The Arts District's warmest room — a marble bar, thoughtful cocktails, and a menu that has genuine range: equally at home for a margarita at happy hour or a serious dinner.
There are restaurants that know exactly what they are, and Regards is emphatically one of them. Located at 547 Congress Street in Portland's Arts District — the same stretch that contains the Portland Museum of Art, the Maine College of Art, and the Congress Street gallery corridor — Regards draws its culinary inspiration from Los Angeles's polyglot food culture while grounding every plate in Maine's exceptional local produce. The result is a restaurant with no obvious precedent in Portland: small plates with bold Latin flavour architecture, a commitment to sustainably sourced agave spirits, and a natural wine programme that takes the conversation seriously.
The menu changes regularly, but the flavour logic is consistent. A recent card included oysters with Oaxacan ponzu — fresh Maine shellfish meeting the citrus brightness of ponzu and the depth of Oaxacan chilli — and dayboat scallop ceviche that treats Maine's scallop harvest with the same acidity and precision that Peru developed over centuries. The tamale with mole blanco is the most technically ambitious preparation, built on a sauce of remarkable complexity; the lamb barbacoa with polenta and smoked hazelnut is the most satisfying. Galician octopus with charred new potatoes travels between Spain and New England without losing its footing in either.
The room itself is a genuine achievement: a long marble bar dominates one wall, backlit shelves of natural wine and agave spirits behind it, warm lighting that flatters everyone without trying too hard. The design communicates seriousness without stiffness. The bar is the best seat in the house for a solo evening — there is enough theatrical activity between the bar staff and the open kitchen to provide entertainment without distraction. Service carries the knowledgeable enthusiasm of a young team that genuinely cares about what it is selling.
Regards is the most contemporary restaurant in Portland — not in a trend-chasing sense, but in the sense that it is doing something new that is also entirely itself. The city's dining scene has needed a room like this for some time.
The shared plates format at Regards is ideal for a first date for a specific reason: it creates a structure for conversation that is about the food without being about the food. Choosing dishes together, tasting each other's plates, debating the mole — this is the kind of low-stakes collaborative activity that reveals character and establishes rapport more naturally than any dinner where two people stare at their own plates and talk at each other. The room is good-looking and appropriately ambient. The agave cocktail list is the most interesting in the neighbourhood. Start with the ponzu oysters and go from there.
Address
547 Congress St, Portland, ME 04101
Neighbourhood
Arts District — Congress Street
Price Per Person
$45–$70 with cocktails and small plates
Cuisine
Modern American, Latin-Inspired, Small Plates
Dress Code
Smart casual
Reservations
OpenTable recommended. Walk-ins at bar welcome.
Hours
Tue–Sat 5pm–9pm
Phone
(207) 747-5940
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