Bar Crawl: Portland, Maine
Campari Cosmos, farmhouse ales, and non-alcoholic Painkillers await on our drinking tour of the seaside city.
Welcome to the weekend! Here’s what you’ll find in this week’s newsletter:
Bar Crawl: Portland, Maine may be best known for its restaurants but its bar scene is also top-notch. Our itinerary takes you to some of our favorite bars for beer, cocktails, non-alcoholic drinks, and more, plus we’ll get some snacks along the way.
November’s Featured Field Guides: This month, we’re giving paid subscribers two freshly updated field guides! First, we’ve upgraded our Portland, Maine Field Guide. It’s now a five-day Signature Field Guide with more than 35 recommendations. Our four-day Southern Coast of Maine Field Guide has also been updated with some new favorites so you’re ready to make an off-season escape or get a jump on your 2025 vacation planning. (Find your discount codes in this month’s Weekend Getaway newsletter.)
The Order: Head to Lexington, Tennessee for a superb whole hog barbecue sandwich with creamy slaw and hot sauce.
Weekend Reading:
explores Vermont’s Mad River Valley, digs into western Pennsylvania’s unusual regional salad, shares a Michelin-starred chef’s plans for an all-day cafe, and more.
Seaside Sips
PORTLAND, MAINE — As longtime readers know, we are frequent visitors to Portland. We visit the city for many reasons — The tinned fish at Browne Trading Company! The walkability! The red snapper hot dogs! — but a big one is the bar scene.
Portland has more great spots for a tipple than we can responsibly tell you to visit during a single-day bar crawl. You can find our complete list of vetted picks in our Portland Field Guide (which happens to be free this month for paid subscribers), but today we’re hitting six great stops, all of which we love for different reasons. Whether you visit a spot or two or take a Saturday to do the whole itinerary, the picks here will introduce you to the friendly Portland bar scene we love so well.
1:00 PM: TAKING FLIGHT
Oxbow Blending & Bottling
Why you should go: A local beer juggernaut, Oxbow has three locations in the area; this sprawling outpost is home to the blending and bottling operations and has both indoor and patio bars. Grab a bar stool and order a flight so you can sample a few of Oxbow’s beers, which focus on French and Belgian farmhouse styles. We particularly like the easy drinking Farmhouse Pale Ale, which is made with American-grown hops. Pair your flight with frites and garlic mayo from Duckfat Frites Shack, an onsite outpost of the local favorite eatery.
What to get: Farmhouse Pale Ale
49 Washington Ave., Portland, ME | @oxbowbrewingcompany
3:00 PM: LOW-AND-NO SNACKTIME
Portland Hunt + Alpine Club
Why you should go: Andrew Volk’s Alpine-inspired bar earned a slot on our inaugural Landmark List this year, which means that a trip to Portland is not complete without a stop here. We pretty much treat Alpine Club like our living room when we’re in town — we pop in for pre-dinner cocktails and nightcaps, but our favorite time is the afternoon. That’s because the space is sunny and the snacks are great (get the Lil’ Devils deviled eggs and the green chile-brown butter popcorn), and also because the team here does an excellent job with low and no-alcohol cocktails. The fizzy elderflower-vermouth White Noise is an all-time favorite of ours, but there’s always some new gem to discover, like Kill or Be Killed, a non-alcoholic Painkiller made with coconut, pineapple, lime, and nutmeg.
What to get: Lil’ Devils, White Noise
75 Market St., Portland, ME | @huntandalpine
5:00 PM: MARTINIS AND HOT DOGS
Room for Improvement
Why you should go: Arvid Brown and Nick Coffin’s Room for Improvement is a bar that captures how we like to drink. The cocktails on offer are classics, but with signature twists that make them feel fresh. Take the martini, which includes a blend of vermouths and apricot to add nuanced stone fruit notes. The Cosmopolitan includes a Campari-cranberry cordial for some gentle bitterness. And the Manhattan mixes two ryes, two amari, and French vermouth with amaretto and bitters for a really elegant cocktail with layers of flavor. Pick your favorite, then get a red snapper hot dog — we like the kraut, which comes with local Morse’s Sauerkraut and a tangy house mustard sauce.
What to get: Martini, Cosmopolitan, kraut dog
41 Wharf St, Portland, ME 04101 | @_room_for_improvement_
7:00 PM: GO FOR A DIVE
Ruski’s Tavern
Why you should go: Located in a house with a blue awning, this low-key West End neighborhood dive opened in 1981 though the building dates back to the 1860s. Those decades of history are on the ephemera-loaded wood-paneled walls and back bar. There’s nothing fancy here — draft beers, cans of Narragansett, mixed drinks — and food runs the gamut from all-day breakfast to clam cakes. While Ruski’s has not kept its late closing time since the pandemic, the bar opens at 8 a.m. — like any good dive should.
