At Maine Foodie Tours we pride ourselves on providing a highly informative, entertaining, and delicious experience for our customers. Our tour guides know Portland inside and out and love to share their knowledge and stories. As you will see from the individual bios below, our guides are an eclectic bunch with varied life stories to share, but one thing they have in common is their passion for Portland, meeting new people, and having FUN!

Please scroll down to meet the team or use these links below:
Pamela Laskey • Pat Bagg • Harold Withee • Dave Mason • Suzy Sargent •
Randy Judkins • Ginger Lawson • John Hickson • Carol Farrell

Carol Farrell—Tour Guide CAROL FARRELL creates whole worlds from scratch, as the Co-Director of a world-renowned puppet/mask/actor touring company called Figures of Speech Theatre. Carol began performing experimental theater in 1971 with the New World Energy Theatre in Switzerland, then moved to San Francisco to study dance. After returning back east and completing a Master’s degree in Theater Design, Carol joined the theater faculty at the University of Maine as Costume Designer, then co-founded Figures of Speech Theatre with husband John in 1982. With FST Carol wears many hats, including writing and designing plays, performing, and administering FST’s teaching residency programs. With a home base in Freeport, Maine, Figures of Speech (www.figures.org) has toured extensively worldwide, won several lovely awards, and has enjoyed collaborating on major artistic projects with several Maine organizations including Portland Stage Company (Peer Gynt), Heartwood Theater (Gilgamesh), Bates College (All the World’s a Grave), and the Portland Symphony Orchestra (Magic of Christmas). Carol’s “foodie” credentials center on home cooking: she makes all the yogurt, pesto, bread, and even a daily breakfast nut mix for her family, and grows her own organic vegies in the summer months. Carol’s great grandfather was a ship captain whose ship was built in Freeport, where Carol currently lives with her family on a 250 year old farm. You can see why she loves sharing Freeport history with her Chocolate Tour friends! Back to top

Ginger Lawson—Tour Guide Ginger fell in love with Maine the first time she saw it 20 years ago and decided that Maine was home. The islands, the lakes, the mountains, and the fantastic food keep her rooted in Maine and she continues to explore every corner of the state in all seasons. In her previous career, Ginger travelled much of the world and gained a deep appreciation for good, local food. She lived in Spain where she completed studies on commercial flower crops. She also has a degree in horticulture and spent much of her youth working in her family’s greenhouses…all of this has led her to an affection for locally grown organic foods. Ginger and her husband are very involved with land conservation work in Maine and NH and recently donated a conservation easement on their own New Hampshire property to the Mahoosuc Land Trust. She is a board member of the land trust and also provides volunteer trail maintenance and oversight on about 40 miles of trails in the Mahoosuc mountains of Maine and New Hampshire. A love of food, the outdoors, walking and Portland history attracted Ginger to the Maine Foodie tours. She recently completed the Portland History Docents course, so feel free to ask her about the history of our beautiful city. When not at work, Ginger can be found paddling, biking, hiking or skiing her way across Maine, always with a stop at a great local restaurant or food shop. There is so much to enjoy in Portland and Ginger would love to share it with you. Back to top

Suzy Sargent—Tour Guide Suzy is a Certified Tour Director and a Portland History Docent so you will be in capable hands and good company with her as your guide. With a background in acting and improvisational comedy and a career in graphic design, she will having you guffawing down the streets of the Old Port to the next delectable delight as she points out some of Portland’s fabulous architecture. If being a foodie means loving food then she is most definitely one. Raised on homemade bread and “put up” fruits and vegetables and living with a grandfather who kept bees, the health advantages and fresh tastes of homegrown are part of her makeup. Since her first shopping experience at the Portland Farmer’s market in the early 80’s she has never looked back and is a passionate advocate for all things local. What Suzy loves most about leading food tours is sharing her love of Portland, working with talented, passionate artisans and purveyors of food and drink, and having the opportunity to meet—and learn from—diverse, intriguing new people. Mix this together with a main course of fun and you get one fabulous, unforgettable culinary experience. Back to top

