Vinland

Tapas style, but local organic gluten free. I hate gluten free but he explained that Nordic use a lot of fermentation and use oatmeal and other meat accompaniments. I loved this kind of gluten free! The chef is world class trained in Europe. Portions are not too small, but not a meal either. It is pricey but worth it for a date night!

Wonderful atmosphere. The creativity and feel of the restaurant are so refreshing. The food is delicious and local and this is one of the best restaurants in Portland, if not the best, by far!

My first impression upon walking in was warm and inviting. The aroma was intoxicating and immediately set the tone for what’s to come. The concept of all locally sourced ingredients is really cool and one of the reasons we decided to eat here.
We ordered the Pickled Beet Salad with Feta and the Corn Chowder with Dill Cracker for appetizers. They were both delicious although the corn chowder stole the show.
For entrees we ordered the Hake and Celeriac Ginger Tea and Coriander Mussels with Oat and Parsnip Brown Bread. I love Hake (similar to Cod but not as dense) and this preparation ensures that the fish is the star. It was a bit too salty and the chef agreed, but I ate it all anyway. They were kind enough to give us a complimentary dessert although not necessary.
Restaurants always get points in my book for good customer service.
The mussels were delicious and the oat bread was amazing!
They are one of the many small plate restaurants in the area. This trend typically doesn’t fare well with the very hungry and customers will always remember how they felt when they left a restaurant.
I consider Vinland to be a fine dining establishment and with fine dining comes small plates. It’s not about the portion it’s about the quality of the food and the love that goes into it, this is what you are paying for.

Definitely unremarkable and over-​priced. They have followed the formula to be a trendy restaurant (small plates, local food, eclectic ingredients, posh décor) but they fail on the execution. The food was not bad but nor was anything we tried at all memorable. At $ 20 per small plate, it is $ 100 per person for a meal (with a drink) and nothing that we tried was tasty enough to warrant those prices. The wine list was unremarkable and the $ 11 glass of wine was a frustratingly short pour (below the wide portion of the glass)
I say skip this and and head to central provisions.

Had dinner at Vinland for the 1^st time last night. What a great experience! All 4 of us took advantage of the 5 course prix fixe. Each dish was fantastic. Usually not a big fan of small plates, but this was definitely the exception. Each course was substantial & satisfying. The drinks were creative and delicious as well.
The chef/​owner checked in with us at the end of the evening to make sure everything was satisfying and to see if we had any suggestions for improvements.
I highly recommend Vinland when you are in Portland.

Had dinner here on a Wednesday evening in October. Opted for the five course pre-​fixe for $ 75/​pp. I had the Corn chowder with oysters, lobster tail, hake, chicken and semmifrotto. My partner had the beet salad, lobster tail, oysters, monkfish, and cheese plate. The atmosphere is semi casual, open kitchen, with limited tables. I’d recommend reservations. It’s not good for groups over 6. The food was some of the best I had on Portland. The sauces and preparations were light, fragrant, and herbaceous. Definitely worth a visit if you’re in town.

I tried Vinland when they first opened and was not real wowed at the time however, I revisited them last night and I was thoroughly impressed! The server we had was tops. She was patient and attentive, friendly and warm. The food is presented as small plates so you are supposed to sample many and we did, however I would have been happy with a main dish and an app. We ordered too many dishes but they were all very good. My favorite was the polenta app. Delish. My drink was fantastic too, I might have to go back just for that! Love the local food, enjoyed the night thoughts! Well done Vinland!

Went here for dinner after reading some positive reviews and was not disappointed. The level of creativity displayed in the food preparation is hard to come by outside of a major metropolis. Oftentimes in creative pursuits restrictions can be a catalyst for great work, by restricting himself totally to local ingredients David Levy has not only made a statement of sustainability for the future, but opened a portal to the source of all great local cuisine from the past: necessity. Through hard work he has done something very special in this little city. Bravo.
P. S. If there is beet ice cream available on the menu when you are there, I highly recommend you get it.

