Food for Thought | Inside Yankee
The first thing I do each morning is turn on my computer and see what emails have arrived from Yankee readers. Lately, something new has been cropping up in this correspondence: comments about Weekends with Yankee, the national PBS show in which our knowledge of New England’s special places and its unique people takes center […]
The first thing I do each morning is turn on my computer and see what emails have arrived from Yankee readers. Lately, something new has been cropping up in this correspondence: comments about Weekends with Yankee, the national PBS show in which our knowledge of New England’s special places and its unique people takes center stage. The comments all express the same thing, and many come from viewers who love the region but who live far away. They say the show brings them home.
That was the inspiration from the start—to showcase our stories of New England in a visually exciting half-hour show. Season 3 of Weekends with Yankee debuts this April, and I think the pull toward home will be stronger than ever. We go rafting with one of the first Maine Guides to take adventurers down the thundering Kennebec River. We find puffins in one episode, and in another we go behind the scenes at the famous artists’ colony where Thornton Wilder wrote Our Town, the classic drama of family and community. We meet artisans and a beekeeper, and our food editor, Amy Traverso, continues to explore the flavors of the six states we call home and to spotlight its tastemakers (including Massachusetts food writer Alana Chernila, featured on p. 57).
When I moved to Maine in 1970, Munjoy Hill was where visitors to Portland were advised not to go, even though its view to the bay was a fine reward for the uphill walk. As with many other formerly distressed places, though, over time the energy and vision of the residents has created the sense that anything is possible—including Munjoy Hill’s becoming one of the most vibrant food neighborhoods in a city recently acclaimed as Bon Appétit’s “restaurant city of the year.”
Which got us thinking: What does it mean to be called “restaurant city of the year”? And suppose we lived in Boston, which has long been the New England epicenter for chefs and diners alike? Amy Traverso calls Boston home, yet she has always been drawn to and fascinated by Portland’s rise in the culinary world. So she set herself a challenge: Eat out (a lot), talk to chefs (many), and devise a scorecard for readers to show which city they should turn to for their favorite foods. It became a delicious story for all of us here [“Food Town Showdown,” p. 81].
I hope that soon after this issue reaches all of you, I will turn on my computer in the morning and find out what you say about your own favorite spots to eat, in your own personal restaurant city of the year.
Mel Allen editor@yankeemagazine.com
Mel Allen
Mel Allen is the fifth editor of Yankee Magazine since its beginning in 1935. His first byline in Yankee appeared in 1977 and he joined the staff in 1979 as a senior editor. Eventually he became executive editor and in the summer of 2006 became editor. During his career he has edited and written for every section of the magazine, including home, food, and travel, while his pursuit of long form story telling has always been vital to his mission as well. He has raced a sled dog team, crawled into the dens of black bears, fished with the legendary Ted Williams, profiled astronaut Alan Shephard, and stood beneath a battleship before it was launched. He also once helped author Stephen King round up his pigs for market, but that story is for another day. Mel taught fourth grade in Maine for three years and believes that his education as a writer began when he had to hold the attention of 29 children through months of Maine winters. He learned you had to grab their attention and hold it. After 12 years teaching magazine writing at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, he now teaches in the MFA creative nonfiction program at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Like all editors, his greatest joy is finding new talent and bringing their work to light.
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