In Portland’s Restaurants, a Down East Banquet

[Renew Deal]

THE overnight temperature is dropping toward frost this week and probably won’t rise above it until May. Most of the cruise ships are gone, and with them the fudge buyers, the lobster seekers and the chowderheads who clog the Old Port neighborhood in the summer.

But the quiet and the chill are deceptive. Portland’s many chefs and bakers, its turnip farmers and cookbook sellers and assorted mad food geniuses are gearing up for another lively winter.

“I wouldn’t call it a competition, I’d call it a collective,” Josh Potocki, the chef and owner of 158 Pickett St. Café in South Portland, said of the city’s food scene. “We are all trying to raise the level of food in Portland to insanely high.”

It’s working. With a simmering sense of injustice, I recently ate my way across some of the city’s new and offbeat restaurants. Why doesn’t my neighborhood have an all-day restaurant that makes its own spicy sausage, or one that produces house-made crackers and hot sauce for oysters? When will my market organize a ratatouille contest?
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/dining/16chefs.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

This is a very interesting article about Portland, Maine food culture and farming.