After 33 years at the Portland Press Herald, reporter Meredith Goad is retiring and moving back to her childhood home of Tennessee. She talked with food editor Peggy Grodinsky about how the food and drinks scene in Portland, and Maine, has exploded over the 15 + years she has chronicled it, from Sam Hayward’s 2004 James Beard Foundation award for Best Chef Northeast (the first such award for Maine) to the growing farm-to-table movement, through the trials and tribulations for Maine’s restaurants and other food establishments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Find out what she’ll miss – and won’t – about eating in Maine, and just see what happens if you ask her about her favorite restaurant.