55 Best Restaurants in Portland, Maine

Jordan Rubin, along with his trusty team, has built a reputation in Portland for inventive and top-quality sushi. Sleekly designed and filled with a young crowd, this Binchotan-fired eatery takes a slight detour with its grilled and skewered creations like duck breast with prune and togarashi or charred hamachi with ponzu and puffed rice. Unconventional Japanese? Yes, but it's well worth opening your mind for.

The beans producing this shop’s delicious brew are bought from a handful of small growers—you can read their bios on the website—and roasted in-house. Savor your brew hot, cold, or iced with a locally made baked good.

You won't find a more local or unfussy place—or one more abuzz with conversation—than this waterfront institution way down on the end of Commercial Street. The food is cheap, generous in proportion, and has that satisfying, old-time-diner quality. Sitting next to you at the counter or in a neighboring booth could be rubber-booted fishermen back from sea, college students soothing a hangover, or suited business folks. From the upstairs deck you can watch the working waterfront in action.

Impressively clean and efficient in whipping up bowls of fresh Hawaiian-style poké, Big Fin is a family-owned operation (with another location in the nearby town of Westbrook). The fast, friendly staff churns out dishes of yellowtail, torched salmon, or spicy ahi tuna with customized toppings like shoyu, green onion, avocado, seaweed salad, and fried shallots.

Perched on Thompson’s Point (a quick walk away from the busy entertainment venue of the same name), Bissell Brothers is in a perfect place—a 100-year-old former railway building, to be exact—to wow the crowds before and after the shows. It also draws crowds of its own for its hoppy ales (The Substance Ale, for instance), for regular releases available on tap and in cans, and a kitchen serving big salads full of local veg, wings covered in any of three sauces, and charcuterie from a nearby farm.

This huge family-owned floating restaurant on a centrally located marina has been a staple of Portland's food scene for decades. The food has stayed largely the same since it opened—this isn't the place to break any culinary sound barriers—with classics like Maine lobster dinners, bacon-wrapped scallops, and clam chowder. If you're looking for a place to have a drink with great views and a unique atmosphere filled with nautical decor, this is a worthy option.

For some of the best Mexican food in town, head to this fun, hip spot where the flavors are as vibrant as the turquoise, yellow, and fuchsia decor and the guacamole and salsas are made fresh daily. Wash down achiote-seasoned fish tacos or a citrus-and-cumin-marinated chicken burrito with a lemon-hibiscus refresca (cold drink) or a house margarita. They also have a location in Scarborough.

Not only does Eventide have fresh, tasty oysters from all over Maine and New England, artfully prepared with novel accoutrements like kimchi, ginger ices, and cucumber-champagne mignonette, it also serves delicious crudos and ceviches with unique ingredients like blood orange and chili miso. The menu constantly changes, depending on what's in season. So it's best to order a handful of small plates, a glass of bubbly or one of the signature tiki-style cocktails, and, of course, a dozen oysters.

Families, students, and bohemian types gather at this popular New England chain flatbread-pizza place where two massive wood-fire ovens are the heart of the soaring, warehouselike space. Waits can be long on weekends and in summer, but you can call a half-hour ahead to put your name on the list, or grab a drink from the bar and wait outside with a view of the harbor. The menu has eight signature pizzas made with fresh, local ingredients, plus weekly veggie and meat specials; everything is homemade, organic, and nitrate-free, and there are delicious local microbrews on tap.

The biggest of three breweries sharing space in an industrial warehouse, Foundation welcomes visitors (and their fur babies) to its tasting room with a roster of craft brews that pair well with their Detroit-style pizzas and snacks like giant pretzels, available Thursday through Monday. Foundation's best-known brew is the Double IPA Epiphany, but the ever-changing list of beers on tap includes pilsners like Riverton Flyer and wheaty brews such as Radiant Waves.

This is the real deal, as quintessential as old-school Maine dining can be. Clam rakes and nautical charts hang from the walls of this unpretentious waterfront diner, and the flavors come from the depths of the North Atlantic, prepared and presented simply: fried scallops, haddock, clams and extraordinary clam cakes, and fish, clam, and seafood chowders (corn, too).

This high-energy spot serves lobster in both classic and creative ways—in a roll, on a stick, on a burger, over a salad, or even with your Bloody Mary. If you're feeling adventurous, try one of the sauces (lime mayo, lobster ghee) on your roll, and wash it all down with a beer from the ever-changing menu, which depends on availability from local breweries.

Don't pass up a chance to try these sweet and savory, all-natural, Maine potato-based doughnuts glazed in flavors such as dark chocolate--sea salt, maple, pomegranate, triple berry, and chai, or stuffed with delicious fillings like bacon and cheddar or ricotta. There are always new inventions, too, such as salted chocolate caramel and key lime pie.

