{"id":31236,"date":"2012-08-27T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2012-08-27T16:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/?p=31236"},"modified":"2025-09-02T02:58:03","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T06:58:03","slug":"things-to-do-in-portland-maine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/31236\/things-to-do-in-portland-maine\/","title":{"rendered":"Chef David Levi’s 29 Favorite Things to Do in Portland, Maine"},"content":{"rendered":"

I first knew David Levi years ago as my history teacher in New York City. Since then, David has traded in the chalk for a chopping block and has shadowed some of the world’s best chefs in restaurants like Noma, Faviken Magasinet, and Perry St. David spoke to me from Portland, Maine where he now lives because it is “easier to get to wild nature.”<\/p>\n

\"Chef

At Vinland, all menu items will be locally-sourced, with the exception of coffee and wine. This means no olive oil, citrus, black pepper, cane sugar, or anything else that needs to be imported. All food waste will be composted or fed to animals, and everything will be stored in reusable containers–even the sous vide will be modified and made in glass jars–and the 100% post-consumer recycled paper towels will either be burned or composted. Eventually, Vinland will run on self-generated solar energy. As for flavor, dishes will be heavily influenced by Nordic, Italian, and indigenous American cuisine. David is influenced as well by the lesser-known local Acadian-French culture, which is most well known for its ployes<\/em>, gluten-free buckwheat pancakes. David\u2019s own politics, interests, and nutrition (there will be no wheat, and very little grain) will also play a large part in what is served at Vinland.<\/p>\n

In anticipation of a trip to Vinland later this year, I asked David for some tips for things to do and places to eat in Portland.<\/p>\n

\"Acadia

For coffee: <\/strong>“Speckled Ax<\/a> just opened a couple of months ago by Matt Bolinger, owner of Matt\u2019s Coffee<\/a>. The coffee is organic and wood roasted, and will be the coffee served at Vinland. They do a terrific job of roasting the coffee. The roasting \u2018oven\u2019 is fired with local wood. They\u2019re doing things in a good way, and make a great cup of coffee. There\u2019s been a coffee renaissance in Portland recently, and there\u2019s another place called Tandem Coffee<\/a> opening soon which I\u2019m excited about. It\u2019s almost too much of a good thing! Tandem Coffee is owned by a couple that lived in San Francisco and then Brooklyn. They hail from\u00a0Blue Bottle Coffee<\/a>, which is the \u201cgo to high quality coffee roaster in SF, best-regarded in the country. They are working with the very best, and I\u2019m eager to try their stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Five

<\/strong>For a Portland day trip:<\/strong> \u201cNew York is so full of friends and family\u2014I built my life there\u2014but it was so hard to get to wild nature. The great thing about Portland is that it\u2019s so incredibly easy. My friend has a sailboat; we went on a sailing trip recently. Lots of people have boats, and it\u2019s a super easy and low-key thing to do. You don\u2019t have to go that far outside of Portland to find nature, so you don\u2019t really need a getaway. You can just take a relatively easy bike ride to one of the many parks, or inland to Sebago Lake<\/a>, where there\u2019s great swimming, and canoeing. It\u2019s 25-30 minutes away [or a two-hour bike ride] to Wolfe\u2019s Neck Woods State Park<\/a> or Bradbury Mountain State Park<\/a>, and then you can really be surrounded by deep wood. Baxter State Park<\/a> and Acadia State Park<\/a> are three hours from Portland. The northern end of the Appalachian Trail is on Katahdin and there are lots of skiing destinations\u2014Sugar Loaf, Sunday River, among others.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Rosemont

For dinner:<\/strong> David\u2019s favorite place for dinner is Miyake<\/a>. Japanese chef Masa Miyake, was trained in New York, Italy, and France. \u201cHe moved to Portland because he thought he was never going to afford to open his own restaurant in New York, and Maine reminded him of his home island Hokkaido. He\u2019s doing incredible things with food, and has a tremendous reputation. The new spot is much sleeker than his original hole-in-the-wall place, but it\u2019s quite a bargain for LA and New York people, and those who are serious about Japanese food.\u201d<\/strong> David also appreciates Fore Street<\/a>, which \u201claunched the local food movement in terms of cuisine as opposed to just farmers markets.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Old

For something sweet:<\/strong> With his Italian roots, David is partial to Gorgeous Gelato<\/a>, which is owned by a Milanese man. He says: \u201cIf this gelato place were in Milan, it would be considered a good one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Update: Visit Vinland<\/a>, now open,\u00a0on your next trip to Portland.<\/em><\/p>\n

How to get there<\/strong>: Consult oM’s public transportation guide <\/a>to Portland.<\/em><\/p>\n

Photos: Joy the Baker<\/a>, Chef Levi, Usonia<\/a><\/em>, lumierefl<\/a><\/em>,\u00a0Rob_sg
\n<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first knew David Levi years ago as my history teacher in New York City. Since then, David has traded in the chalk for a chopping block and has shadowed some of the world’s best chefs in restaurants like Noma, Faviken Magasinet, and Perry St. David spoke to me from Portland, Maine where he now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":31814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[784,785,817,758,314,1089,776,777,790,364,874,774,849,748,316],"tags":[21,11257,489,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-31236","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-adventure-activity-2","8":"category-beaches-adventure-activity-2","9":"category-biking-adventure-activity-2","10":"category-cafe-activity-2","11":"category-dining-nightlife","12":"category-farmers-market-shopping-2","13":"category-farms-food-drink","14":"category-fine-dining","15":"category-hiking-adventure-activity-2","16":"category-maine","17":"category-portland-maine-2","18":"category-restaurants-food-drink","19":"category-shopping-2","20":"category-train-2","21":"category-weekend-getaways","22":"tag-beach","23":"tag-maine-guide","24":"tag-new-restaurant","25":"tag-outdoors"},"acf":[],"mv":{"thumbnail_id":31814,"thumbnail_uri":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/7984187526_f633e5e3f6_z-300x179.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}