Maine Steakhouses | SteakMap
The Best Steakhouses in Maine
Maine has three steakhouses in this directory, in three different towns. That is genuinely the list. Maine is a seafood state — it lands the overwhelming majority of America’s lobster — and its restaurant culture was built around the coast, not the pasture.
There is also no national chain steakhouse anywhere in Maine, a distinction it shares with Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, New Hampshire, West Virginia and Vermont. All three below are independent.
All three
- The Grill Room & Bar (Portland) — opened in 2008 by chef Harding Lee Smith in the Old Port, and the best steak in the state without much argument. Almost everything comes off a wood-fired grill in the open kitchen. It is one of Smith’s group of Portland restaurants known collectively as the Rooms.
- Royal River Grill House (Yarmouth) — on the water north of Portland, steaks alongside the seafood you would expect at a Maine marina.
- Utopia (Bangor) — the only serious steak dinner in the north of the state, which makes it worth knowing about if you are heading for Baxter or Acadia.
A lobster state with a wood grill
Maine’s food identity is settled and it is not beef. The state is synonymous with lobster, and its best-known restaurants are shacks on piers. A steakhouse here is working against the current.
Which is why The Grill Room is interesting: Harding Lee Smith did not build a New York chophouse in Portland, he built a wood-fire grill house and let the fire do the work. Steaks and chops are the headline, the kitchen is open, and the seafood is still there on the menu because this is Maine and it would be strange not to be.
If you want a conventional steakhouse with a long dry-aging list, Boston is two hours south and has fourteen of them.
