By Will Grunewald Photos by Nicole Wolf From our April 2024 issue The table setting was pretty darn lovely — a light-gray runner draped diagonally, beneath a small vase of yellow and white tulips and a couple of squat, flickering candles. The napkins were folded just so, the lighting dimmed exactly right. All in a private dining room. Or, more precisely, our dining room — at home. I’d arranged most of the scene myself, so I’m a little biased toward how it turned out. Not often do my wife and I do a fancy meal at home, and I was feeling inspired. As for the meal, it too came together without a ..read more

By Kate McCarty Photos by Mat Trogner From our March 2024 issue Oak & Ember owner Shannon Keefe The circa 1790 mustard-colored farmhouse at the intersection of Routes 202 and 22 has witnessed the town of Buxton transform from a hub of Saco River mill activity to a rural enclave of metro Portland. The farmhouse has transformed too, serving first as a private residence, then an antiques shop, then the beloved Buxton Common restaurant, and now a new gastropub, Oak & Ember. Last June, longtime Portland bartender Shannon Keefe bought the place from Buxton Common chef Max Brody, who had exte ..read more

By Will Grunewald Photos by Nicole Wolf From our February 2024 issue Cara Stadler was just 24 years old when, in 2012, she opened Tao Yuan. Two years later, the Brunswick restaurant earned her the first of what would be five consecutive nods as a semifinalist or finalist for the “rising star” award at the James Beard Foundation’s annual culinary equivalent of the Oscars. Food & Wine twice named her one of the country’s best new chefs. Then, in early 2020, all the momentum at Tao Yuan came to an abrupt halt. Like other restaurant owners, Stadler shut her doors when the pandemic hit. Then, u ..read more

By Virginia M. Wright Photos by Nicole Wolf From our January 2024 issue Pottle’s, which opened last summer in Liberty village, is a den of homeyness. The barroom is dark and intimate, with exposed wooden beams, red-checkered curtains, and a built-in bookcase stocked with vintage tomes and painted a deep blue-gray to match the walls. The adjacent dining room is brighter but no less cozy, with a fireplace, chef Isiah Pottle’s vintage family photos on the walls, and an upright piano that guests play with varying skill.  Pottle’s fare is homey too, most of it created from his family’s re ..read more

By Michaela Cavallaro Photos by Anthony DiBiase From our November 2023 issue Major landmarks on outer Congress Street, across I-295 from downtown Portland, include a Dunkin’, a couple of gas stations, and a shopping plaza with a CVS and a Shaw’s. Next door to Eddie’s Nails, Mitr Ping Yang Thai Kitchen opened late last year, in a former IT shop that’s been renovated beyond recognizability. Now, shamrock-green walls are adorned with picture-frame molding and cheeky pop-art portraits of Thai film star Mitr Chaibancha and the first Thai Miss Universe, Apasra Hongsakula, and an illustration of a sm ..read more

By Brian Kevin Photos by Hannah Hoggatt From our October 2023 issue When the Young family showed up at the foot of Mount Megunticook in 1777, the plantation around them was called Canaan, after the biblical Promised Land, the land of milk and honey. By the time the Youngs built their sprawling farmhouse, around 1810, the town around them had incorporated as Lincolnville, and in the generations that followed, the Young farmstead became a land of milk and eggs: a dairy, at first, then a laying farm.  The Nowaks, with daughter Colette and Aster & Rose server Mary Menn. Today, it’s a land ..read more

By Will Grunewald Photos by Hannah Hoggatt From our September 2023 issue For the squeamish or the vegetarian, digging into a charcuterie board while watching a sow and her piglets snuffling around in the shade of some trees might seem macabre. Philosophical meat eaters, on the other hand, might interpret the milieu as an antidote to the dissociative effects of industrial agriculture — knowing where food comes from is good, and sitting where it comes from is even better. And for people who are neither squeamish nor vegetarian nor particularly philosophical about what they ingest, those meats at ..read more

By Will Grunewald Photos by Cara Dolan From our August 2023 issue The Il Leone kitchen consists of a trailer, which serves as pantry, refrigerator, and prep station, and a wood-fired oven, which has two wheels and a tow hitch. They’re parked next to each other on the periphery of Peaks Island’s small downtown, in a shaded grove with 10 picnic tables beneath bistro lights strung from branches. That’s pretty much all there is to it — either a food truck without a truck or a restaurant without walls. And whether in spite of or precisely because of that operational minimalism, Il Leone is maximall ..read more

By Kate McCarty Photos by Liz Daly From our July 2023 issue In 2017, brothers Alan and Jonathan Hines were on vacation in Copenhagen, and a lightbulb went off when they happened upon a food stall packed with locals enjoying pints of beer along with smørrebrød, open-faced sandwiches served on squares of rye bread. Smørrebrød (pronounced like “s’more-brood”) is, traditionally, a way of using up leftovers, but it’s lately been showing up on restaurant menus around Scandinavia, getting chefier treatments. The Hineses, who had already been toying with the idea of opening a bar back in Maine, decide ..read more

By Jesse Ellison Photos by Nicole Wolf From our May 2023 issue Jasper Ludwig grew up in Newcastle, just seven minutes down the road from the Alna Store, which was originally owned by friends of her parents. Her dad used to take her there to buy strawberry milk on their way to the transfer station. She moved to the West Coast for college, bounced around the country for a few years, and, in 2014, opened a hybrid restaurant, café, and market in Tucson with her partner, Brian Haskins. She knew that, one day, she’d want to come back to Maine and replicate the model. “We wondered where we might find ..read more