Here are listed most of the Restaurants and Places to Eat In Camden Maine, and some information about walkability, price and seasonality of the various places to eat. There are listings of all places mentioned below the articles on Views, and Cocktails.
Camden Cocktails, Coffee and Harbor Views...
Which Restaurants and Places to Eat In Camden Maine Have a Camden Harbor View
- Camden Deli
- Waterfront
- Atlantica Restaurant
- Natalies
- Bay View Lobster
- Off the Boat (not all seats second floor only)
- Village Restaurant(in the back)
- Mariners Restaurant (in the back)
Camden, Maine is a small New England fishing village. However despite its small town of Maine stature, you can find something to suit every food yearning, from white table cloth fine dining to the traditional chowder house and lobster pound style dining with views of Camden Harbor. Without further ado, let’s get down to the questions visitors to Camden Me. usually have about dining: Here is a list of Places to eat in Camden with a view of the water. With a harbor voted one of the top ten prettiest in the world, and the largest fleet of historic schooners in the world, as well as yachts both motor and sail not to be seen in one harbor anywhere in the world, it is no wonder why so many of our guests ask which restaurants have a view of Camden Harbor. Without distinction as to the style of dining experience, here is our list of restaurants with Camden Harbor Water Views:
Having Cocktails in Camden Maine
In the mood for cocktails? Here are a few of the bars either in a bar or in a restaurant that are particularly appealing, ether for ambience view or great mixology:
- Cocktails at Waterfront Restaurant
- Waterfront has a very nice interior with exposed beams a gas fireplace and copious windows to take advantage of their great harbor view location. However, they have an even nicer deck. You may order cocktails on the deck, which has some space reserved for dinner traffic, but also a not ungenerous section for those enjoying cocktails. Decorated with fine carved fish and birds and interesting photographs of the Maine coast of yesteryear, the Waterfront restaurant is one of the venerable old standbys for locals and visitors alike. In the cocktail section a bar menu which is quite excellent is available.
- Cocktails at Natalies Restaurant
- The restaurant at Natalies is actually within the first floor of the Camden Harbor inn. Completely renovated in 2006-2007, Natalies has a new chef, and an ultra chic interior, as well as seating on the deck. Situated on a hill, Natalies has views of Camden harbor. As you would expect with such cosmopolitan décor, the bar tender at Natalies is an experienced mixologist serving their original creations as well as some of the more cutting edge big City concoctions. The traditional architecture of the Harbor Inn has difficulty breathing through the fashionable modernity of the décor; however, it is quite comfortable if urbane. Here's a tip, order the Pemaquid Oysters, superfresh great mignonet and traditional cocktail sauces.
- Cocktails at Peter Otts Restaurant
- Peter Otts has a loyal local following, and a comfortable bar that is well situated for people watching on Bayview Street. With very large picture windows, and televisions, patrons at the bar can enjoy sporting events without a sports bar feel. The restaurant is decorated with fine art by local artists including Gordon Bok. They sometimes feature live music.
- Cold Beer at The Camden Deli
- The Camden Deli is one of the best kept secrets around. For those who enjoy cold beer with a terrific view, they offer a choice of indoor or outdoor seating, including plush lounge seating on the second floor, this is the place. It is very casual, and very comfortable, with local and visitor patrons, great casual food, and friendly service. And did I mention the view!
- Cappy’s Restaurant
- Cappy’s has an interesting bar cum Hard Rock Café of the Maine Coast. The outboard motor beer tap is worth the price of admission. The interior is thickly encrusted with every manner of hokey shore vacation memorabilia one could imagine, and even some that is hard to imagine, including the infamous Heron-Gull-Hit-Head-On-By-A-Truck stuffed bird. Mounted within a convex glass frame is -, well who knows exactly what it is, but some time passed the ecology police had words with the owner about it, and it may have had to go away. If it’s still there, someone let me know.
- Gilberts Public House
- Gilberts features live music often, which is to be commended. The live music is typically local bands, with young and old artists who tend to be quite good. The bar is very large, with a t.v. or two in this subterranean cave-like haunt. They serve their own pizza, which some of the Portland Pirate’s hockey players have informed us is not bad. There are pool tables and a juke box. It is a very traditional Maine honkey tonk frequented loyally by many locals as well as schooner bums, who may or may not be granted a discount for their cabin boy status –or so I’ve heard.
- Off the Boat, formerly The Quarterdeck
- Off the Boat has eliminated most of the formerly popular second story bar. They still have the first floor bar, and their near life sized, sword wielding Captain Morgan wooden statue, but it is apparent they are seeking to enhance their dinner crowd at the expense of the bar trade that was very popular. It was a younger more local crowd as the Quarterdeck, and now as Off the Boat, it is still too soon to tell. They have tucked upstairs and outside a little screened porch facing the hill of the street behind them for secret rendezvous.
