Fresh Catch

How Portland, Maine, went from being a great little food town to one of America's finest places to eat.

- Marcia DeSanctis

Dusk over Portland's waterfront

THE MINUTE I crossed the Piscataqua River Bridge connecting New Hampshire to Maine, I felt a gnawing in my belly. The weather was classic coastal New England: cold, wet, and foggy. At 3:30 p.m., it was a little late for lunch. But the smell of the ocean and the sound of the seagulls told me, a born-andraised New Englander, two things: that I was home, and that I needed a lobster roll.

When I was a child, my parents had summer houses in Ogunquit and, later, York-two seaside villages that embody the "Vacationland" motto still printed on Maine license plates. Between my mother's clam chowder and the local sweet corn, we felt no need to venture north to Portland, even to visit the childhood home of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (because of his time at Harvard University, we Bostonians claim him as one of our own).

So on this October day, I was finally going to Portland. But first I took a detour to Bite into Maine (entrées $5-$34), a food truck in Fort Williams Park, just south of the city. I ordered the "picnic": the freshest lobster in a toasted roll, doused in melted butter from a silver teapot. Portland Head Lighthouse and a fleet of charcoal clouds were my backdrop as I ate it at an outdoor table in the rain.

PORTLAND IS WELL established as one of the best food destinations in the United States. Trawlers in the harbor collect the day's catch for the city's restaurants of which there is one for every 200 people, even before the tourists arrive. Maine has the country's oldest organic state growers' association, and the Portland Farmers' Market has been operating continuously since 1768, selling the highest quality cheese, berries, flour, meat, and vegetables, along with every other conceivable ingredient, to area residents and chefs.