100. Try 5 local restaurants

Pat and I love to go out to eat, but we always seem to go to the same places over and over. In an effort to try new places, I wanted to set a goal to try 5 new local places, which was accomplished quite quickly!

Pat and I met my very good friend Erica and her boyfriend Jamie here for dinner one night. It was a great meal with great company! I've been wanting to get back there, pulled pork is one of my all-time favorite meals.

This is a new sandwich shop that opened in Portland. I had heard good things and their food was quite good, but I felt that it was overpriced. I'm not interested in paying over $10 for a sandwich (pulled pork again).

Gauchos was a very interesting dining experience. The first thing is that it's on the first floor of my office building, so I've known about this restaurant for a long time. It's not your normal steakhouse, that's for sure. You get constant table-side service with all different kinds of meat. I found it quite enjoyable. It's not a place to go for a quick bite to eat, you must be willing to relax and spend your evening there. I think this place would also be great to go to with another couple. The salad bar is also fabulous. We'd go back, but definitely with a gift certificate from restaurant.com. Kind of helps with the fixed $29.95 per person price.

MAINESTREET GRILL

Not the best webpage to copy logos from. This is a new-ish restaurant in Standish (a town not really known for it's restaurants). I was pleasantly surprised with our meal there in a renovated old house. It's cute - a bunch of little rooms, it feels like private dining.

We love going out for breakfast and there's not much better than a breakfast buffet. Not too shabby, definitely worth going to again (although I may wait until the summer people leave the area).

So that's a piece of what we've been up to lately. We're still trying to make progress on my 101 things to do list and blogging about them really helps!