Dining Out: Cava Tapas and Wine BarCava Tapas and Wine Bar

There are a few chefs in town who I would just love to spend a couple of days learning from, or just watching cook. That's why I take cooking classes from big-time talented chefs or sit at the chef's table in a restaurant — so I can see how it's all done — the art, craft, excitement.

Chef Gregg Sessler, chef/owner at the new Cava Tapas and Wine Bar is on my list of chefs who could teach any of us a thing or two about how to create dishes that delight in all ways possible. Just perch at the little four seat bar space in front of the open kitchen and you'll see some smart, creative and visually lovely culinary moves, the result fantastic from sweet roasted Medjool dates stuffed with sharp Manchego cheese and wrapped in salty crisp ham to the creamy butternut squash soup poured tableside over puffy white marshmallows and a swash of dark rich chocolate...

Dining Out: Abercrombie's Seafood Grille
New name, new chef, new menu

12/18/2008 By Rachel Forrest

You might know Abercrombie's Seafood Grille as Abercrombie & Finch, indeed, that's what it says on the placemats still, but they've made quite an effort here to update the logo with a bright, more modern look and naturally, the menu as well. They've brought in Chef John Mebane to stir things up and he has, adding a touch of modern to the already familiar pub dining.

Dining Out: Pepperland Cafe, South Berwick, Maine
Pepperland Café offers great prices and a feeling of comfort

Since I first encountered Pepperland Café in South Berwick, Maine three years ago, it's changed. It's not incredibly hit you over the head obvious — the décor is the same with the bright black and white checkerboard floors and calming reddish pink walls with local art work galore. The bar is quite lively, a change from years ago and the cuisine still taps into what's seasonal and local, the Kellie Brook Farm pork, the local root veggies and bacon.

New Asia Chinese Restaurant
I engaged in Chinese food buffet eating again. My last foray was over at the Super Buffet on Route 1 in Portsmouth and they do mean Super — it's huge. The buffet at New Asia is not nearly as extensive, but it is only $12.95 for an adult at dinner.

I'll tell you what I ate but I think it goes without saying that in these situations, the regular dishes on the menu are better. So, Babette's Feast included (my very nice waitress was named Babette) kung pao chicken (good meat, but not spicy), hot and sour soup (sour, but also not spicy), crab rangoons (crisp outside, creamy inside), spring rolls (not greasy, plenty of veggies), shrimp with lobster sauce (small Bowl, sticksshrimp so-so sauce), egg foo young (fluffy but greasy, gravy too heavy), boneless pork spareribs (very good sauce), prime rib (very dry, but substantial), beef and potatoes (oily, but the beef was tender). And dessert. Ice cream, some sort of mousse cake (light and chocolatey), a brownie (tasted nothing like chocolate), cream puffs (total sugar rush)....

Dining Out: The Red Ginger
The Red Ginger has sandwiches that satisfy

I'd like to do a Ph.D., dissertation on The Sandwich: History and Variations. We love our sandwiches and there are so many different kinds — hot steak sandwiches, Paninis, deli versions. Sandwiches with meat, some with just cheese and the bread varieties take it to a whole new level — marble rye, whole wheat, and the now very popular ciabatta.

Dining Out: Emilitsa

Emilitsa offers delicious combinations

By Rachel Forrest
November 06, 2008

Dining Out: Sticks, York, Maine
Sticks offers creative comfort food
By Rachel Forrest

Wings of Chickens. Sounds like a PBS documentary to me, but really it's the cute way Sticks Restaurant offers up its crispy wings on its extensive fall menu and it's one of the few homages to casual pub fare on that menu.The rest is hearty, down-home cooking with flair, each dish with its own little twist of creativity. It's what we need right now I suppose, not fancy stuff, but interesting enough to get our attention, filling enough to have some to take home and priced well enough so that dining here won't totally break the bank.

Dining Out: UNH Dairy Bar

Lots of apples, yummy sandwiches at UNH Dairy Bar

The train station in Durham right in the University of New Hampshire campus has a little depot and that depot houses the Dairy Bar, a soup, salad, sandwich and light breakfast spot with a menu that reads like a chapter from a Michael Pollan book.

It's all about local, sustainable, seasonal, green, compostable, organic and healthy, healthy, healthy. With lots of apples. The service is all counter with the menu on a few big boards and there are handy signs showing which waste to throw in which bin — the cutlery, cups, paper goods are all compostable for one.

Yes, we've been here before. Almost three years ago I reviewed The Dunaway when it first opened with Chef Mary Dumont in the executive chef spot. The place got a lot of buzz, which carried over when young Ben Hasty took over the helm.

Now, things have changed enough to warrant another look. There are new owners for one and while the décor is still that warm, glowing New England meets Arts and Crafts era meets elegant hip, the new executive chef is a talent many restaurant nerds, um, fans, have been begging to head up a kitchen in the area — Chef Evan Hennessey.

While there's not a dramatic change to the menu in terms of the basics, there's an undeniable finesse, creativity and thoughtful merging of flavors in subtle, delightful ways.

Elegant dishes and vibrant flavors at Four

Perusing the menu on the door of Four, the new restaurant on State Street won't tell you much. It might list merely "halibut" and in that case you'd have no idea that the fresh white fish comes with a delicate orange beurre blanc or that the roasted chicken confit is cooked in duck fat, making the skin all crispy.

