Harvest on the Harbor

Harvest on the Harbor (pictured above) returns for its fourteenth year, October 27-29, 2022, with three days of food, drink, and Maine-maker events. The annual Maine Lobster Chef of the Year event is back with nine Maine chefs competing for People’s Choice and professionally judged top honors. Meet Your Maker is a collaboration with the Maine Distillers Guild for the ultimate tasting event, while the Maine OysterFest will be held in two sessions in partnership with Maine Oyster Company. It will feature oysters from up and down the coast of Maine and spotlight the farmers who grow and harvest them. The Zombie Cocktail Class will teach guests how to taste and make the Zombie, a classic rum cocktail. This year’s main events will occur at O’Maine Studios, 54 Danforth Street in Portland. All events are 21+. Tickets are on sale now at harvestontheharbor.com.

Eating & Drinking 

The New York Times just named Leeward and Twelve in Portland as two of the best 50 restaurants in America. Leeward is owned by Raquel and Jake Stevens and is described as a restaurant with “an Italian bent and a fondness for fresh pasta.” Colin Wyatt, a former executive sous-chef at Eleven Madison Park in Manhattan, is behind Twelve, which was also named one of “America’s Most Anticipated Restaurant Openings of 2022” by Vogue. In other Portland food news, Bull Feeney’s, a popular Irish bar that closed during the pandemic, has reopened on Fore Street. New openings in the city include The Danforth, a neighborhood restaurant and craft cocktail bar in Portland’s West End, and Keg and Kraken, a Thai and Japanese restaurant on Congress Street. Cabana, a Latin American cocktail bar and restaurant is now serving on Middle Street, with a menu that includes tapas and Cuban-style sliders. In Biddeford, a Czech-style brewery and tank pub called Sacred Profane has just opened on Washington Street. Specializing in using traditional Czech methods and equipment to brew its lagers, the restaurant serves fare like curry wieners, pork schnitzel, and poutine.

Lockwood Hotel Opens in Waterville

Lockwood Hotel, downtown Waterville’s first new hotel in over a century, has just opened. The hotel is part of Colby College’s downtown Waterville revitalization project and the hotel’s architecture is by the nationally renowned firm Baskervill. There are 53 guestrooms and suites, as well as curated artworks from the Colby College Museum of Art on display throughout the hotel’s public spaces. Fine dining is on offer at the hotel’s restaurant, Front & Main, which Executive Chef Jesse Souza helms. The hotel has a private dining room and a meeting venue for up to 32 guests.

Maine State Parks for Leaf Peeping

Maine’s fall foliage offers a dramatic spectacle and one of the best ways to take in the colors is to take a walk or a hike in one of Maine’s Maine State Parks. Parks such as Camden Hills, Bradbury Mountain and Baxter State Park offer easy access for leaf peepers while Grafton Notch State Park is close to Maine’s spectacular Mahoosuc Range. Maine also has Public Reserved Lands, consisting of over half a million acres of protected wilderness. They include Cutler Coast Public Lands, which offer miles of oceanfront hiking, as well as the 36,000 acre Bigelow Preserve, in western Maine, which has hiking trails, mountains, ponds and streams.

Gardens Aglow

Gardens Aglow is a festival of lights at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay from November 19 through December 31, 2022. It began as a grassroots event and this year will offer more than 750,000 LED lights strung among the 14-acre gardens for the largest light display in Maine, drawing close to 90,000 visitors.

Maine Made Goods for the Holidays

Maine Made is the perfect place to discover hand-made and locally-made gifts by some of the state’s best artisans, artists, craftspeople, and growers and brewers. Hancock Gourmet Lobster Co., Maine Coast Sea Vegetables, Sawyer’s Maple Farm, and Ducktrap River of Maine are among many food purveyors in Maine Made. Acorn and Artisan crafts jewelry from sterling silver and 14K gold while Kennedy & Company makes leather goods. There’s Grain Surfboards in York, climbing gear from Oterra Designs in Biddeford and decorative metalwork at Liberty Farm & Forge in Corinna. The Maine Fly Company crafts fly rods in Yarmouth while Lakeside Flies specializes in hand-tied flies. Linden Longboards makes skateboards from vintage water skis, North Country Winds Bells echoes the sound of the Maine Coast, and Lobster Buoy Birdhouses offers colorful houses and feeders. For more holiday ideas on Maine purveyors and goods, go to Maine Made.