Portland Makes New York Times

True.  At least the NYT website.  For Portland’s recently booming reputation on the foodie scene, as it were, which has been making waves across the country.  The visitor’s bureau has recently decreed that more money is spent in Portland, ME’s restaurants than anywhere else in the country, save the two giants, New York and San Francisco.  This didn’t come as an enormous surprise to me, it’s easy living here to stroll down the street and take note of the shoulder to shoulder restaurants, diners and bar/grills.  What did come as a surprise was the reason for the NYT making such a hub-bub (grub-hub?) about our little port city’s food culture.

In the last decade, Portland has undergone a controlled fermentation for culinary ideas — combining young chefs in a hard climate with few rules, no European tradition to answer to, and relatively low economic pressure — and has become one of the best places to eat in the Northeast. The most interesting chefs here cook up and down the spectrum, from Erik Desjarlais’s classically pressed roast ducks at Evangeline, to the renegade baker Stephen Lanzalotta’s gorgeously caramelized sfogliatelle (sold out of the back of Micucci Grocery, an Italian-imports shop), to Mr. Potocki’s simple but brilliant chili-garlic cream cheese and handmade bagels.

Tablecloths, Asian fusion and spherification are out (the locals aren’t interested in, or rich enough to indulge in, frivolous food experiments, the thinking goes). Nose-to-tail, rustic French and Italian, and small plates are in.

They go into a lot of the more famous chef’s names and signature plates from around town, emphasizing Portland’s infamous “Buy Local” campaign and mentioning both of the weekly Farmer’s Markets. Of course, I was very skeptical at first by all the name-dropping. It seemed to highlight the finest dining establishments in the area, such as Evangeline or Bresca.

Buttermilk panna cotta from Bresca -- looks so good it might fellate me.

This is all in lieu of Bon Apetit magazine recently declaring Portland, Maine as the Foodiest Small Town in America (!!!).

Forget name-dropping chefs, Portland’s ride just got pimped to the rest of America. Forbes already boasts how livable our city is, and now here’s Bon Apetit telling everyone to eat here. Their very well-written narrative article on the decision goes even further into Portland foodie culture, turning over stones to find the less-renowned businesses that build the backbone of eating out, the breakfast diners. Both Becky’s and Marcy’s are praised, as well as South Portland’s 158 as having “the country’s best bacon, egg, and cheese bagel sandwich.” Even Hot Suppa! makes it in. Here’s the whole article, it’s really something.

Japanese snapper rolls, out of Masa Miyake.

Miyake, the little innocuous sushi place up in the West End, gets mention in both NYT and Bon Apetit. The head chef Masa Miyake moved his family of five out of a single bedroom in Queens to open up shop here in Portland, and now they’re apparently running the best sushi game in town. I’ll have to check it out and test my strong loyalties to King of the Roll and Fuji.

Both authors also took part in a top-secret invite-only underground no-holds-barred dinner party, referred to only as “Deathmatch.” This is when two local culinary players throw down and match their mettle against each other. With themes ranging from “foie gras” to “breakfast” to “Your Last Meal,” the latter of which was an 18-course meal complete with caviar and crème fraîche on potato chips, grill-roasted local Damariscotta oysters served with hot sauce and a squeeze of lemon, and “bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches served by young women dressed as Catholic schoolgirls, wielding hot mayonnaise in squeeze bottles.”

I don’t know where this infamous event takes place, but I simply must infiltrate it, deep undercover reporter style. I’m sure they’ll probably black-bag me somewhere in Monument Square, spin around ten times, then put me in a van for two hours before letting me out deep in a catacomb of tunnels where I must paw my way through Portland’s underbelly to their hidden arena, where I’m fully strip-searched and beaten with reeds for good measure (Reader, don’t fear, they will never find my trusty pen and Moleskine. Hint: They’re not in my bowel cavity.)

I, for one, am enthused Portland’s getting so much cred on the national scene. Sure, I’ll bitch and moan at all the tourists, but will I still kindly, almost eagerly, give them directions to Exchange St. or the Nickelodeon, or Five Fifty-Five? You bet your filet mignon. But I still feel a wide demographic of Portland’s business is being neglected: the cheap-eats we twenty-something collegiate depend on for breaks from the ramen and tuna, where we will actually take people on wallet-friendly dates while still maintaining class, the places we’ve grown up with and can’t seem to stop going to.

Join me, Potentialites, in an archiving of a true local’s eatery experience in this grand city, before the lower middle class gets broad-brushed out by these fancy-shmancy New York Times toting “foodies.”

On a related note, I also wish to catalog and review all of Portland’s bars and pubs, before someone else beats us to it.  J-Christie, I’m looking Straight.  At.  You.