Maine Diner – Wells, Maine

How do you know when a restaurant has really made it?  Is it when that restaurant is recognized by national publications as one of the very best diners in the country?  Or when celebrities go out of their way to dine at its tables?  Is it when more than five-million people have been warmly welcomed at its doors?  When neither rain, nor sleet nor the most stern and frigid of Maine winters can dissuade visitors? The Maine Diner has achieved all of this and so much more.  Richly deserving of all the accolades bestowed upon it, the telltale sign that it’s made it–at least from a pop culture perspective–is when it’s recognized as the restaurant after which Flo’s Offshore Diner…

Woodman’s of Essex – Essex, Massachusetts

If you can imagine what New Mexico would be like without green chile or the South without barbecue, you can understand what New England would be without fried clams.  Like our beloved green chile, fried clams are an iconic food, so much so that they are almost synonymous with states like Maine and Massachusetts in which they are harvested and sold.  It’s almost a wonder the license plate mottos in at least one of those two states isn’t “The Fried Clam State.” As with our cherished chile, fried clams have a distinctive, unforgettable flavor that not everybody “gets.”  Similar to chile, those who love fried clams are usually ensnared at first bite by this distinctly delicious delicacy.  Like green chile,…