MIDDLE STREET: PORTLAND, MAINE

It’s that hour of grace between sunset and evening, where the tides do their mysterious dance in the port and the collective shifts their attention from output to restoration. Giggling down the centuries-old streets past rows of red bricks, you find yourself at the shipyard-roped sidewalk of Eventide Oyster Co., a stands-alone pearl in a sea of exceptionality. Inside, there is no warm-up necessary, no settling in. Instead, you are enfolded, stirred into the existing blend of untimed partaking. Clouds sweep overhead scattering dappled sunlight across your window seat, the sky swaying from moody to radiant depending on the instant. “He was a bold man that first ate an oyster” quips the menu, and their ceremonial place at the bar’s center suggests that you too should be so bold. A bite of brown butter lobster on a bao roll and a spoonful of dashi chowder lands as ‘Portland on a Plate’ – imaginative, heavenly and wholly unfettered by old gastronomic statutes. Something in that rebel spirit emboldens your thinking, a little moral of the Portland story you can take for the road.

Looking for more Portland stories? See the full Gather collection here.

© Essential Moment, Portland Maine Restaurants.