What to get: Beer
212 Danforth St, Portland, ME 04102 | @ruskistavern
8:00 PM: DINNER AND A DRINK
Wayside Tavern
Why you should go: By this point, you’ll need some dinner. Lately we’ve really been enjoying Wayside Tavern for its cozy bar and dining rooms and well-made classics on both the cocktail and food fronts. Share the broiled local oysters with garlic and chile butter, planks of burnished roasted chicken served over ricotta-slathered toast with golden raisins and pinenuts, and crisp pork schnitzel with fennel, shaved celery, and tonnato sauce. For drinks: The House Negroni, which adds a little Alta Verde for an herbal grace note, and the Paper Plane, which incorporates local fortified blueberry wine.
What to get: House Negroni, broiled oysters, roasted chicken
747 Congress St, Portland, ME 04102 | @waysidetavern
10:00 PM: NIGHTCAP
CBG
Why you should go: Finish off the day at CBG, a bar industry favorite for cheap cocktails and beer. A reinvention of Congress Bar and Grill, CBG taps into the modern comfortable dive bar aesthetic of wood-paneled walls, taxidermy, and vintage beer clocks. It’s open till 1 a.m. with food served till midnight. You’ll find local draft beers from spots like Oxbow and Maine Beer Co., while the epic cocktail menu features dozens of well-made classics, including Hemingway daiquiris, stingers, and amaretto sours “a la Jeff.” They all clock in at around 10 bucks.
What to get: Amaretto sour, Stinger
617 Congress St, Portland, ME 04101 | @cbgportland
More Bar Crawls
Two Free Downloads: All our Maine Recommendations!
Paid subscribers can download complimentary copies of two updated guides this month — our Southern Maine Coast Field Guide and our Portland, Maine Field Guide. Each guide has been freshly updated and revised and features daily itineraries with recommendations for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and drinks. Together, these guides offer nine days of curated itineraries with more than 55 recommendations. They’re downloadable for offline reading, include Google Maps and Instagram links, and are formatted for your phone — perfect for easy reference on your next trip. Paid subscribers to American Weekender can download these guides for free using the discount codes found in this month’s Weekend Getaway issue.
Barbecue Sandwich at B.E. Scott's BBQ
LEXINGTON, TENN. — So many of America’s best barbecue joints are in small towns far from a big city, so you really need to get out there to find them. Located halfway between Memphis and Nashville, B.E. Scott’s BBQ serves some of the best ‘cue we’ve had in recent memory.
Open since 1962, Scott’s serves a few items but you’re here for the whole hog barbecue sandwich. Order the regular ($5) or jumbo ($5.50), then you’ll be asked to make the choice between mayo or vinegar slaw. There are also two kinds of barbecue sauce, a spicier vinegar-based one and a thicker, sweeter version. The correct order is mayo slaw and hot sauce, which gives you a nice spicy-creamy combo. Add on a potato salad as your side and a fried peach or pecan hand pie from Yoder’s Country Pies to see you on your way.
10880 US-412, Lexington, TN 38351
Favorite Places for a Great Drink:
tapped the folks behind his bars and asked them to share some of their favorite places to drink in his newsletter . Among American bars, a number of our favorites stuck out: Pacific Cocktail Haven, Estereo, Herbs & Rye, Three Dots and a Dash, and more. One of the most unique bars mentioned is the Tonga Room in San Francisco. We can all admit that the drinks aren’t exactly world class but it’s the only bar I know that includes a floating bandstand.
VERMONT
Exploring Vermont's Mad River Valley: “I first fell in love with Vermont's Mad River Valley while hiking the Long Trail a few years back,” writes
in her newsletter, . “That trip took me through the heart of the Green Mountains and popular towns like Stowe and Manchester, which I also hold dear. Yet, it's the quaint villages of Waitsfield and Warren in the Mad River Valley that keep drawing me back. There's just something about the region's gorgeous scenery, distinctive food scene, and good vibes that make it so quintessentially Vermont.” Bethune has a number of recommendations but the place that caught our eye was Canteen Creemee Co. — we will always stop for a maple creemee.
PENNSYLVANIA
Put French Fries On Your Salad: You’ve heard of people in Pittsburgh putting french fries in their sandwiches but did you know they like fries on their salads too? Writing for his newsletter,
, takes a look at the Pittsburgh Salad and how the regional dish intersects with Middle Eastern culture in western Pennsylvania.
ILLINOIS
Inside Cafe Yaya: The folks at Chicago’s Galit are opening a new all-day cafe next door. Our friend
talked with Zach Engel, Andrés Clavero, and their team to get some details on the new counter-service spot. There will be pastries and coffee in the morning but most exciting to me is that in the afternoon Cafe Yaya will expand on the fantastic wine program they built next door. Can’t wait.— Compiled by Kenney Marlatt
Want more? Chat with us on Substack, download our Field Guides, check out our archives, or follow us on Instagram @americanweekender. We’ll be back next week.
Thanks so much for the shout out! I appreciate it.