- Drinks at the McMahon’s Knox Mill
- McMahons has a long wooden bar partitioned from the dining area with 2 televisions mounted behind the bar. They have a great selection of local and your favorite national and international beers, including one of my favorites, Stella Artois. The people are very friendly, and the décor is authentic traditional Maine mill town; it is the premises of the former Knox Mill, and they have fortunately kept many of the old mill fixtures on display, and made renovations that fit right in. This is a very comfortable watering hole. They have wines by the glass at reasonable prices.
- Drinks & Sushi
- One of my favorite past times is to site in a sushi bar, have a roll or two, a great cold beer, and chat with the bar tender or sushi chef. Well, Mikado in Camden is a terrific spot for that. The bar is casual, yet sophisticated, the sushi is excellent and the people are friendly. So if you're thinking of ducking out for a while, and enjoying yourself this is a wonderful spot for it.
Having Coffee in Camden Maine
Like all great waterfront communities, there are many great places to have coffee. With roasters such as Rock City Coffee, and others, you can find fair trade, shade grown, flavored, hot, cold, etc., etc.
- Camden Deli
- Great views and home baked sweets, selections of coffee, all the big newspapers available, all around nice casual place to sit. The Camden Deli also has a counter with a couple of stools in the front window for those who wish to people watch, but by far their view of the harbor is the best of any place to simply have coffee.
- Boynton-McKay Food Co
- Very popular with published authors, this former apothecary shop still has many of the old Rx items on display, from scales to packaging of products from a bygone era. It is not unpleasantly busy with big picture windows and a hexagonal tile floor. They have excellent cakes and cookies, and a selection of wonderful coffees that you may enjoy in wooden tall-backed booths, or at a stool watching the world go by on Main Street USA, Route 1 North and South, Camden Maine. To facilitate people watching, it has stools and a counter for diner’s right in front of the large picture windows that face the Main Street, and shops across.
- Zoot Coffee
- Starbuckians should feel right at home here. This friendly desert and coffee shop is directly across from the village green. Zoot has wonderful coffee, large picture windows great for people watching. It also has the highest Mac-computer-per-patron ratio of any coffee shop in Camden.
- Camden Bagel Café
- Plantation shudders make you feel like you are trying to enjoy your coffee incognito. If you walk by on Mechanic Street, you may miss it. The windows look out over lower Mechanic Street. This is a great place to have coffee with the local populace. It is quiet and comfortable, with wooden seating and tables, and many varieties of home made bagels, and gourmet coffees and teas.
The category of Walkable in Camden is measured from Camden Harbor and the Windward House B&B. "Yes" means its no more than four blocks or so. "No" means further. Consult a map for more exact coordinates. Cost or cost range tries to describe a cost range, or give an exact price when it is known. We also try to indicate if an eating place is Seasonal. We try to update this page frequently as to opening and closing times and days of the week. However keep in mind if a date and time are important it is advisable to call ahead. Please email us with any new information about any of our listings!
Camden Deli
Great deli for lunch or light dinner. big windows and deck right over the Camden waterfall. This deli is a best kept secret: it has a world class view, upstairs outside deck with comfiy chairs and wonderful beers on tap. Great home baked goods too! Happy Hour is every day this summer in the upstairs dining area and on the rooftop decks from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. with FREE Appetizers and $3 drafts.
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: Yes
- Seasonal:June-October
- Camden Deli
- Address: 37 Main Street
Waterfront Restaurant
This restaurant is always fun. Right on the harbor, you can watch for harbor seals as you drink a cocktail. Great for large groups. Dinner, lunch and bar menu are available. In the summer they have two different menus for the outside deck, a formal dinner menu, as well as a bar menu. You may also simply order cocktails on the huge deck. You feel like your on the deck of one of the ships right in the harbor. The inside decor is exposed beams, nautical prints and carvings of fish and birds, open gas fireplaces and lots of windows.
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: Yes
- Seasonal:all
- Waterfront Restaurant
- Address: 44 Bayview Street
Natalies
Elegant and sophisticated very refined menus. The owners pride themselves on decor, and this grand old hotel has a wonderful large porch and views of the harbor.The dining room has just been completely renovated and restyled to create the look of an elegant old French restaurant with contemporary casual accents. Dinner is also offered on the wrap-around porch, which is heated for those crisp spring and autumn evenings. The bar is the place for an after-work cocktail or a more casual meal from the bar menu.
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: Yes
- Seasonal:all
- Natalies
- Address: 83 Bayview Street
Atlantica Seafood Bistro
Great restaurant right on the Camden dock. Great outdoor deck, for dinners only. Reservations are taken, and suggested for the Summer and October. They have propane heaters on the deck for chilly nights. The menu is consistently fresh and new, but not intimidating.Atlantica is a chef owned and operated upscale bistro nestled in a large historic clapboard building located on Bayview Landing in Camden, Maine. Stylish yet comfortable dining rooms are professionally decorated and furnished, while the open kitchen creates a lively yet intimate bistro.
