When people ask me where to go for dinner in Maine, I usually respond with a question: “Well, what restaurants do you already know you like?” Often, that’s all it takes to give me a window into the person’s tastes – just enough to clue me in to what they’re likely to enjoy. It probably won’t be long before artificial intelligence is able to tackle this kind of question successfully, mining your personal roster of favorite restaurants to recommend new dining spots. But we’re not quite there yet.
Even as AI algorithms and language models improve by the month, they remain stupefyingly dumb when it comes to understanding what humans like and don’t. Case in point: I prompted Microsoft Copilot by telling it my favorite restaurant in Portland is celebrated farm-to-table stalwart Fore Street, and asked for recommendations in Rockland. It immediately spat back an unfiltered list of five of TripAdvisor’s top-rated Rockland dining spots.
I tried again, using casual, Levantine-inspired Nura as my local go-to, and got ...
the very same list (minus my top contender, Sammy’s Deluxe, for some strange reason). Until the technology catches up, I can do better. To help you make your Vacationland summer dining plans, I’ve put together a list of a dozen new-ish or recently updated restaurants across the state that are worth the drive from wherever you are.
And to help you figure out if these picks might be right for you, I’ve linked each of my recommendations to a few Ma.