Maine is a foodie state. With towns of award-winning restaurants, Mainers are all about enjoying their food. But what happens when you want to really indulge? We’re talking BIG food. Across the state, local restaurants, pubs, and cafes, are challenging their clientele to take on everything from whopping sundaes to enormous burgers. Here are the best places for BIG food in Maine.
Popular with thru-hikers and people just passing through to Baxter State Park, the Appalachian Trail Café cooks up some mighty good meals for hungry hikers. If you love ice cream or just a good challenge, try the Summit Sundae Challenge, which starts with a banana and is topped with 14 scoops of ice cream to represent each state the Appalachian Trail travels through. If that isn’t enough for you, the ice cream is then topped with a Snickers candy bar, a handful of M&Ms, an AT Café homemade doughnut, chocolate syrup, whipped cream and finally a cherry on top. If you can eat it all by yourself, you get a t-shirt, bump sticker, and you get to add your name to the pole of fame.
Located in a beautiful 200-year-old post & beam building on Naples’s Causeway, the Freedom Café & Pub has an extensive menu of appetizers, salads, seafood, and more. If you love burgers and would like your chance to win the epic Triple By-Pass t-shirt then see if you can finish the Triple By-Pass Burger, which is three half-pound beef patties, six slices of cheese, six slices of bacon, and side of chili cheese fries.
Nestled in the western mountain of Maine near Sugarloaf, the White Wolf Inn offers the Wolf Burger. This eight-ounce beef burger is topped with a layer of bacon, sausage, mushrooms, and cheese and served with homemade fries. If you finish the burger, you’ll get a little flag that says, “I Conquered the Wolf.”
You better come hungry when you come to Sylvia’s Café in Ellsworth for the Hibernator Challenge as it is the size of four breakfasts! The challenge includes a Scrambler topped with corned beef hash piled under more eggs, bacon, sausage and ham. Your second dish is a stack of buttermilk pancakes and a biscuit. If you eat every last bite under 30 minutes, the meal is free. You’ll get a t-shirt and have your photo of the “Wall of Fame.” But, if you lose, you pay the $30 for the meal and your photo goes on the “Wall of Shame.” Eat up!
For the ultimate sweet treat, order the Federal Deficit from the Governor’s Restaurant. This is all specials in one featuring a vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, caramel, peanut butter, blueberries, cherries, pineapple, strawberries, raspberries, marshmallow, a banana, a biscuit, a brownie, nuts, jimmies, and a pile of whipped cream. Do you think you can take this one on?