#Food tours in maine full#
#Food tours in maine plus#

Chefs draw on the enormous and wonderful bay, which is one of the world's most biologically rich bodies of water.īlue crabs are not only delicious, they are also the most important food that comes from the bay, in terms of quantity. It sits on the wide Patapsco river where it joins Chesapeake Bay. Heading south-east from Philly, the former manufacturing city of Baltimore is still an important seaport. It's diner food, widely available, including at the market, and no one who loves it seems to complain about the quality anywhere.ĭiners eating Chesapeake Bay crabs. I once immersed myself in the topic, doing a blind scrapple tasting, looking for the best. It's served sliced and fried crisp on the outside.

#Food tours in maine plus#

Philadelphia is known for scrapple, a loaf made of cornmeal with pork scraps, including liver, plus spices – a polarising food. Buy a soft Philadelphia pretzel ($2) in the market at Miller's Twist.

#Food tours in maine full#

At weekends, the famous Reading Terminal Market is full of energy and jammed with people coming to buy from the countless purveyors, including Amish. I've come to know the city and its ever-increasing number of good restaurants only as an adult. The food of Philadelphia, in the shadow of New York, is underappreciated by those who haven't been. In season, you might catch their two-day harvest, and buy straight from the growers (call first). Kristine and Robert Keese of Cranberry Hill Farm (+1 5, ) in Plymouth, Massachusetts, became the first certified-organic cranberry growers in the US almost 20 years ago. For keeping, they must be harvested dry, which is done nowadays by machine. It's fascinating to see the harvested red berries floating in a flooded bog, but those berries are only for processing. Taste these excellent meats at Bondir a contemporary restaurant in Cambridge, just over the Charles river.Ĭranberries, an ultra-American, originally wild fruit, are harvested at the end of September and early October. Some of the best get their humanely raised, organically fed poultry, rabbit, pork, and other things from Pete & Jen's Backyard Birds up the road in Concord, Massachusetts. Now Boston restaurants are totally up to date. Of course, it had been known for certain foods - baked beans (which can be excellent), cod (ditto), and the incredibly old-fashioned-sounding Indian pudding, which is cornmeal mush with molasses. When I first began to eat in Boston some years ago it was a gastronomic backwater, and appeared to suffer from a strong, lingering Puritan influence. Photograph: Boston Globe via Getty Images If you'd rather have someone else do the work, sample them at King Eider's Pub right in Damariscotta town. If you want to open them yourself, buy them at the little shop at Glidden Point Oyster Co. It's really a long tidal inlet, in whose lower portion the cold water and balance of salt produces slow-growing, full-flavoured, fine-textured oysters. To the south-west, the other side of Rockland, lies what is probably the north-east's best spot for oyster-farming, the Damariscotta river. Near Harborside, lovers of organic veg will enjoy a stop at the famous Four Seasons Farm (609 Weir Cove Road, ), run by eminent gardener Eliot Coleman, to buy produce, books and artworks from the local artist collective. From there, head to 36 Main Street and eat a lobster with the locals at the Harbor Cafe (+1 2).īack on the mainland, hang a left at Brooksville for the Cape Rosier peninsula.

Then, if you're back in town early enough, you can watch the lobstermen unload their catch. To see the bay properly, take the 'mail boat' from Stonington to Isle au Haut, a few miles south at the edge of the bay. Fishermen unload their haul at Stonington, Maine's lobster capital.