The undisputed cream of a very impressive Portland restaurant crop. We dined here to celebrate our engagement and the meal was as unforgettable as the proposal. Chef David and his team were more than willing to accommodate our inflexible schedule and a few dietary restrictions to create a truly amazing experience. We opted for the tasting menu, which consisted of 8 courses (all with small snacks in between). From our seats at the bar, we watched each course prepared in the open kitchen. The chef was accessible and excited to discuss each of his courses, and the menu perfectly conveyed his creativity and painstaking attention to detail.
The restaurant’s self-​imposed limitation of sourcing every ingredient from Maine necessitates some outside-​the-​box thinking, as staples like citrus and olive oil can’t be used. Rather than tasting like something is being compensated for, the food flourishes.
I see a couple people docking points for portion size and price. The fact that you’re on Unilocal suggests a willingness to do a little research on the places at which you choose to eat. This is a particularly good idea if you’re dining on a budget. Check out the menu, website, and reviews before going. If you’re looking for unlimited breadsticks and over-​salted junk food, there’s an Olive Garden by the mall. If you’re looking for some of the most delicious and thoughtful food this city has to offer, Vinland is where it’s at.

Over priced portions that are fit for a bird. The food portions are closer to an amuse bouche than a tapas, and they don’t even call themselves a tapas restaurant. They strive on being local and organic but their menu choices are limited, and they don’t cater to special diet restrictions. They are trying to be Scandinavian style but they are far from it, I’ve been to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, none of the meals I had in those countries would ever serve Vinland’s version. The waitstaff was awful, we were there for two hours, waiting on our food then our drinks, then our bill. We missed part of our movie due to their servers acting like turtles.

My wife and I did an anniversary tour of some of Portland’s best spots, and Vinland stood out as the highlight. While we enjoyed everywhere we went, the staff and chef at Vinland took the experience to another level.
Every dish was unique and delicious, and they took the time to explain the process and thinking behind each course.
Don’t miss this place if you’re in Portland.

The spicy chicken nuggets made me sick. I couldn’t leave the house for hours. The staff did not even give me my drink. I was served lukewarm water after paying for diet pop.

Went there for brunch, and as nearly the only people in the restaurant the service was shockingly slow. The staff seemed more interested in chatting with how with each other, and was never asked for my coffee to be refilled. Incredibly overpriced on top of it all. Would never go back after that experience

I can’t speak highly enough of this restaurant. We went to the many «must-​visit» eating spots in Portland but this is the only one we will return to and recommend to friends.
The tasting menu of five dishes is absolutely worth it, the wine list is extensive and beautifully curated, and the service is exceptional. Bravo to the chef and his team! We had a vey positive and memorable experience here.

I love any place that offers gluten free options and healthy choices. But i would also give them 5 stars just based on the burger i had for dinner…
Friday nights during the summer Vinland has @8 outdoor tables where you dont have dress so spiffy and you can listen to the music in Congress square park and use their free wifi too! Wed nights also have music and Sunday nights you can order to go and watch a movie in the park next door.
Plus the dog liked the burger too!
Also all the employees are super friendly and knowledgeable.

Phoebe was an excellent server. Food was delicious. Phoebe even made a fun drink for my 7-​year old daughter. Named it after her. :) Food was excellent as always.

Here are some guidelines before you go to Vinland
1) This place is expensive. Count on $ 150 for a pair with just moderate booze consumption, but you will definitely want to try their homegrown booze here, if you drink alcohol in the first place. But even if you just drink tapwater, count on $ 100 for a pair.
2) The portions here are tiny, yes indeed. But after three courses, and three glasses, both my wife and I had to call it quits. Very satisfyingly rich food here. Yes.
3) This is not just a restaurant to satisfy your need for good food and drink. This joint is a wacky experiment. The kitchen and the dining area are the matched laboratories, and the customer is both the guinea pig and the scientific review that judges the success or failure of the whole project.
4) Part of that experiment is that you will both be lectured to on what you are eating as well as constantly asked about what you think of the experimental results.
If you can get your mind past all of these formalities, and your wallet is bulging, then this place is definitely one of the most interesting restaurant experiences in New England, maybe in all of the USA, who knows?
Or think of it as very sophisticated theater. I wonder how many people grumbling about $ 15 plates, with little coverage of said plate, would grumble about spending $ 100s on tickets to a pro sports game or a rock concert? How much would you pay to see the Boss at Merrill Auditorium? A Sox-​Yankees matchup in Hadlock Field?
Or think of it as modern conceptual art. Museum tickets in the USA can approach the amount of money that you would shell out here, and there is no arguing that this place is an aesthetic trip for more than just the senses linking your nose to your brain!
You get what you pay for, and here you are getting some rather remarkable results:
1) Wild flavors that you will probably never have tried before unless you are the type of decadent foodie who likes to read Unilocal reviews in the first place. I had never tried nettles, or Jerusalem artichokes, or about half a dozen wild mushrooms whose names I cannot remember, before I walked in to this place. How often does that happen in life? How much is that worth to you? I have multiple decades of seafood consumption under my very large belt, and I can say that the monkfish and mussels were some of the best I have ever tasted, perfectly and lovingly prepared. If they had put double the number of mussels on my plate, would I have complained? No, but I was happy with what I had!
2) Incredibly inventive use of natural resources, almost all from the state of Maine.
3) Exceptionally attentive service. Way too attentive for my liking, but I also appreciated the fact that the tattooed waitstaff did not look askance on my just-​off-​the-​lobster-​boat Mainer attire. I sort of just walked in and asked if they had a free table.
4) Food for your brain too, that you won’t get scarfing an eggplant parm at D’Angelos. Here just one example: What would the world look like if we could not get pepper, because pepper comes from the Far East and it just got blown up by a meteorite? What does a radical locavore replace pepper with? Well, come here and find out the answer.
Now, one can argue about the last point. Pepper has been around since Roman times and perhaps longer, and the spices that Western cultures have valued for millennia have brought about indisputable benefits and tragic aspects for culture, for history, for human relations.
But wait, what are those sentences doing in a Unilocal review? WTF man, I just wanna know where to eat tonight! That is precisely what is so wild about this place, it makes you think about a lot of things that most joints don’t.
I have to wish these people luck, they have got a hard sell in front of them, look at all those grumbling Unilocalers. If this place were in Manhattan, they probably would be booked for months in advance. I could not believe that I could just stroll in off the street in the primetime of a Saturday night on a warm May weekend and get some places at the bar (which by the way has the best seats in the house). Just wanted to poke me head in, really. Sure glad I stayed for a meal…