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: Yes
- Seasonal:June-October
- Atlantica Seafood Bistro
- Address: 1 Bayview Landing
Bayview Lobster
Picnic style lobster house. Great selection of imported and local beers. This place has a great view, rustic dining. Fun restaurant right on the dock. Choose your lobster from the outside tank and watch them cook it for you. Picnic benches and lobster bibs.
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: Yes
- Seasonal:June-October
- Bayview Lobster
- Address: 1 Public Landing
Camden House of Pizza
Small pizzeria, primarily for take out, but they have a few booths.
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: Yes
- Seasonal:high and shoulder seasons
- Camden House of Pizza
- Address: 12 mechanic Street
Cappy's Chowder House
Pub right in the center of town. The slogan is "sooner or later everyone ends up at Cappy's". Pub food and Local ales. Family owned corporation. Established in 1979.Great location. Also has a greta bakery attached to it. Grab a cup of Coffee, muffin and sit by the dock. Cappy's has been at the main intersection in downtown Camden, Maine, for more than 20 years. The goal at Cappy's is to ensure the customer has an enjoyable dining experience and will come back to visit us again and again.
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: Yes
- Seasonal:all
- Cappy's Chowder House
- Address: 1 Main Street
Elm Street Grill
Don't let the outside of this grill fool you, it is not the Motel, but its own place and a good one for Pizza. The Grill is a little outside the village but worth a trip for the pizza if you're in the mood. Live music on the weekends frequently jazz standards.
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: No
- Seasonal:all
- Elm Street Grill
- Address: 115 Elm Street
Francine's Bistro
This is a local favorite. This restaurant is chef owned by Brian Hill. Brian is a very accomplished Chef and former punk rock star, and has made his little reaturant a destination in itself. If you can get a reservation in the summer, you are one of the lucky few. Make reservations the minute you decide to come to Camden. A little secret trick is to try and get a place at the bar to eat if you can't get reservations they allow this. Boston Globe Article date May 30th 2008: HEADLINE: From cooking on the sideto a Maine event BYLINE: Jonathan Levitt Globe Correspondent Food & Travel CAMDEN, Maine - The chef and owner of Francine Bistro here doesn't just cook the best birds he can find, he also goes to a farm to pick them up himself. At Maine-ly Poultry, a patched together, hillside chicken and egg farm in neighboring Warren, Brian Hill loads his butch new Toyota FJ Cruiser with 16 whole birds, and another 120 pounds of feet and bones for making stock. "These birds were killed this morning," explains the chef. "It's crazy, but at the restaurant we roast them to order - stuffed with thyme, sprinkled with Maine sea salt, and cooked in the hottest oven for 20 minutes." At Francine Bistro, a whimsical 29-seat restaurant close to the harbor here, Hill can do things like that. His small, personal establishment is the type of place many good cooks dream about opening. From seats at the bar, you can watch Hill in the kitchen. He is clean and precise, moving around like a tai chi master, assembling delicate herb salads alongside big, bloody, local dry-aged rib eyes - "like James Bond would eat," says the chef. He fries potatoes in olive oil with Provencal herbs, smokes lamb riblets, and pan roasts mussels on a bed of pine needles. The menu changes every day. "It's luxurious comfort food," he says. "I cook for the weather and with the seasons." This is a second career for Hill, 42, a Camden native. For almost two decades, he made a living as a nomadic musician who cooked on the side. He returned to his hometown 4 1/2 years ago. The restaurant is small but doesn't skimp on the good stuff. There's a liquor license at the bar along with an espresso machine, and enough forsythia and tulips for a wedding party. After service, Hill mixes hearty bread dough to proof overnight. In the morning he bakes big gnarly rounds until they're charred and smell like good coffee. "I've been baking bread since I was a little kid," says the chef. "I do it because I love to do it." Hill grew up on a back-to-the-land goat dairy his parents ran in Warren. At 10, his first job was clubbing dogfish on a gillnet boat off Monhegan Island. After high school, Island Records signed his rock 'n' roll band, Heretix. "We sounded like Nirvana before Nirvana," he says. For 10 years Hill wrote songs and played lead guitar, touring the country and playing with big names like Aerosmith and Joe Strummer of the Clash. "On tour I ate at the best barbecue joints and seafood shacks," he says. "I tasted everything, simple food that was unbelievably good. I ate and I cataloged Page 1 away all those tastes for someday - for now." Between tours Hill worked part time in restaurants. His first gig was baking bread for Figs in Charlestown when Todd English was in the kitchen. The band broke up in the mid-'90s and Hill turned to cooking full time. He worked in fine dining kitchens around the country. By 2001 he was ready for his own place. "I got in my truck and I drove around looking for the perfect spot to open this kind of restaurant," he says. That tour took him to Key West, Fla., and deep into the mountains of North Carolina. He settled on Maine. Francine already existed as a groovy coffee shop. For a year Hill cooked tasting menus on a hot plate until he got the feel of the place. Then he bought the business. There's been a line out the door ever since. Next week Hill plans to knock down a wall to expand the kitchen and make room for 10 seats. "It will be bigger and more civilized but I won't mess with the place too much," says Hill. "Francine is a bistro, people come here by themselves, and they come here every day. It's what I always wanted." At midnight Camden is salty and quiet. The bell buoys ring outside the harbor. At Francine, Hill shapes the last loaf of bread. The music is loud and the lights are low. He's by himself now, offstage, but still rocking.
