Maine’s main muffin

Maine’s culinary highlights are a unique sort of surf and turf – lobster from the ocean deep and blueberries from the mountainside brush. If the nearest Kennebunkport or Bar Harbor souvenir shop isn’t laced with red crustacean fare, it’s doused in blue – blueberry syrup, blueberry pancake mix, blueberry soda; the list is endless.

But for my money, the best foodie representation of Vacationland is the blueberry muffin. Nothing says comfort food on a blustery New England winter morning like one of these breakfast confections sitting next to your coffee. But they require skill to master, to perfect the right texture, right amount of berries, right balance of sweet and tart. This means that the state’s restaurants are chock full of old time recipes, innovative twists on the classic, and boring, tasteless attempts. 

There are plenty of blueberry muffins in Maine; but there is no blueberry muffin like the one at the Maine Diner. Spiked with blueberries and flavor, just the right amount of sweetness with a texture that lingers somewhere near aerated pound cake, these Maine staples certainly do the state’s most famous berry proud.

Located on Route 1 in Wells, Maine, the family-owned Maine Diner opened in 1983 and continues to open daily at 7:00am. The restaurant’s amusing history, which is recounted on the restaurant’s website, reads like Maine folklore: a transplant from down south (Boston) retires up north; he opens a diner, utilizing the land to grow fresh ingredients for his dishes, shutting down in summer to tend the garden; the first ever diner customer walks in the front door after driving his car into their telephone pole; the next day, hundreds more stroll in and a Maine icon, clad in simple blue and white awnings, takes flight.

In the ensuing thirty-plus years, the Maine Diner has won numerous awards, been featured on television morning shows and cooking channel segments, and served more than 6 million customers.

And yet, every morning locals still occupy the stools lining the counter – the same few rotating in and out depending on the day. In the winter, they’re clad in their coats and hats, sipping hot coffee.

The blueberry muffins, or most any of their muffins or pies, are the diner’s highlights. But the entire menu smacks of hearty, classic dishes that spotlight the fare Maine is famous for, and incorporate local ingredients, many of which are still grown out back in the Maine Diner’s garden. The food is comfort food at its best; and the home grown cooking is complimented by an old school hospitality, both of which are too often forgotten in so many other tourist hotspots.

For me, Wells, Maine, is all about hospitality and homegrown cooking. My wife’s parents live there, just a few minutes down the road from the Maine Diner. A visit to the in-laws, in typical Maine fashion, usually entails multiple days of feasting, regardless of whether or not a holiday is upon us. This comes from my mother-in-law’s heartwarming combination of old world Italian family traditions and adherence to New England hospitality (not to mention her expert cooking skills).

But my father-in-law is never one to be left out. Breakfast is his domain and he has no qualms about looking to the Maine Diner for a frequent assist. Nothing compares to waking up in Maine, walking downstairs and seeing a Styrofoam container on the kitchen table. We all know what’s inside, especially with the smell of the blueberry muffins, fresh-baked and recently picked up, infusing the room. They bring the family together around the breakfast table like no cereal box or store-bought pastry ever could.

Many mornings, my father-in-law calls ahead to the diner before he leaves the house. They’ll gladly set aside an appropriate amount of muffins for him before the crowds get in and devour them like locusts. He’s not one of the local guys at the counter – yet. But when that day does come, when he settles in as a local at the counter, I’ll gladly pick up the mantle of the morning blueberry muffin run to the Maine Diner.

Michael Hartigan is a Massachusetts travel writer. His first novel, Stone Angels, was published in August, 2015. Hartigan will be signing copies of Stone Angels at Barnes & Noble in Saugus on Saturday, February 6, 2016 at 1:00pm. 

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