I had the pleasure to visit Vinland during Maine Restaurant Week, and while some of these menu items may not stick around I am confident that the spirit of Vinland and the excellent experience are here to stay.
So, you walk into Vinland, a staff member greets you warmly and checks their tablet for your reservation. A table awaits, and on that table is a menu with a poem on it. I could stop right there and you’d probably get the idea, but allow me to expand.
The ceiling is gilded, the walls are hiding acoustic paneling under tasteful birch tree decorations, when you order a cider in a can it is poured into a glass like a fine wine. The entire atmosphere is calculated to be high-​class, yet comfortable.
The menu will delight gluten-​free, locavore diners and the wine list is full of words like «biodynamic.» There’s a lot of potential for this place to be insufferable.
And yet…
There is something earnest about it that makes me really appreciate what they’re doing. My meal included carrot ginger soup, monkfish with mushrooms, sunchokes and spinach and a parsnip maple custard. Everything was, well, a little weird. But great. I like weird.
To get into more detail: I could have used salt on my main course, but that’s literally my only complaint. My monkfish was cooked to perfection and that’s not an easy thing to do. The parsnip custard was probably my strangest course, not quite dessert and not quite side dish, but in the end I found myself really liking it.
I also can’t say enough good things about the service. Five stars all the way and worth the splurge.

Short version: Great for people with food sensitivities and/​or people who prefer local/​organic food. Great for people who like dinner to be an experience, and who don’t want to rush.
Longer version: Vinland has very «clean» food. If you have food sensitivities or allergies, you will probably appreciate this place. As they will likely explain to you, they use local and organic products whenever possible. (They do this to a more extreme level than any other establishment I have visited so far.) I cringe to use catchphrases to describe my dining preferences, but I am going to go ahead and type the word «Paleo» here, in case anyone is doing a search for that. There are a few menu items that are not die-​hard paleo-​friendly, but they are very transparent about their ingredients and will be more than happy to help you find items that fit your dietary needs. It was a relief to be able to order anything on the menu without worrying about being ‘dosed’ with MSG or other mystery ingredients.
To address a few comments from other reviews that initially scared me off a little bit… I think they have taken previous reviews into account, because I didn’t find anything lacking in spices or flavor here. I agree that the portions are somewhat on the small side compared to what restaurants have grown accustomed to serving. I thoroughly enjoyed the drawn-​out process of the full dining experience. I ordered five plates with wine pairings and had a great time, slowly enjoying my dinner for almost two hours. (Loved it – that’s exactly what I was looking for.) The wine pairings were very well matched. There was only one dish and pairing I didn’t particularly care for, and that was the Chicken with Crisp Skin. I think that was my own fault for choosing that, since I don’t care for sage too much. Here are the entrees I had. Again, I enjoyed everything very much, except the chicken:
— Fall Salad (market vegetables, herbs, blue cheese and apple vinegar dressing)
— Lobster (wild black trumpet mushroom emulsion, nori, radish)
— Raw Beef (pickled onion, cranberry, horseradish, spicy green)
— Chicken with Crisp Skin (sage, lovage, bone broth, butternut squash)
— Daily Ice Cream (kombu)
The kombu ice cream was SO good that (especially on my fifth wine pairing when inhibitions were down), I could have eaten a gallon of it. I really enjoyed the lobster too (see pics).
On top of enjoying the food and wine, the service was outstanding. The host was so friendly and accommodating, even though I didn’t make reservations. My server was very friendly and attentive. The owner even stopped by to make sure everything was okay. I love this kind of service.
So in sum… If you are used to large portions, or if you are in a hurry, this might not be up your alley. (I’m not judging… there are times when I want huge portions and/​or am in a hurry. I’m just mentioning it so you can factor that into your decision.) If you have food sensitivities or just prefer to eat clean, local, organic foods, give this a try.

