Portsmouth Restaurants

Portsmouth is legendary for its Harborfront dining including at the River House and Old Ferry Landing, pictured above, among others
Portsmouth is said to have more restaurant seats per capita than any city in America, and anyone who lives or visits here would agree that the Port City (as it is sometimes called) has an abundant variety of restaurant options that run the gamut from to lobster shacks and informal seafood restaurants with outdoor seating on the waterfront decks, to fine dining in Portsmouth’s centuries-old red brick buildings. Indeed, if every man, woman and child in Portsmouth picked the same evening to go out to dinner, there would still be about 500 seats for visitors.
It is our pleasure to recommend (or not recommend) the following Portsmouth restaurants, based entirely upon anonymous, unannounced and uncompensated visits to the various establishments.
We want to give you good advice, because we want you back, so “we call ‘em as we see ‘em”, and we never “call ‘em” with a particularly high recommendation, or a particularly tepid one, based upon only one visit. Indeed, we have frequented most of the restaurants reviewed here on multiple occasions.
Portsmouth’s Best in Class Dining Establishments
Above left, comfortable seating behind the fountain in the lush interior at the Hearth Food Garden, and at right, the counter and open kitchen at Portsmouth’s imaginative Cheese Louise
Watch this space for additional restaurant reviews coming soon. The foregoing and future restaurant reviews reflect the candid opinions of Visit New Hampshire’s editors, and are published without any compensation. We have begun with restaurants that most warrant early recognition, and going forward, for good or ill, we will call them as we see them.