Combing through the city of Portland’s database of 2024 food and liquor licenses triggered feelings from four years earlier, when as part of the Press Herald’s food team, I put together a list of the city’s restaurants at the start of the pandemic and their latest operating status — from open for dine-in to takeout-only to temporarily or permanently closed.

The point was both to let readers know about their dining options and to take stock of the restaurants we had, so we could evaluate how COVID was affecting Portland’s signature industry in the short term and, eventually, look at its overall impact.

We wouldn’t have guessed then that, five years later, the situation would still be evolving, with the pandemic’s aftermath continuing to shut down restaurants. We also wouldn’t have guessed that just as many new restaurants would so quickly take their place.

The task at hand this year was to determine just how much turnover there was, which started with revisiting the inventory from 2021 and reliving its creation.

Because the city’s food service licenses include everything from gas stations to school cafeterias, many judgment calls about what constituted a restaurant went into making a curated list: Did it have to have seating? Does a convenience store that sells sandwiches to-go count? Yes and no, I’d decided, partly because we were looking at businesses most affected by the shutdown.

What about breweries? That was a different thing, I remember thinking. And with bars, I only included ones that served some food.

Then there was the matter of food stalls in the Portland Public Market and One City Center and seasonal restaurants on Peaks Island. They all made the cut, though I found myself rehashing the same internal debate as I looked through the latest database and did not come to all the same conclusions — but, for consistency’s sake, stuck with my original decisions.

The thing is, the problems have pivoted — remember that word? — with inflation and changes in dining habits replacing the supply-chain and social-distancing challenges of the past. And the way businesses have responded over the last five years has the made the job of quantifying the pandemic’s impact harder too.

A few of those breweries I had discounted have since added their own kitchens; should they be considered new openings? Other restaurants relocated out of town; does that count as a closure?

I think I’ve made my point that the process has been fraught, subjective and imperfect — not to mention that these figures are changing by the minute, with new ventures constantly coming online and some restaurateurs undoubtedly debating right now whether it’s time to throw in the towel.

But, looking at this snapshot in time, here are a few trends in what’s opened in the past five years and takeaways about how Portland’s restaurant scene just before the pandemic compares to today.

Portland’s total number of restaurants hasn’t changed.

Out of 303 dine-in restaurants, bars and cafes in Portland that were open around the time of the COVID shutdown, 100 have closed. Of the new restaurants that have opened since 2020, about 94 are still in business, for a net loss of just six dining options — though at least seven new spots are planning to open in the coming months.

It’s hard to call it a wash when, surely, there are fans of certain longtime establishments, like Parker’s and Local 188, who are lamenting the loss of a favorite restaurant. And, of course, closures also have left devastated entrepreneurs and staffers in their wake. (The extensive build-outs followed by rapid shuttering of Thistle & Grouse and Sissle & Daughters were particularly hard to watch.) But in terms of overall dining options in the city, the total number hasn’t really changed.

Of course, if the pandemic hadn’t happened, we’d likely have a lot more by now. According to year-end compilations of restaurant openings and closures by blog Portland Food Map, in the years leading up to the pandemic, new restaurants were opening at about the same rate as they have since 2020, but there were fewer closures, with the city adding more than twice as many restaurants as it lost from 2017 to 2019.

We’re all about beverages, all day long.

Of the new restaurants that remain open, about a quarter are cafes – 25 total – or at least are in part, with places like all-day Mexican restaurant Lenora operating as a coffee shop in the morning.

Another popular type of food and drink establishment to open was bars, with 19, though that figure has some overlap with the cafes, a combination that’s become more commonplace in recent years. Think Smalls (which has a shop in back too), Novel (also a bookstore) and Another Round (primarily a gaming hub). Seeing a trend here?

In addition to giving potential customers multiple reasons to walk through the door, by focusing on beverages, these are business where you don’t have to spend a ton of money to feel like you’ve had a night out or a nice little treat in the morning. If it’s near your home or workplace, you might go more than once a week, or even in a day — for a coffee to-go in the morning and a cocktail after work.

Expect to seat and serve yourself more often.

A trend toward low-pressure, less formal dining experiences extends beyond bars and cafes. Nearly two-thirds of Portland’s new restaurants fall under what I’m classifying as “casual.” That definition isn’t based on what you should wear there — even before sweatpants culture swept the nation, Maine dining establishments have been known for having an anything-goes dress code — but how the business operates.

I’m talking about places where you’re not going to walk in to find a host or table settings and that probably partially rely on counter service. Aside from the obvious spots, like ice cream and sandwich shops, there are also whole new kinds of restaurants we haven’t seen before, like Oun Lido’s, where the Cambodian food is destination-worthy but the service, though by all accounts friendly, is limited.

While some short-staffed restaurants tried to switch to this model during the pandemic, it could be off-putting to regular customers who weren’t getting the experience they came for but paying just as much or more. But, by operating this way from the get-go, it feels more like an intentional business decision than a Band-Aid.

Asian and Latin flavors abound.

In terms of cuisine, Asian and Asian-inspired menus continue to proliferate faster than any other fare, with 13 new restaurants that feature or borrow influence from that part of the world. In a single building on Fore Street, we saw the 2022 openings of Paper Tiger, with continent-spanning offerings, and Bar Futo, which uses a Japanese cooking method for its inventive menu.

At the same time, nearly as many Asian restaurants also closed, from tiny ramen shop Ishi Ishi to relocated Thai restaurant Esaan.

Latin flavors, from Mexico to Puerto Rico, were next most common among new restaurants and probably the category of cuisine to see the most expansion, with new openings — like Papi, Mesa Grande, Cantina Calafia and Ocotillo — far outpacing the closures.

Other popular types of fare among new restaurants include pub food, seafood, sandwiches and pizza, though many could fall into more than one of those categories — places like Lil Chippy, serving fish and chips; the East Bayside location of Bite into Maine, with its lobster rolls; and Camp Pennant, where you can get a warm pretzel, sub or pizza.

Fine dining still has its place.

In 2022, when Back Bay Grill closed and then Hugo’s, which hadn’t reopened since the start of the pandemic shutdown, announced that it never would, we wondered about the future of fine dining.

But Elda, relocating from Biddeford, plans to open in Portland this summer, and Twelve, which opened in 2022, is still going strong. At the start of this week, there were no reservations for two available for Saturday night.

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