I love the idea of Vinland. That every item of food is locally-​sourced and every detail from flavor to presentation has been meticulously thought out far in advance — it’s both refreshing and unique. To be honest, I typically don’t gravitate towards higher-​end/​fine dining type places (which I know Vinland doesn’t associate themselves as, but essentially seem to be) — as a vegetarian those restaurants typically aren’t super accommodating. Nor should I expect them to be; I know that I’m not their demographic, and I’m okay with that. But that’s not the case at Vinland; for the most part, I felt dietarily nurtured while I was there! It’s this point that I think is the best for me to focus on for this (way too long) review.
— First snack: beet chip with a dollop of yogurt
Apparently, between courses, Vinland likes to send out «snacks» to their customers. Our first — dehydrated beet chips with yogurt — was so delicious I could have easily eaten just these (with a beer) all night long and been perfectly content. I know it’s pedestrian in comparison, but if you’re wondering what these taste like, they’re similar to Terra’s «Sweets and Beets».
— First course: Oat and corn polenta (w/​yogurt whey sauce and micro greens)
I was initially hesitant about this option, but our waitress said it was her favorite thing to eat at Vinland because it was one of the most «complete» and well-​rounded dishes in Portland. I couldn’t agree more. It was hearty, it was flavorful, the sauce was creamy and perfectly seasoned, and the micro greens were an ideal fresh addition. Talk about divine (I think I actually referred to it as «manna from heaven» when I was there!).
— First course (part two): Turnip soup (with yogurt, fermented carrot, micro cilantro)
One of the most brilliant visual dishes I’ve ever seen. It literally looked like a piece of art. The photos you’ve seen (white broth topped with greens, flowers, and beet dust) don’t even do it justice. When you finally get over the hurdle of destroying this masterpiece, know that it’s dizzyingly delicious.
— Second snack: oat cakes with salty butter
Meh. These were just okay. A bit like a sweeter Nairn’s.
— Second course: Celery root «steak»
Ugh. This just didn’t do it for me at all. And, unfortunately, this was the lone «main course» option for my significant other and I. Neither my partner or I finished it; to be totally honest, we barely touched any of it as the flavor profiles, textures, and smells were entirely off-​putting to us. They can’t all be winners, and this one falls short of anything memorable. You REALLY have to love celery root to appreciate this dish which came with very thick slabs of the root dressed with pickled carrot, kohlrabi chip, black radish, and an egg. I wouldn’t recommend this dish.
— Third course: all the dessert options that night (none of which my dinnermates and I unanimously liked)!
1. Lavender cookies with a sweet citrus cream: I’m a sucker for anything lavender and appreciated the juxtaposition of these.
2. Brown butter ice cream with granola: I thought this was a little boring, truth be told. To me, it lacked any defining flavor or character, but my significant other is still drooling over it days later!
3. Cheese plate with local honey and apple butter: Our friend who got this as her dessert was sorely disappointed. I think she thought it was fragmented and ill-​thought out. I disagree entirely; then again, I’m a sucker for this exact kind of dish and couldn’t have been more envious of her!
The staff was incredibly knowledgable about each component of a dish and the origin of its ingredients; the interior is tastefully «Maine»; and the cocktail options are both interesting and well-​balanced (though you can’t go wrong with Allagash White for $ 6).
I definitely can’t afford to come here often, but I heard Vinland started a late night menu on Fridays and Saturdays from 9pm to midnight that includes small plates — like a twist on poutine — between $ 7 and $ 12 (which is pretty standard «small plate» pricing in this town these days).