Monument Square was made up of more abandoned than occupied spaces.
“Everybody said, ‘You’re nuts,’ but I liked the space and I liked the location,” Turin says.
The business is still going strong, despite growing competition for customers — and staff — with all the new up-market eateries popping up not just downtown and in the West End but throughout greater Portland and beyond. He says one downside of that is a greater emphasis on décor.
“People are demanding more flash, but flash is really expensive,” he notes.
The late Tony DiMillo was another Portland restaurant pioneer, opening DiMillo’s on the Waterfront in 1965 and a floating restaurant in December 1982. Today, DiMillo’s Restaurant and Lounge is a waterfront mainstay.
Asked to explain the source of Maine’s restaurant boom, Turin boils it down to the ease with which a chef can open a place here without huge investment costs, coupled with “amazing access” to local products from fish to fresh produce.
“We have this wonderful combination of opportunity,” he says, adding that he hopes Portland will maintain its place in the food scene but also notes an explosion happening in other places.
That includes Biddeford, where Elda was named one of the best new restaurants in the country and Palace Diner one of America’s “essential restaurants” by Eater magazine. Turin also mentioned the Midcoast town of Rockland, whose dining hotspots include Primo Restaurant and Café Miranda.
Further afield, in Freedom, Erin French’s Lost Kitchen has developed a culinary mystique, taking reservations by snail-mail only during a narrow window in April.
Eventide Oyster Co., Hugo’s, Duck Fat, Fore Street and Scales are among the Portland restaurants that have garnered widespread attention.
Mainers also love their food trucks and no-frills dining options, like the seasonal Lobster Shack at Two Lights in Cape Elizabeth, Bob’s Clam Hut on Route 1 in Kittery and Cumberland Avenue in Portland and — for those who don’t mind long queues for lobster rolls — Red’s Eats, at the foot of Wiscasset’s main drag.
