A trip to Maine means walking in the woods and along the rocky coastline. Pack a sweater, because nights can be chilly, and you will want to sit outside, under the stars. Walk, kayak, swim with ducks in lakes and catch minnows in tide pools. Eat lobster. The food scene in Maine is thriving. Stop at every farm and farmstand for whatever fruits are ripe. Pull over and eat a slice of pie in a classic American diner. Talk to bartenders: they always know where to eat. Ask to say hello to the chefs who are working in concert with local growers and suppliers. A holiday adventure in Maine is an interactive, enriching, experience, full of winding roads and delicious surprises.
The midcoast of Maine, between Brunswick and Belfast, is an idyll from an idealised past, where children run to the ends of docks to catch crabs with pieces of chicken on a string. Rockland has a thriving Main Street and good art at the Farnsworth Art Museum, many fine galleries, an independent movie house, antiques shops, bookstores, coffee shops, and more than a few exceptional restaurants. The once rough-and-tumble town is becoming a destination for dining, with a reputation for young, clever chef-owners making the best of all things local.
Maine's coast is one of tall pines and cold rough waters. In these deep waters "bugs" (lobsters) were once so abundant, that there were laws about how frequently they could be fed to prisoners and indentured servants (gma.org/lobsters). These days, a lobster can be bought for $3 off the boat, if you know a guy. They are a delicacy mostly because they taste like the depths of the sea. Vaguely salty, rich, and sweet, they are an almost-perfect food. Watch someone eating a lobster, and you will glimpse our evolutionary past. Affluent, otherwise decorous adults will tie a plastic bib around their necks to devour these 1-2lb monsters with gleeful abandon.
Primo is Rockland's restaurant on a hill, where James Beard-award winning chef Melissa Kelly has been raising her own animals and vegetables for a decade, and transforming them into gorgeous food. Our favourite way to experience Primo is to sit at the bar, order a cocktail with prosecco and aperol, and fill the space in front of us with small tastes, including sausage-stuffed olives and braised collard greens (from $6).
Suzuki's Sushi Bar is the kind of high-end sushi restaurant one might not expect to find in a working-class port town. In this small, quiet space, the all-female staff deftly craft beautiful dishes of raw fish. Order the omakase, and leave your choices to talented chef Keiko Suzuki Steinberger and her team. The most elegant tastes include the tiny sweet Maine shrimp ($8), and scallop sashimi.
Salt Water Farm is the place to go for breakfast before a sail or stroll through handsome Rockport. The staff is young and creative; the food is grown on their nearby land, or caught from the water an arm's-length away. The menu changes daily, is delicious, and it creates the best breakfast sandwich, ever ($6).
The Slipway 10 minutes' drive away in Thomaston is the perfect spot for seafood. Sit on the deck at sunset, at picnic tables large enough for meeting friends, and dine together on fried oysters ($8.50) served with a shockingly purple shallot dipping sauce, crab cakes on a bed of salad greens, and, of course, steamed lobster. The Slipway serves the classics, ever so slightly elevated, with nature as your dining room. As the sun sets over the inlet and you sway with sangria in hand, you realise that this is Maine, and this is what life is meant to be.
Much has been written about the food scene in Portland, Maine's most cosmopolitan city, 80 miles south of Rockland. And most of it is true. Explore the port from the West End to the East End, with the cobbled streets of the Old Port in between, at a sidewalk table in summer or a cozy spot near a wood-burning fireplace in winter. This thriving town boasts scores of niche restaurants, where the food, the ambience and the wine and cocktail menus are thoughtful and thought-provoking. Chefs have easy access to the bounty of New England's land and sea.
At Caiola's, you will feel like part of the fabric of the brick-and-ivy West End. It's a neighbourhood place where you have one too many glasses of wine and feast on comfort food – order the eggplant puttanesca with grilled fennel bread and sautéed greens ($16.95), it's insanely good.
Eventide Oyster Co is a buzzing place. Keep the order simple: local shellfish from the well-curated list, or a surprising twist on the classic lobster roll, this one served in a steamed Japanese-style bun ($12). Select the accompaniments for your oysters accordingly: classic cocktail sauce is a fine choice, as is the mimosa mignonette or the sensational horseradish ice.
Micucci Wholesale Foods has maybe four tables and six stools, where the lucky few can sit and savour a slice of its famous Sicilian Slab pizza ($4.50) at lunchtime. It's really not a restaurant at all, but an importer of Italian speciality foods, with a deli. Stop here before you picnic, for wine, cheese, crusty bread, olives, and a bag of biscotti. The real trick, though, is to get one of the coveted squares of sweet saucy cheese pizza. South of Portland at Cape Elizabeth, you'll find the Bite Into Maine truck in Fort Williams Park until mid-November, parked on a grassy hill overlooking the crashing Atlantic ocean. Its lobster is sweet and plump, and it is turning out interesting variations on the classic roll ($13) including versions spiked with curry or wasabi. It feels very "Sunday in the Park", as couples go by hand in hand, children scramble over rocks, and seabirds squawk overhead. It's another idyllic place to land.
They go fast, and when they're gone, that's it until next time. It's an insider's favourite, and if you are spending the day hoofing around Portland, you are going to need a slice for the road.
Jillian and Malcolm Bedell, authors of Maine food blog From Away
• For more information on holidays in the USA, visit DiscoverAmerica.com
