Chow Maine - Restaurant Guide

Snug with the southern border of Maine and traditional vacation destinations of long standing, the towns on this end of the coast support dozens of good restaurants. Many are a summer's-night destination for people in Boston with a little wanderlust and only a little time.

The towns, starting from the southern border and traveling north, are Kittery, York (Cape Neddick), Ogunquit (Perkins Cove), Wells, Kennebunk, and Kennebunkport, which includes Cape Porpoise and Goose Rocks Beach.

Kittery has its own "food alley," a collection of great food shops, on Route 1 near the bridge to New Hampshire. From the first interstate exit in Maine, merge into the Kittery rotary and head south on Route 1 to find Mayan chocolates, freshly made ravioli, and wine from southern Italy.

York has many places to eat, fun to go to as much for the view-especially at Cliff House-as for the food.

The view is always in competition with what's on the plates in a restaurant perched over the sea, like MC Perkins Cove, on the southern end of Ogunquit.
Downtown Ogunquit, as quiet in winter as a midwestern town, becomes a place without parking in July and August, when tourists crowd the sidewalks and take the free trolleys to the beach. That long, beautiful, sandy beach was a source of inspiration for painters who started this town's career as a summer colony, as artists have been known to do elsewhere along the Maine coast.

Wells, right alongside Ogunquit, has been the middlebrow neighbor, but new restaurants opening there are changing that description.

Kennebunkport, the flaunting sister of plainer Kennebunk, lords over all with its vast array of places to eat. I've included many Kennebunkport restaurants that have good reputations, but the criticism "overpriced" could be applicable. It depends on your preferences. For some of us, the silverware and the quality of the linens don't really matter; for others, all the expensive accoutrements of fine dining are what make an evening out worthwhile.

Yankees are stubborn, suspicious people, and anyone who lives in Maine is influenced by the land's long-enduring skepticism. It must come into our systems from the earth itself, growing fine vegetables in its brief summer, but austere under the winter sky for so much of the year.

You may be one of those in sympathy with local history, preferring a paper plate of freshly shucked fried clams to gussied-up lobster.

But there are places for all tastes, here as everywhere, on this friendly, accommodating, and eagerly commercial coast.