Category: PFM

The 2024 Pocket Guide is now available. As in past years the guide highlights a cross section of the restaurants, bakeries, breweries, coffee shops, cocktail bars, and cafes that make eating and drinking in Portland so compelling.

Use the guide as a starting point for your ongoing exploration of the Portland and Maine food scenes. See the Portland Food Map directory for the full list of independent eateries in the city and the Maine Food Map list, and put together your own selection. We’d enjoy seeing your list and hearing about your eating adventures. If you have a moment, send us a copy of your set of favorites and new finds for us to consider for the next edition of the pocket guide.

Many thanks to the Pocket Guide sponsors! Their support is essential to making this resource available: Evergreen Credit Union, The Boulos Company, the Canopy by Hilton Waterfront, Wine Wise, Allagash Brewing Company, The Longfellow Hotel, and Vertical Harvest.

While supplies last you can pick-up a free copy of the guide at these local businesses: Tandem Coffee Roasters, Portland Trading Company, Allagash Brewing, Rose Foods, Oxbow Brewing, Onggi, Ugly Duckling, Bresca and the Honey Bee in New Gloucester, and at the Portland Yoga Collective.

Do you need a larger number of pocket guides for an event you’re holding or for your business? Starting this year, they’re for sale in packages of 25 on our online store. Please contact us if you’re from a nonprofit organizations or if you’re interested in volume discount pricing or have any questions about buying copies of the pocket guide.

One final note: The pocket guide wouldn’t be as good as it, in fact it wouldn’t exist at all, without the skills and contributions of graphic designer Sofija Razgaitis and of Dawn Hagin from Rare Bird Strategic. Congratulate them on their work the next time you see them.

Over the last couple years we’ve road-tripped through all of Maine’s sixteen counties to see the state and explore Maine’s food and dining scene. While there’s still so much more to do in that regard, we’re pleased to introduce the Maine Food Map, a growing guide to notable coffee shops, bars, restaurants, bakeries, cafes, and other food and dining businesses from all around the state.

The list is a work-in-progress—just like the Maine restaurant scene itself—it will continue to grow as the new establishments come to light and as we work through our extensive backlog of businesses to write-up.

The Maine Food Map currently has 83 entries representing nearly 60 communities from all of Maine’s sixteen counties. We hope you can put it to good use this summer to plan your own eating and travel adventures in Maine.

Check the Maine Food & Dining column each week for a list of new additions, and please keep sending in your recommendations for places across the state that we should visit, share on social media and add to the list.

I’m happy to announce the release of the 2020 PFM Printed Pocket Guide. This handy paper reference highlights many of the restaurants, bakeries, breweries, coffee shops, cocktail bars, and cafes that make eating and drinking in Portland so interesting. It also includes highlights of a few places to dine elsewhere in the state worth the drive.

Use the pocket guide for ideas on where to go, and consult the information here on PFM for the latest information on which restaurants are offering takeout, outdoor seating or indoor dining.

Many thanks to the Pocket Guide sponsors for their generous support, which enabled Portland Food Map to produce and print this resource:

• The Press Hotel
• Evergreen Credit Union
• The Boulos Company
• Wine Wise

While supplies last you can pick-up your very own copy of the guide at these local businesses: Rose Foods, Tandem Coffee in the West End, the Portland Trading Company, Little Woodfords, or Oxbow Brewing on Washington Ave.

The pocket guide wouldn’t be as good as it is, in fact it wouldn’t exist at all, without help from the extended PFM team of Dawn Hagin from Rare Bird Strategic, and from graphic designer Sofija Razgaitis. My thanks to both of them for all their hard work on the project.

Looking for a gift for that foodie friend on your list? Visit the Portland Food Map online store to check out our line of  short and long sleeve t-shirts, tote bags, coffee mugs.

Welcome to the newly redesigned Portland Food Map website — the first overhaul in nearly 11 years in operation.

As you can see the new site has an updated visual design while preserving the familiar structure and core features of the PFM 1.0. Behind the curtain is a flexible new technical platform that will make it much easier to keep the site updated with all the latest news and information. The site delivers content in a much more responsive, mobile friendly format, and integrates feeds from the PFM instagram and twitter accounts, adding new dimensions to the information available through the site. There’s also a new integrated search feature that indexes the entire restaurant directory and nearly 8,000 blog posts from the past decade the site’s been in business.

To celebrate the new site, I’m also releasing a limited-edition offline version: a pocket-sized printed Portland Food Map. You can pick-up your copy while supplies last at the Little Giant market in the West End, Maine & Loire in the East End, Portland Trading Co. in the Old Port, and Rose Foods on Forest Ave.

Portland Food Map has been supported in this evolution by Evergreen Credit Union, the first sponsor for PFM. Evergreen was looking for opportunities to promote resources that are important to the culture and vibe of the Portland community, and I’m honored that Portland Food Map was chosen as one of them. They’ve been terrific and a true partner in this big step forward for PFM.

Also crucial to the relaunch has been Dawn Hagin from the marketing consulting firm Rare Bird Strategic, Sarah Hines and her web development team at Shines & Jecker Laboratories, and graphic designer Sofija Razgaitis.

I hope you enjoy the new site!

Today marks the anniversary of the launch of Portland Food Map. It’s been fascinating to watch the evolution in the food scene that’s taken place since 2007. A majority of tourists now come to Maine for the outstanding options for food and drink. I can hardly imagine what 2023 will be like but regardless, I look forward to chronicling what happens in the years to come.

Today marks the 5-year anniversary of the launch of Portland Food Map.

I think it’s fair to say that had you told me then that I was headed down the path to running a daily news site for the Portland food community that would be read by thousands of people I would have thought you were crazy. But that’s exactly what’s happened and I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out, and as long as there continues to be an interest and an audience for PFM, I expect I’ll still be at it when 2017 rolls around.

I owe a a big thanks to all of you for showing such support for the site over the years, and to the restaurant and food community for building such a fascinating industry for me to obsessively focus my attention on.