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Portland, ME is too small but should be considered! It punches waaaaaayyyy above its weight
Agreed.
Here’s my list:
For sheer volume but not necessarily per capita, some amazing world class food, but often inconsistent results:
NYC
LA
Chicago
Smaller, but what I would call cities with a food culture. In that, overall there’s amazing food everywhere and reasonably priced. Places don’t depend on “hype”:
New Orleans
Montreal (I know, not US, but very accessible to northeast)
New Haven
Portland ME
For sheer volume but not necessarily per capita, some amazing world class food, but often inconsistent results:
NYC
LA
Chicago
Smaller, but what I would call cities with a food culture. In that, overall there’s amazing food everywhere and reasonably priced. Places don’t depend on “hype”:
New Orleans
Montreal (I know, not US, but very accessible to northeast)
New Haven
Portland ME
For sheer volume but not necessarily per capita, some amazing world class food, but often inconsistent results:
NYC
LA
Chicago
Smaller, but what I would call cities with a food culture. In that, overall there’s amazing food everywhere and reasonably priced. Places don’t depend on “hype”:
New Orleans
Montreal (I know, not US, but very accessible to northeast)
New Haven Portland ME
I have mixed feelings on Portland, ME's food scene. On one hand, there's zero question that it "punches above its weight" on the food front. It's hard to think of many comparably size cities with better restaurant scenes. And you're right that there's a good food culture there (or restaurant culture at least, it's not exactly cutting edge on the market or home chef front). It's a great place to spend a weekend trying different restaurants.
But it's definitely a place where "hype" is a big part of the experience. One of my knocks on Portland when I lived there was that there's sort of an air of "everything in Portland is the best!" simply by virtue of being in Portland. Much of the best in Portland would just be good (probably not standout or destinations) in a lot of other places. And a lot of the "good" places in Portland are pretty average elsewhere. That's not necessarily a huge knock against Portland because "elsewhere" includes many larger, more influential cities which would be expected to have more/better. But it's relevant. I'm also hesitant to call Portland "reasonably priced." A fine dining experience in Portland might slot be slightly less expensive than a similar tier experience in Boston, New York, San Francisco, etc. But the median income in the Portland area is drastically lower than in those places. And the lower and mid range places are pretty much on par with the larger, major metros. As a result, the "nice" restaurants in Portland cater far more heavily toward tourists than locals which I can't define as "affordable." In fact, I think you can find more unique, tasty food at lower price points in NYC, Montreal, New Haven, Providence, New Orleans, etc.
If I had to chose a place to spend a week or weekend eating my way through, I'd pick almost all of your honorable mentions over Portland. The lone exception would be Burlington which I consider to be almost the opposite of Portland. Portland has a better restaurant scene, but Burlington is the best of this bunch in terms of the utilization of locally sourced ingredients (apart from certain seafood items, obviously). There's more of an agricultural culture in VT than there is in Southern ME, and there's a ton of local cheese, produce, and meats available in even the tiniest corner gas station in Burlington (and all over VT). If I'm putting together a meal to cook at home, it's going to be easier to pull all local ingredients in Burlington. If I'm looking for restaurants, it's easily Portland.
I still remember a talk former Food & Wine editor Dana Cowin gave here sometime in the mid-1990s. (This was when the mag was still produced by American Express Publishing Company before AmEx sold its publishing arm to Meredith Corporation [now Dotdash Meredith].)
She was giving an overall assessment of Philadlelphia's dining and culinary scene. Our best restaurants, she said, while very good, weren't at the level of the top restaurants in NYC, Chicago or LA. Our public markets weren't quite as good as those in New York or Seattle. Our culinary schools were one notch below the best. And so on down the line.
And yet, she concluded, this was one of the country's best food cities because the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. The way everything fit together here elevated the entire scene into the top tier.
And I'd say the scene's gotten better since she gave that talk. José Garces, for instance, had yet to open his first restaurant at the time.
I still remember a talk former Food & Wine editor Dana Cowin gave here sometime in the mid-1990s. (This was when the mag was still produced by American Express Publishing Company before AmEx sold its publishing arm to Meredith Corporation [now Dotdash Meredith].)
She was giving an overall assessment of Philadlelphia's dining and culinary scene. Our best restaurants, she said, while very good, weren't at the level of the top restaurants in NYC, Chicago or LA. Our public markets weren't quite as good as those in New York or Seattle. Our culinary schools were one notch below the best. And so on down the line.
And yet, she concluded, this was one of the country's best food cities because the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. The way everything fit together here elevated the entire scene into the top tier.
And I'd say the scene's gotten better since she gave that talk. José Garces, for instance, had yet to open his first restaurant at the time.
Reading Terminal > Pike Place Market.
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