This Maine City Ranked No. 17 out of 182 for Best Foodie Cities 2022

If Portland, Maine, has one thing, it’s good food.

I have practically lived here my entire life and I still have so many restaurants and spots to try just in this very city, let alone the state.

We have classics that have been around for generations and are still standing strong and we have new places opening up almost weekly. When friends come to visit the city and ask where they should go eat, I blackout and go speechless because there are just so many options. The hard part is, every single option is really, really good.

2022 Best Foodie Cities

Not only do we have top-rated restaurants and a lot of them in a small space, we also have a ridiculous amount of distilleries and breweries. Plus, we are known for our food trucks; we have precious farmer’s markets, and we source ingredients locally whenever possible.

For all of these reasons and then some more, we have been ranked No. 17 out of 182 cities for the best and cheapest local food scene!

The financial website WalletHub recently conducted an analysis in honor of World Food Day coming up on October 16. The website compared 182 cities in the U.S. across 29 key indicators of foodie-friendliness based on affordability and diversity, accessibility, and quality.

These are indicators like the cost of groceries, restaurant meal cost, food and sales tax, restaurants per capita, ratio of full-service restaurants to fast-food restaurants, average ranking of restaurants on Yelp, food trucks per capita, food freshness, etc. For the full list, you can check out the methodology here.

Portland, Maine, is a Great Place for Food

We Mainers love to eat and we love to eat good, fresh, local food. Our adoration for local food, mobile food on wheels, and craft beer has landed us in an extremely impressive ranking for this foodie analysis.

Our neighbor, Boston, made it in the top 50 cities at No. 47 but we beat them by a longshot.

The analysis had a strong emphasis on affordability, focusing on wallet-friendly cities where you can dine at culinary hotspots that have affordable options. So, if you were planning on cooking at home tonight, I may suggest taking the night off and hitting the town for some top-rated local grub.