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Food at the Portsmouth Harbor Inn and Spa, and in the SeacoastBreakfast Breakfast – The most important meal of the day! After a peaceful night’s sleep, a delicious breakfast at the Portsmouth Harbor Inn & Spa is an excellent way to prepare for an active day of walking around the parks, quaint streets, and beaches of the Seacoast, or a restful day of spa treatments or lazing around with a good book, a DVD, or a board game. Coffee or decaf from the Coffee Goddesses at Carpe Diem coffee roasters; teas from Portsmouth Tea Company, White Heron Tea and Upton Tea; jams and jellies from Stonewall Kitchen and Appledore Cove; breads and croissants from the artisan Beach Pea Bakery and Café, Me and Ollie’s, and When Pigs Fly: we buy locally-grown and locally-produced foods as much as possible, to share with our guests the bounty of our area. We aim for perfection – wild Maine blueberry pancakes served hot and crisp, the freshest seasonal fruit dishes, home-baked biscuits, scones, muffins; oj not from concentrate, freshly-baked afternoon cookies richly buttery – we take pride in our cooking for our satisfied guests. And we make it all here, from scratch, not from commercial mixes. Fix yourself a hot cup of coffee or decaf, or tea (and there are so many from which to choose!) as early at 7:30; sit on the porch, go for a walk, read the local newspaper, and come back to breakfast at 8:30 – in plenty of time to enjoy Spa treatments, or get an early start on the day’s activities. Later in the day, at teatime, enjoy some of our freshly-made baked goods – New England’s own tollhouse cookies, Lucille’s Jelly Cookies, Little Cranberry Island Gingerbread, Oatmeal-Craisin Spice cookies, our vegan-friendly Banana-oatmeal-coconut-chocolate chunk cookies (delicious even if you’re not vegan!). Special Diets Given reasonable advance notice, we can accommodate many people’s dietary restrictions and requirements (however, we do not keep a kosher or halal kitchen). For example, for our guests who do not eat dairy products, we use “milks” made of rice, almonds or soy, coconut oil or Smart Balance™ instead of butter, and Tofutti “Better than Sour Cream”™; we keep on hand rice flour for our gluten-free guests, and MorningStar Farms™ sausage patties for vegetarians. Recipes and Restaurants We have put together a list of some restaurants and their websites (below) which we have enjoyed over the years, together with a couple of websites you can review for an overall picture of area dining facilities. We recommend that dinner reservations be made well in advance during the summer months and for weekend evenings year 'round at any of the restaurants named in the following list, due to their small size and great popularity with locals and with visitors to the area. Some of the restaurants on the list below provide "gift certificates" at a significant discount, through one or both of the following websites: Taste of the Seacoast, http://www.tasteoftheseacoast.com/Taste-Deals/Taste-Deals.html, and Restaurant.com, http://www.restaurant.com/rdc_site2.net/listings.aspx?StateID=&zip=03904&. The terms and conditions of each restaurant's certificates are set forth on these sites, so you can decide whether any such gift certificate will be valid during your stay here. "Nice" casual dress is appropriate at most of the restaurants in this area, while business and dressy attire are also appropriate at Ristorante Massimo, Cava and the Black Trumpet - since the Kittery/Portsmouth area is both a city serving a sizable population and a tourist destination, all manner of styles are appropriate at the nicer restaurants in each town. Most of the restaurants in the list below are within easy walking distance of the Inn. The following is a partial list of some Kittery / Portsmouth area dining considerations, some of which are open for lunch in the summer: Black Trumpet Bistro Ristorante Massimo The Green Monkey Brazo Radici Anneke Jans Tulsi Cava Tapas and Wine Bar Four Jumpin’ Jay’s Fish Café The Portsmouth Brewery Chauncey Creek Lobster Pier (Mother’s Day to Columbus Day) Loco Coco's Tacos (for real Mexican food on the Seacoast!) Slightly farther afield, in Maine and in New Hampshire, are restaurants ranging from the casual lobster and seafood places on the water, such as Hebert Bros on Badger Island, Kittery, and BG’s Boathouse in Portsmouth, http://www.bgsboathouse.com/, to dressier restaurants in York, Maine, such as the York Harbor Inn, http://www.yorkharborinn.com/, and Blue Sky on York Beach, http://www.blueskyonyorkbeach.com/. Within an hour’s drive along Maine’s coast are the exceptional Arrows Restaurant, http://www.arrowsrestaurant.com/index.cfm, and the White Barn Inn, http://www.whitebarninn.com/.
General dining websites for the area: http://www.discoverourtown.com/NH/Portsmouth/Dining-3318.html http://www.portsmouthnh.com/dining/index.cfm For lunch, we can recommend any of the following: in Kittery, Beach Pea Baking Company, http://www.beachpeabaking.com, Chef's Cove Cafe, http://www.chefscovecafe.com, Loco Coco's Tacos, http://www.locococos.com, And then there’s dessert! Buy a beautiful fruit tart, or a “bon-bomb” at Beach Pea, and bring it back to the Inn to enjoy with a glass of port, or sherry. Or mosey across the river to Annabelle’s Ice Cream on Ceres Street, http://www.annabellesicecream.com/ (the area’s answer to the Italian passegiata). Have a piece of cake at Popovers on the Square. For dining with a river view, there is the charming Wellington Room, and the more casual River House, both on Bow Street in Portsmouth. And in the summer season, there are the several outdoor restaurants and dining rooms collectively known as “the decks”, on the water sides of Bow Street and Ceres Street in Portsmouth, and the Weathervane on Badger’s Island in Kittery. The food scene in the Kittery/Portsmouth area also comprises cafés and tearooms, after-hours clubs, and several places to snack while enjoying live entertainment. On Market Square in Portsmouth, a great place to people-watch, is Breaking New Grounds, for coffee and pastries; a few doors down Congress Street is Popovers on the Square. Farther down Islington Street is Caffe Kilim for coffee, in a very unusual (especially for northern New England) atmosphere. For tea and goodies, the Portsmouth Tea Co. tearoom in Somersworth, NH, about 15 minutes from the Inn. After dessert, you can have a nightcap at one of the clubs in Portsmouth – Two Ceres Street, the Red Door, the Press Room. Or dance off some of your dinner, and prepare for breakfast, at the Gaslight! |
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