All of that is revealed by the staff who'll tell you all about each dish in mouth-watering detail like a bit of culinary performance art — including the way some of the steaks are cooked in the wood-burning oven, hence the name "Four," the word for oven in French.

Tapas and Tinis combines creative with traditional

By Rachel Forrest
September 18, 2008 6:00 AM

I've been craving a tapas restaurant ever since Ciento in Portsmouth closed more than five years ago and lo and behold here it is in Ogunquit, Maine.

Sure, we've got our restaurants with small plates on the menu to share and that's great, I love it, but here at Tapas and Tinis, there's a list of 37 little appetizers to share and they're all very good, using interesting yet simple ingredients in preparations both creative and traditional.

Dining Out: Bella Luna

Bella Luna, an oasis in the hubbub of Portsmouth

By Rachel Forrest

Italian cuisine is usually associated with comfort and nurturing  we crave pasta and a simple red sauce like mom used to make.

With its cozy den of a dining room downstairs and its more airy dining space upstairs, Bella Luna is the right space for comfort food, relaxed and welcoming, offering primarily Italian dishes piled high with fresh ingredients and a little of the exotic thrown in.

Dining Out: The Holy Grail Pub
Hearty Irish, British and American dishes
By Rachel Forrest

Craft and delight at Evangeline

By Rachel Forrest

Portsmouth food celebs have been flocking to Evangeline for months. Ben Hasty at The Dunaway brings Evangleine Chef Erik Desjarlais pigs from his dad’s farm. Evan Mallett from Black Trumpet’s been there. He used to work with Desjarlais "Back In The Day" at Ciento in Portsmouth. Cliffe Arrand over at Pesce Blue has dined there many times, once risking his life on the way back when he hit a moose.

After a long line of the Gandolfo family from Genoa to Brooklyn to Long Island and a deli legacy as well, one of them moves to Utah and opens a New York style deli and then begins to franchise it with a bunch of them out west and now, the only one in New England here in Exeter.

Remember Goldi's in Portsmouth? Yeah, it's not like that. Except for the ingredients in various permutations, it's not much like a New York deli. I mean, you won't see Katz's Deli in New York City naming its sandwiches after the Holland Tunnel and Broadway, but there is a festive air about the place and the sandwiches are hearty and come in many variations.

Tulsi is all about the flavor

Each time I write about an Indian restaurant I get a lesson in one of the most intriguing cuisines in the world. What seems simple at the outset — steaming bowls of chicken curry, vegetables grilled and marinated in deep red sauces licked with saffron, soft charred buttery bread — is actually very complex, each flavor made up of a mélange of spices and herbs that can reach dozens of hidden ingredients.

SpicesAt Tulsi those ingredients merge in delectable, delicate and alluring dishes with a subtlety and finesse I travel long distances to find. Named for the holy basil of India, Tulsi is a charming little spot with fewer than 30 seats, small, understated, yes, but offering what just might be the best ethnic cuisine on the Seacoast.

.Those who go to the Portsmouth farmers market or who used to stop into Kittery's Divine Cuisines, a catering and take-out Indian spot, might recognize Janet Howe and Rajesh Mandekar, chefs who've turned their old store front into Tulsi. They still offer up their dishes at the market and indeed they've gotten some familiar faces from the market to staff the restaurant, a staff who knows the cuisine pretty well. If they don't know an answer, they ask and learn themselves (there's much to learn). Our waiter Dennis was very nice, friendly and fast. The décor is subtle and charming with some mellow modern art on the walls, but it's the aroma when you walk in that gives away the real ambience — it's all about the flavors....

If you go by its definition as an event indicating a new beginning or memorable development then "Epoch" is the perfect name for this new restaurant and bar in the renovated Exeter Inn.

It's definitely a new beginning for the Exeter Inn, which was looking quite run-down until they jazzed up everything in the past few months and the restaurant has undergone a dramatic change as well. Gone is great-grandma's parlor decor that hadn't been refreshed in an eon ; now it's like your hip uncle's pad with cool bar and lounge, elegant modern dining area in a thoughtfully designed ambience that "works."

Portsmouth restaurant gossips have been all abuzz for months watching the progress of Agave down there on State Street.

Since the doors opened in early June, the bar has been hopping with the see-and-be-seens in town. Yes, we have our own version of the glitterati — and loads of people who work in restaurants — chefs, waiters, bartenders — they're all coming here, along with the families, couples, well, it's good for everyone with its nicely priced food, a huge selection of tequilas and a terrific atmosphere that seems outdo everything else.

Delicious, interesting food at Prime

Ogunquit is one of the best Seacoast restaurant towns, rivaling Portsmouth in variety and quality of dining spots. Thankfully not all of the restaurants here are about the tourists — with all that fried seafood and such — not that there's anything wrong with that.

The leaning old building on Water Street that houses Pimentos has gone through many changes since I came to the area, and while I don't live in Exeter anymore, I'm still excited to see what new restaurants open there. After all, I have to visit friends there still and it's good to have a new place to meet.

Pimentos is owned by young but still relatively "seasoned" restaurant veterans Ken Linn in the front of the house and Chef Rob Miller in the kitchen. They have spruced up the place to open a lively or relaxing spot (depending which room you're in) serving creative cuisine with a comfort food twist.