Portsmouth NH’s Greatest Tables
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Black Trumpet
Black Trumpet occupies the second floor of a 19th-century brick chandlery on Ceres Street, the cobblestone block that runs along the Piscataqua River directly above the working tugboat docks at Portsmouth's old port. The room is exactly what a serious Seacoast restaurant should look like - exposed brick walls, dark wood beams, low warm light, sixty covers across a main dining room and a smaller back nook overlooking Bow Street. Chef-owner Evan Mallett bought the space in 2007 (it had operated as Lindbergh's Crossing in the 1990s), has held it independently for almost two decades, and was a James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef Northeast four times running.
Ristorante Massimo
Ristorante Massimo opened in 1994 on Penhallow Street in the historic Customs House block, two minutes' walk from Market Square, and has been continuously owned and operated by chef Massimo Morgia and his wife Eve for more than three decades. The dining room is in the granite-walled lower level of a Federal-period building - barrel-vaulted brick ceilings, oil paintings, white linen, twelve heavy four-tops and a few intimate two-tops along the back wall, around fifty-five covers in total. Upstairs at Massimo opened in 2018 as a small-plates wine bar in the same building and runs as a more casual second concept.
The Library Restaurant
The Library Restaurant occupies the ground floor of the Rockingham House, a Federal-period mansion at 401 State Street that was built in 1785 as the residence of a New Hampshire chief justice and later operated as the Rockingham Hotel - a hotel that hosted Daniel Webster, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Portsmouth Peace Treaty delegations of 1905. The restaurant has been in continuous operation in the building since 1976 and is structured as a series of intimate wood-panelled rooms - the main dining room with floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookshelves and original 18th-century built-ins, a smaller Madison Room for private dining of up to twelve, and a clubby corner bar with leather wing-back chairs in front of a working marble fireplace.
Cure
Cure opened in 2014 on State Street, four blocks west of Market Square, and has been quietly run as a chef-driven New American room by chef-owner Julie Cutting-Garand and her husband Sam ever since. The dining room is small at forty-two covers - a main banquette along one wall, a row of two-tops along the opposite, and a low eleven-seat bar in front of an open pass that gives every counter guest direct visual access to the kitchen. The wood floors, soft warm lighting, and white-painted brick walls read as a contemporary Brooklyn bistro rather than a Seacoast room.
Botanica Restaurant and Gin Bar
Botanica opened in 2021 in the converted Brewery Lane warehouses in Portsmouth's West End - a regenerated industrial block six minutes by car from Market Square that has become the city's most interesting independent-restaurant cluster. The dining room is small at forty covers across a single main room with brick walls, hanging botanical illustrations, a marble-topped twelve-seat bar at the entrance, and large industrial windows that flood the room with the kind of warm afternoon light that the State Street rooms cannot match.