Our Gourmet

With the new year well underway, I’ve been convinced it’s time to get into better shape, so I’m trying to eat healthier. I’ve always been a big fan of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food, so working that healthy cuisine into my diet is no hardship.

It had been a taxing post-holiday week and the refrigerator prospects were uninspiring.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie “A Christmas Story” is the one where the neighbor’s dogs come bounding through the kitchen, upending the family’s turkey dinner onto the floor. After the catastrophe, The Old Man announces that they are going out to dinner. Cut to the next scene in whic…

Coming off a Christmas weekend filled with everything but time to search for new restaurants, we thought this would be a good time to look back at a few of the new and memorable spots Mrs. Gourmet and I had the pleasure of visiting over the past 12 months.

NICHINAN RESTAURANT, named for Portsmouth’s sister city in Japan, is in the heart of downtown, nestled alongside Hotel Thaxter with the John Paul Jones House next door and the Discover Portsmouth Center across the street.

The Lakehouse Tavern in Hopkinton is the kind of place where — remember that old TV theme song? — everybody knows your name.

If you’ve never seen a whirling dervish, I saw one at Pasquale’s Ristorante in Londonderry recently. And her name was Yvonne.

With a rare weekend afternoon off together, Mrs. Gourmet and I decided to head out for a quick lunch before getting a jump on some Christmas shopping. We were hungry for something more than sandwiches but didn’t want to devote a lot of time to a full-service restaurant, and a bit of online r…

Napoletana Pizzeria and Bar boasts the best outdoor dining space in Portsmouth’s Market Square, but we visited on a rainy November day and were happy to find a seat inside the cozy, brick-walled bistro.

There’s a special sense of comfort in gathering with old friends.

After taking a break from being part of the Our Gourmet team (not counting a few guest appearances), I’m back. This time around, I’m bringing my dad along for the ride. Our first stop? The new Friendly Red’s in Derry.

The best brewpubs are the ones where the food is as good as the beer.

Billed as “Portsmouth’s Living Room” when it opened in June, Hearth Market is 15,000 square feet of luxuriant greenery, food court and lots of cozy seating nooks and crannies.

With an out-of-town relative visiting for a long weekend, we pondered where to take her to show off New Hampshire cuisine.

A friend and I were trying to choose a place for lunch recently. I was in Manchester and she was on the Seacoast, so we wanted to meet somewhere more or less in the middle.

Over the past few years we’ve driven through the intersection of routes 125 and 27 dozens of times, looked over at the Railpenny Tavern and said, “Hmm.”

The Pelletier brothers have been in the Mexican restaurant business for nearly 40 years.

Michael Buckley’s restaurant at 212 Main St. has been a reliable fine-dining destination in Nashua for almost three decades, but that doesn’t mean it’s stayed static.

Sometimes a drive to a neighborhood I have not visited in a while tempts me to check out an old haunt. My Lovely Dining Companion and I recently dined at Fratello’s Italian Grille in Manchester after I spotted the restaurant’s sign earlier in the day.

MICHAEL TSOPAS started working at Roger’s Restaurant in Dover at 14, hired in 1979 to come in after school and make pizza dough.

Popping into The Press Room with two journalist pals on a warm summer evening seemed perfect, given that my first venture into the Portsmouth pub came after a newspaper softball match in 1983.

HOT LOBSTER ROLLS aren’t the rule in New Hampshire. But Sylvia Cheever may be changing that.

It’s been a long time since Mrs. Gourmet and I have been to a boat-up restaurant. Sadly (to me, anyway), it’s been even longer since we had a boat in which we could boat up to a restaurant.

The Crown Tavern says its concept was based on two simple principles. “Never forget where you came from, and never forget where you came to eat,” it proclaims on its website.

Reincarnating a beloved restaurant is no easy task, but the Scarlotto family seems up to the task.

It used to be a firehouse, it used to be an Irish restaurant, and now it’s Foundation Kitchen & Bar.

OK, so we’re a bit late to the party at Alas de Frida, which recently opened at 931 Elm St., the former home of Birch on Elm.

The Pasta Loft in Milford has been on our to-be-reviewed list for a long time, but twice over the years, another Our Gourmet team got there before us. So when a web search turned up another restaurant named Pasta Loft — this one in rural East Hampstead — we were intrigued.

Since Pressed Cafe opened more than a year ago in the space formerly occupied by Canoe, I’ve noticed the parking lot packed even at odd hours, like 2 p.m. on a holiday afternoon.

SPLITSVILLE IS OUR favorite relationship style for dining out.

Decadent.

Dining by the water is one of life’s greatest pleasures, something missing from my life during a long exile from New Hampshire in a landlocked state hundreds of miles from the sea.

The siren call of “Southern Fried Chicken Tuesday” had us hotfooting it to Hagan’s Grill on Hampton’s High Street recently.

Sometimes we get really lucky when we do a random web search for a restaurant. That’s what happened for us recently when our search landed on Riley’s Place in Milford.

If you’re like me and only recently learned the correct way to pronounce “bruschetta,” you might be intimidated by a menu where all the items are printed in Italian.

The idea for Cinco de Mayo to go came just as I bit into the Burrito Deluxe at Jonny Boston’s International in Newmarket one spring afternoon.

Mrs. Gourmet and I were in California a few weeks ago, and one of the fondest memories we brought home was of a wonderful Mexican dinner at a little cafe in San Diego. We’re hoping that dinner 15 miles from the border hasn’t set us up for disappointment at Mexican restaurants back here, 3,00…