Bon Appetit has named Drifters Wife, a Portland restaurant known for its stellar food and selection of natural wines, one of the ten best new restaurants in America. The restaurant clocked in at No. 9. on the “Hot 10,” the magazine’s annual list.
Drifters Wife, at 59 Washington Avenue, is owned by Brooklyn transplants Peter and Orenda Hale. In its write-up of the place, Bon Appetit said there is “no better place on the planet to drink natural wine than right here.” Natural wine is minimally interfered with; during the wine-making process, no chemical or technological manipulation occurs.
Bon Appetit follows the restaurant’s journey from its beginnings, a few tables in a small wine shop called Maine & Loire, through its recent expansion into a larger space next door where there’s room for 60 seats and wine is sold by the bottle as well as by the glass. The editors share three recipes from chef Ben Jackson, including an Herb-Rubbed Cast-Iron Chicken with Pan Sauce that the chef weighs down with a rock he found while snorkeling off the Maine coast to render the fat and crisp the skin.
Drifters Wife is only the second Portland restaurant to make it into the Hot 10. Central Provisions made the list in 2014. Rose Foods was on this year’s list of 50 nominees. The honor comes on the heels of Portland’s designation last week as the magazine’s Restaurant City of the Year.
Other restaurants in the Hot 10 were from much larger cities, such as Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Denver. Collectively, Bon Appetit called the Hot 10 “the most delicious, exciting, and just plain fun places to eat in America right now.”
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