Pat Bagg—Tour Guide Pat has been a true “foodie” all her life and is now thoroughly enjoying the chance to share her knowledge while walking the streets of her own neighborhood. She was professionally trained in french cooking and baking at the Peter Kump cooking school in NYC before creating her first business,“Fetes Accomplies”, in Central Massachusetts. Her catering company specialized in gourmet and everyday french cooking with exclusive. long-term contracts with businesses such as the Worcester Art Museum. While owning and operating the catering business for ten years, Pat also founded “Special Teas” shops in Central Massachusetts. Realizing she enjoyed sharing all that she was learning, Pat also began teaching cooking classes, originally in Whittinsville, MA, and now out of her home in Portland, ME. Pat offers hands on instruction to small groups in her comfortable home kitchen and participants love her instruction, patience and attention to detail. When not at work, Pat has traveled extensively to study world cuisines, and she has enjoyed training in France, Italy, Vietnam, Cambodia, Morocco and Turkey. She also spends spare time at various cooking schools, including her favorite, Tante Marie in the San Francisco Bay area. If Pat is your guide, you may ask her any food and cooking questions you like! If she doesn’t know the answer, which is doubtful, she will collect your contact information and get back to you. Ever a teacher and true foodie, Pat’s tours offer an interactive occasion to make new friends and learn a lot! Back to top

Pamela Laskey—Director Pam’s energy and enthusiasm are the heart and soul of Maine Foodie Tours. Until recently, Pam channeled much of her creative energy into marketing endeavors for major publishing houses, including Houghton Mifflin, Addison-Wesley and Pearson-Allyn & Bacon. On the side, however, she was having lots of fun–performing in an improv troupe, doing stand-up comedy, and inspiring students at Northeastern University while teaching classes in communications. Since a big part of her career involved wining and dining with authors, Pam felt the pressures early on to master strategic seating charts for the restaurant tables and know which wines to select when the author orders the bouillabaisse. The work required an extensive amount of 5-star travel, affording Pam the opportunity to shamelessly eat her way throughout the country. Maine Foodie Tours represents an amalgam of Pam’s passions. Always up for a great meal, she loves finding new restaurants, learning about up-and-coming chefs, pairing food and wine, gathering fun-loving groups of people together, and of course, as a born educator, sharing her knowledge with others. It has been an eye-opening experience for her to delve into the local Maine food scene, learning about dishes indigenous to this region, and she is eager to share this information with guests on her tours. “I have so much respect for the resourcefulness of Mainers,” Pam says. “Whether it’s an old family recipe handed down from generation to generation, or a new way of presenting and serving one of our state’s staple crops, I’m just constantly amazed at the creativity and ingenuity of Maine artisans, cooks, and chefs.” Pam’s new goal in life is to have as much fun as possible, and surround herself with others who also don’t take themselves too seriously. The Maine Foodie Tours venture has been a delightful – and tasty – sojourn into the history and culture of Portland, a city that seems to continually reveal new and delicious offerings to adventurous and fun-loving foodies. Back to top

Harold Withee—Tour Guide Harold Withee- Harold is the general manager for the Freeport Factory Theatre and ensemble member with the Freeport Shakespeare Festival. He is a member of Actor’s Equity and the Screen Actor’s Guild. For eight years Harold worked with over a dozen theatre companies in Boston and was featured on the cover of the Boston Globe’s Sunday Arts section before returning home to Maine in 2010. He has toured England, performed at the Kennedy Center, and his TV credits include the History Channel’s Exploration of North America and Salem Witch Trials, as well as HBO’s Golden Globe winning Empire Falls. You can see him on the big screen opposite Sissy Spacek in the oscar-nominated film “In the Bedroom” and in “Finding Home” with Louise Fletcher. Harold is an 8th generation Mainer from the Western Foothills so, although his travels have taken him far, he is still a Mainer at heart. You will hear it in his voice when he tells you stories on the tours. If he ever forgets to mention one of his grandmother’s recipes, we will all be shocked.

Dave Mason—Tour Guide Dave once received the following advice: “Find the one thing you truly are passionate about and concentrate on it; make it the focal point of your existence.” Remaining true to his nature, Dave promptly set about ignoring this advice – he’s always had a difficult time choosing one thing over another, so he decided not to bother. When asked why he has so many interests he simply quotes Mark Twain: “I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up.” His love of history and written language took him to the classroom. Dave has taught American History and American Literature in high school and middle school classrooms from Maine to Florida. He’s been at it now for 33 years. He lives for what he calls the “Aha moments!” of teaching. “There’s a lot of nonsense going on in education today and teachers are being pulled in many directions. But the core of education remains the relationship a teacher establishes with his students in the classroom. I wouldn’t trade those moments for anything.” Dave is also an accomplished actor and storyteller. He has appeared in lead roles in over 40 productions ranging from Moliere’s School For Wives to classic musicals like Fiddler on the Roof and Anything Goes. His storytelling credits include festivals, workshops for young storytellers and one-man shows featuring a variety of genres, including Maine humor, historical fiction, and ghost stories. Dave grew up on the coast of Maine and at an early age developed a love for the ocean and all things associated with it. By age three, steamed clams had become his favorite food and he claims he’ll try anything that comes from the sea at least once. “Every time Jacques Cousteau discovered a new undersea creature, I’d have it on the menu within a week.” Predictably, lobster holds a special place in his heart, and if you’re interested, he has some terrific recipes for scallops that he’ll gladly share. A true “Mainah,” Dave relishes the chance to share his knowledge of the beautiful and historic city he loves. Back to top