Come for the salty wontons, piping-hot broths, and wok-fried noodles; stay for the turntable music, the well-stocked cocktail bar, and the soft-serve ice cream that comes in flavors like orange curd, moxie, and charred corn. If you order one thing here, make it one of the rotating fresh fish creations—à la bluefin tuna tartare with gochugaru, ginger, wakame, sesame, and cured egg; or the lobster toast, a delectable mousse with radish, cilantro, tarragon aioli, and fresno pepper.

This sleek, waterfront flagship location is at the heart of the international Luke's Lobster chain, and it operates as a cooperative among Maine's lobstermen who supply it with the freshest of catches. Chill out on the high-energy patio when it's sunny, or head up to the second floor and grab a table by the windows, which have killer views of Portland harbor.

Japanese street food takes center stage at this cozy locale, which was once a hugely popular food truck. The menu rotates regularly, but you're likely to find uncommon takes on burgers and soba noodles as well as some form of okonomiyaki—a savory pancake filled with crazy-delicious flavor and texture combinations.

Named for the pretty plant that blooms across Southwestern deserts, Ocotillo is a daytime-only restaurant that, since opening in 2024, has quickly earned an ardent following for its delicious Tex-Mex breakfasts, brunches, and lunches. The long bar and airy and colorful dining space leads out to a lovely year-round patio, and all of it fills up with locals digging into smoked fish tostadas, smoked brisket breakfast tacos, and peach margaritas. The smoked meats are particularly addictive, and you won't regret taking whatever type of grit cake special is offered.

Let the gargantuan antique front doors brought in from San Juan be your first clue to what Papi is all about: an ongoing celebration of Puerto Rican food and culture. The vibe is upbeat and friendly, the music fun and joyful, and the food and cocktail program complex and supremely excellent. One menu staple, the pernil (traditional marinated and slow-roasted pork shoulder) is especially deep-flavored and worth diving into.

When owner (and self-titled “boochmaster”) Reid Emmerich looked around Portland and realized that lots of locals were drinking kombucha but none of it was being made locally, he set his sights on fixing that in 2018. These days the funky tasting room-cum-brewery (it’s technically licensed as the latter, since all kombucha contains at least a small amount of alcohol) gets filled with fans in to try Emmerich’s latest flavors—which change with whatever ingredients are in season, since he forages many of them himself—and hang out with fellow boochlovers in the process.

What began as a beloved brewery in nearby Biddeford has recently expanded to this large and style-conscious, multiroom tasting room. The Sacred Profane following has grown even larger now that the crowds headed to Thompson's Point are stopping in to hang out over excellent craft beers (especially the lagers, which are a specialty) and partake in the beer-braised sausages, smoked fish dips, pierogis, and lobster bakes.

Trays heaped with St. Louis–style ribs and brisket fly around Salvage’s expansive room, as diners wait for orders to arrive at communal or dinette tables. The deep-flavored meats benefit from time in the outfit’s smoker, custom-built from an old propane tank and fueled by Maine red oak, and sides like collard greens, delicious cornbread, and hush puppies round out the Southern-style feast. The adjoining bar and live music keep things hopping.

This no-fuss yet continuously fun counter-service spot, opened by longtime wholesale purveyors of Island Creek Oysters (from Duxbury, Massachusetts), serves seriously fresh shellfish and excellent Maine microbrews (and wine) on tap. A clutch of imported, tinned fish and house-made pickled items that pair very well with oysters are also available. If it's sunny, grab a seat on the patio and watch all of Munjoy Hill stroll by.

The Speckled Ax serves up a seriously delicious coffee, whether cold brewed or piping hot with frothy milk. The secret to the richness of the beans is the painstaking roasting process, using a vintage Italian Petroncini roaster fired with local hardwood—ask to take a peek at that contraption while you wait for your drink.

Named for local gastro-superhero Dana Street, who's launched a bevy of Portland's best eateries, this staple of the city's upscale restaurant scene is a stunner even after all these years (it opened in 1989). Still drawing crowds in huge waves, diners come for the pan-seared and grilled seafood and mouthwatering pasta like lobster fra diavolo. It all adds up to a Mediterranean-meets-Maine meal you won't soon forget.

One of two large locations (the other is in Freeport), this stylishly decorated, locally owned, and family-friendly trattoria-inspired spot specializes in wood-fired pizzas and hearty (mostly Italian) entrées. There are also seafood options like Maine mussels and oysters as well as a selection of Maine beers on tap.