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: Yes
- Seasonal:all
- Francine's Bistro
- Address: 55 Chestnut Street
Gilbert's Publick House
Pub in town that has live music during the Summer and pool tables. The even have there own money for the locals. Gilbert dollars. Fun to hang out and talk to the real fisherman and lobsterman. We learned they had pizza when a group of the Portland Pirate's hockey players brought some back to the house for a late night snack. -good to know.
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: Yes
- Seasonal:all
- Gilbert's Publick House
- Address: 1 Bayview Landing
Peter Ott's
Nice restaurant in the downtown. Bar and dinner menu available. Large picture windows looking out onto the street. The decor is very fine art. They have a great comfortable bar and sometimes live music.
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: Yes
- Seasonal:all
- Peter Ott's
- Address: 16 Bayview Street
Off the Boat (Bar and Grill?) formerly known as Quarterdeck Bar & Grill
Formerly known for its active night life, now under new management, this restaurant has a two floors, with a small outside deck in the backyard, a bar on both floors, and televisions viewable from all the bars and some of the tables. It is in town across from Gilberts and Peter Otts. Locals go here to watch the Red Soxs or the Patriot Games. Not Chef owned so food is not consistant. Two stories, bar on both, windows looking over the street; live music in the summers.
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: Yes
- Seasonal:all
- Off the Boat (Bar and Grill?) formerly known as Quarterdeck Bar & Grill
- Address: 21 Bayview Street
Scott's Place
This place is a secret of Camden Locals. Outside Renys there is a little wood schack that sells hamburgers, soup and hot dogs. It is easy simple food on the go. Fun to sit in the parking lot and watch the world go by.
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: No
- Seasonal:all
- Scott's Place
- Address: 85 Elm Street
Village Restaurant
Restaurant in downtown Camden.
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: Yes
- Seasonal:all
- Village Restaurant
- Address: 5 Main Street
Zaddik's restaurant
Restaurant in downtown Camden. Mexican and Italian meals. a little expensive for what they serve, but the beer is very cold.
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: Yes
- Seasonal:all
- Zaddik's restaurant
- Address: 20 Washington Street
Camden Bagel Cafe
Bagels, Bagels, Bagels and coffee. Local favorite for an early morning breakfast. Not open for lunch or dinner
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: Yes
- Seasonal:all
- Camden Bagel Cafe
- Address: 25 Mechanic Street
Camden Cone
A very popular ice cream shop wedged in the corner of a building on Bayview street next to Off the Boat restaurant. Owned by a local legislator who sometimes mans the counter, it features many interesting flavors of Round Top hard ice cream, floats, shakes, sundays and splits, waffle cones, sugar cones It's a real treat. A lot of great flavors. They only have hard ice cream. If you want soft ice cream you have to go to Riverhouse Ice Cream.
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: Yes
- Seasonal:June-October
- Camden Cone
- Address: 33 Bayview Street
French & Braun Market
This place like Cappy's, everyone ends up in. It is the town grocery store. Has great meat and wine. The store is on the corner of Mechanic Street and Rout 1. They always have banannas in the window. I recently learned that they actually sell cigaretts in this store - but you will never see them. The keep them behind the counter. So unless you know, there is no way to tell they sell them.
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: Yes
- Seasonal:all
- French & Braun Market
- Address: 1 Elm Street
Primo Restaurant
A world-class restaurant inside a restored Victorian home in coastal Maine…the freshest possible ingredients put to imaginative use in dazzling recipes…a kitchen producing rustic favorites and back-to-basics treasures.
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: no
- Seasonal:all
- Primo Restaurant
- Address: 2 South Maine Street
Mikado Restaurant
This is a great restaurant. The Sushi is world class, and the setting is comfortable. The people are very friendly, and the bar is casual and comfortable for cocktails. It's right across from the village green. Now you know where to get your sushi fix when you're in the MidCoast!
- Cost or Cost Range:
- Walkable in Camden: Yes
- Seasonal:
- Mikado Restaurant
- 207-236-4477
- Address: 31 Elm St