John Hickson—Tour Guide John is relishing (pardon the pun) the opportunity to share his love for all things culinary, now that he’s retired from the high ranks of a Fortune 500 company. The most delicious part about his previous life was that he spent some 40 years traveling to (and eating in) cities from Montreal to Mexico City, and just about everywhere in between. His passion for food is heartfelt and inspirational. He boasts that he retired to Portland ten years ago because he could get all the fresh haddock he could ever want! John knows good food and he certainly knows Portland. The combination was a perfect fit for Maine Foodie Tours. John entertained thousands of visitors working as a tour guide on the duck boat tour here in town for the past four years. The history and culture of Portland were brought to life through his powerful story telling and infectious sense of humor. At the age of 30 John began dabbling in theatre which soon became an obsession. To date, he has acted in or directed more than 150 productions, been named New Jersey’s Director of the Year and nominated for Best Performance by an Actor by the New York Daily News. John will tell you that he did not have a foodie type of upbringing. During World War II, food was scarce and culinary skills limited. It wasn’t until he moved to New Jersey that he was bitten by the food bug. Savoring authentic Hungarian, Italian, and Chinese cuisine opened up a whole new world for him. Advice he received as a young traveler still resonates today. A fellow restaurant customer once told him, “Wherever you find yourself, ask what the locals eat and order that. It will be the freshest and best prepared.” John faithfully heeds that advice, and it hasn’t failed him yet. John finds that his love of food is a natural complement to his passion for theatre. “It helped me see food consumption as so much more than stuffing one’s face…I had a gourmand uncle who would derisively ask, ‘Would you rather eat or dine?’ Eventually I came to appreciate this question and now emphatically answer, ‘Dine…definitely dine!’” Back to top

Randy Judkins—Tour Guide Is there anything more satisfying than a good strong belly laugh? Randy Judkins doesn’t think so. He has successfully integrated humor into most everything he does. He finds that looking at life through the lens of humor lends invaluable perspective on life and he joyfully shares this insight in lively, interactive presentations to professional groups, schools, and organizations throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. Randy’s “Be a Friend, Not a Bully” was an original creation for elementary schools in New England, and his “Laughing in the Face of Change” was an original creation presented at wellness conferences in thirteen states. Randy also has put his creative stamp on numerous theater productions, including gigs at Tanglewood, arts festivals throughout the country, television commercials, and independent films. He has made guest appearances on national morning shows, including CBS This Morning, ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s The Today Show. After teaching stints with Ringling Brothers, Tri-Star Pictures, The Julliard School of Drama, and Circus of the Stars, Randy founded the Maine Hysterical Society, a comedy trio touted as “the best variety comedy act in New England.” Their portrayals of eccentric Downeast characters and comical songs keep their audiences in stitches. Most recently the group participated in The Humor Project’s 52nd International Conference on The Positive Power of Humor & Creativity, and performed with Lucie Arnaz at Birdland, New York City’s legendary jazz club. Among his most notable accomplishments, Randy raised more than $1200.00 for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Portland by running in the Beach to Beacon 10k Road Race, while juggling three balls. He finished the race in under an hour, and he didn’t drop a ball! A native Maineiac, Randy has had a long and ardent love affair with one of our state’s most delicious agricultural bounties – wild blueberries. He recalls fondly handpicking his first cupful some five decades ago in his hometown of Mexico, Maine. He has remained true to these antioxidant wonders of nature and still enjoys them on a daily basis, blending them into refreshing smoothies or incorporating them into various gourmet recipes. Back to top

“Maine Foodie Tours offers visitors to our region an enticing way to discover the delectable delights offered by the many talented food artisans of Maine. The Greater Portland Convention & Visitors Bureau welcomes the opportunity to work with Maine Foodie Tours to position Maine as a culinary travel destination.”

Barbara Whitten
Director, Greater Portland Convention & Visitors Bureau