Elda

Biddeford, Maine Along Maine’s coast, quiet little Biddeford “is giving nearby Portland some serious competition as a darling of food obsessives,” said Bill Addison in Eater.com. Bowman Brown is leading the way, because his Elda alone is “worth a journey.” Inspired by what’s grown or caught locally, Brown’s short menu freely mixes European and Japanese influences and “shows off all kinds of imagination.” Brown, who returned to New England after winning national acclaim in Utah, often intensifies flavors over fire, said Andrew Ross in the Portland Press Herald. He smokes fish bones before brewing them to create the foundation of a watercress soup swimming with cubes of raw black bass and sprouted wheat berries. For Elda’s signature dish, he barely cooks scrambled egg yolks in crab-and–Thai chili butter, then whisks the egg into a froth and serves it on picked crab meat. I didn’t expect he could pull off the dessert menu’s parsnip cake, but “it, like nearly everything at Elda, is magical.” 140 Main St., (207) 494-8365