This site is a directory of all restaurants, bars, groceries, and other food related resources in Portland, Maine—plus a small but growing number of places in the extended local area. You can either navigate the site using the Map View or List View.

I am still experimenting with different ways to group the map. For now, it is consists of six major categories:

  1. Eat Out—places you go because you want to try something different and eat out
  2. Grab a Bite—diners, pizza joints and other casual eateries where you go when you need to eat
  3. Nibble and Sip—coffee, tea, snack food
  4. Take Home—food, raw or prepared, that you'll eat at home
  5. Drinks—bars, lounges, clubs, etc
  6. Non-Edibles—magazines, blogs, and other resources for the foodie in you

As you can see from the image on the right the map is really big—it displays more than 400 individual resources. Because there's so much to show you can only see a portion of the map at any given time.


There are a few things that set this site apart from other existing resources:

Local—portlandfoodmap.com focuses just on the local area and just on local businesses. You won't find national or regional chains that didn't start in Maine listed on the map.
 
Visual—there are several ways for you to access the content on the site, the most unique is certainly the Map View which provides a way to visualize the entire Portland food scene.
 
Complete—the site makes every effort to list every local food-related resource and business. So, for example, you can find all the sushi restaurants rather than just the well known ones.
 
Up to Date—changes get made to the site all the time to add new places, reviews and links to other resources. If you know of any place new that's missing or of a restaurant that's recently closed but still listed, please let me know.
 
Neutral—the site links to reviews by Portland Press Herald, Portland Phoenix, the Breakfast Club, Chow Maine and anyone else I find that's a semi-regular commenter on the Portland food scene. You can quickly access a number of different opinions and make a decision where you want to go.