I’m putting these words together while sitting in the Delta Sky Lounge in Salt Lake City, somewhere between the buzz of espresso machines and the soft hum of people catching flights home. My own was an early one (too early), so I could make it back East in time for trick-or-treating with my six-year-old twins. I’m running on very little sleep, a head full of caffeine, and a heart full of gratitude. I sit here replaying the past few days in my head, and I keep returning to something Mark Twain once said: “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions; the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
That’s exactly how I feel about the publishers, editors, and creators I am fortunate enough to call peers in the Edible Communities network. Among them, I often feel like a man among giants, and for a moment I can almost imagine being a giant too. This week, at the 2025 Best of Edible Awards, those giants cheered as edible MAINE took home Best Profile Photography for our story “Primo Turns 25,” featuring Chef Melissa Kelly. It marked the third consecutive year our little magazine from Maine has been honored at the national level, and I couldn’t be prouder to type that sentence.
Center: edible MAINE’s Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Christopher Ellis-Jacobs, still glowing after the ceremony.
Right: Being congratulated by the Publisher of Edible Silicon Valley, Coline LeConte
The winning photographs, captured by Derek Bissonnette, accompany our 2024 story that celebrates Melissa Kelly’s quarter-century at Primo, the Rockland restaurant that helped redefine what sustainable dining could look like long before “farm-to-table” became a marketing phrase. My favorite image from that shoot shows Melissa seated, holding one of her piglets with a boisterous calmness. Derek caught something elemental there. We see the way her warmth radiates not only to her guests but to every living creature on the farm. You can feel the trust in that frame, the care that flows both ways. Her smile is genuine; the piglet’s seems to be, too.
That photo says everything about what we try to do at edible MAINE. We aim to find humanity in food and honor the connection between land, hand, and heart. Winning for it feels like a recognition not just of Derek’s artistry, but of the community that makes stories like this possible. We were also honored to be named finalists in two additional categories: Best Profile Story for “The Time of His Life” by Rosie DeQuattro, and Best Personal Essay for “Slow and Steady Seafood” by Barton Seaver. To see our contributors’ work celebrated felt like the perfect reflection of who we are — a small team with big hearts, telling Maine stories that truly matter.
The conference itself was anything but quiet. It was a joyful kind of chaos, the good kind, filled with editors, writers, photographers, and publishers all talking about the craft of storytelling and the shared mission that binds us. In that noisy mix, there was harmony: a chorus of voices lifting each other, swapping ideas, laughing over coffee, and occasionally comparing red-eye flight itineraries. There’s something comforting about that cacophony, and it’s proof that creativity rarely happens in silence. One of the speakers told us about making space to allow for magic to happen. Another told stories of how her evolving role doing just that for her team had made it more challenging to do that for herself. And so, the many conversations unfolded with layer after collaborative layer until we all felt we had learned something, together.
So, as I sip another too-strong coffee and watch planes taxi across the tarmac, I feel grateful for Derek and Melissa, I feel grateful for Rosie and Barton, I feel grateful for our entire team, I feel grateful for the judges Elissa Altman, Dorothy Kalins, and Katherine Miller, and I feel grateful for you, our readers and partners, who give our work meaning. These awards are an achievement, yes, but what they truly signify is that Maine’s food stories, from its farms and fisheries to restaurants and home kitchens, matter far beyond our borders.
We’ll celebrate the only way we know how: with humility, good company, and something delicious on the table. You can read the full Primo story and see Derek’s award-winning photos here, and you’ll find this reflection reprinted in our upcoming winter issue. Here’s to community, to craft, and to the giants who make us feel that, for a moment, we can be giants too.
