A commercial plaza on Portsmouth's Mirona Road might not be the kind of place where you'd expect to find authentic Greek fare. Located in Madison Village off Route 1, Café Nostimo serves a variety of traditional Greek dishes (and a handful of American favorites as well), while offering customers an affordable alternative to dinner downtown. Having won Taste's Best Of award for Inexpensive Lunch and Dinner three years in a row, it's no wonder customers say, "It's like eating in Yia Yia's kitchen."

Owned by Dean and Nancy Zottos, Café Nostimo features recipes inspired by those of Dean's own Yia Yia (Greek for grandmother). In planning the menu, Dean prepared moussaka with Nancy in the kitchen of his childhood home, shared by three generations, awaiting the verdict from his Papou (grandfather). After taking small, mindful bites of the hot moussaka, quietly and without so much as a glance in the cooks' direction, Papou muttered one word: Nostimo. Delicious. This experience inspired the name of their eatery.

Open since 2008, Café Nostimo consistently lives up to its name. The Meze (Appetizer) Plate offers an assortment of Greek flavors: warm pita bread, mild feta, briny Kalamata olives, herb-sprinkled tomatoes, and tzatziki, yogurt blended with lemon, garlic, and extra virgin olive oil. Other not-to-miss appetizers include Dolmathes, grape leaves stuffed with herb and lemon–seasoned rice, and the popular Spanakopita, spinach pie made from layers of phyllo dough, spinach, eggs, and a secret blend of cheeses.

Several Greek favorites are served as entrees or sides. You can't go wrong with Loukanico, a mild Greek sausage seasoned with orange zest, or Keftethes, pan-fried Greek meatballs. Enjoy these meaty offerings alone, on the side, or with a traditional Greek Salad and rice pilaf.

For heartier fare, especially popular in winter, Café Nostimo offers casserole-type specialties. Pastichio consists of layers of pasta baked with seasoned ground beef and topped with a bechamel sauce. The family Moussaka recipe is a blend of roasted eggplant, creamy whipped potatoes, and savory ground beef.

Lamb is a well-known Greek specialty, so be sure to try Cafe Nostimo's Souvlaki, marinated kebabs that will melt in your mouth. The Gyro, strips of seasoned ground lamb and beef, comes in a wrap, as a plate with rice pilaf or roasted potatoes, or on a grilled flatbread Pizzotto. Other pizzotto toppings include Santorini, with grilled shrimp, and Mediterranean Veggie with peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, feta, and Kalamata olives.

This being the Seacoast, there are plenty of seafood offerings. Shrimp Tourkolimano are baked in a tomato sauce and topped with feta cheese. Baked Haddock Olympia features a seasoned crumb stuffing and lobster sauce. The Greek Style Green Beans are the perfect accompaniment, slow-roasted with garlic, onion, and tomatoes.

Save room for dessert. The traditional Baklava, phyllo baked with ground walnuts, and Finiki, a very dense cookie with cinnamon and citrusy notes of orange, both gain sweetness from a sugar syrup. A perfect accompaniment to coffee or tea is the milder Galactobouriko, phyllo filled with a creamy custard with just a hint of vanilla.

For beverages, several local microbrews are available, along with a full selection of Greek wines, including the fun and popular line of My Big Fat Greek Wines and a historic dessert wine, St. John Commandaria. Café Nostimo also offers a selection of Greek provisions, such as olive oils, cheeses, and condiments.

Café Nostimo
Madison Village
72 Mirona Road
Portsmouth, N.H.
603-436-3100

Photography by: Kindra Clineff

An entirely different kind of restaurant has just opened in Dover: Stages at One Washington, located on an upper floor of an historic mill building. Executive Chef Evan Hennessey, who owns Flavor Concepts catering company, operates this sort of pop-up restaurant, which seats 30. Dinners will be offered a few weekends a month, centered around a theme, often with a guest chef. The dining room will be reinvented each time so the décor matches the theme of the dinner.

Each dinner is five courses, paired with wines. If you have special requirements, explains PR Coordinator Ellen Foord, when you make your reservations, they’ll ask you a list of questions so they can adjust the menu to accommodate any dietary restrictions or allergies. If someone is a vegetarian, for example, Foord says, “Instead of serving the same plate minus the meat, the chef will actually prepare an entirely different menu in the same theme.”

Of the 30 seats, 6 are offered as a chef’s table in the kitchen, where you can see the meal being made. “All of our food will be prepared using induction cooking,” notes Hennessey in a press release about Stages. “It’s 100 percent efficient heating, and it’s precise to a tenth of a degree, so food is always prepared exactly as it should be.” It also keeps the kitchen cooler, as induction heat only heats the pan when it’s touching the surface.

Dinners range from about $115 to $135 per person, and include everything: all soft beverages, wine, taxes, and tip. (Cocktails, however, are available separately.) Upcoming dinners include Springtime in Paris (April 13 and 14); a dinner with guest chef Greg Sessler of Cava Tapas & Wine Bar (April 22); Savory & Sweet (April 27 and 28); Cinco de Mayo Dinner with White Birch Brewery (with beer pairings, May 5); and Mother’s Day (May 12 and 13).

Stages at One Washington
One Washington St., Suite 325
Dover, N.H.
(603) 842-4077

For over 15 years, Blue Moon Market and Café was a natural food store and casual restaurant. But in the fall of 2010 it morphed into Blue Moon Evolution, an elegant but unfussy lunch and dinner restaurant complete with refined table service, candlelight, white tablecloths, fresh flowers, and a superb locavore fine-dining menu. Much more than a glorified café, it’s worth seeking out this new Moon.

The Gallant family, with mom Kathy at the lead, has been passionately pursuing healthful eating since Blue Moon’s inception in 1995. Gallant has implemented progressive details into menus along the way, including introducing humanely raised animal products and pioneering the use of local items in a fine-dining setting. Chef Ted McCormack, educated at Johnson and Wales and Le Cordon Bleu, procures all manner of foods from several dozen area farms.

Gallant is committed to educating the community about our food supply. With holistic health and wellness counselor Tracey Miller she’s launched the Food and Health Forum (foodandhealthforum.com), a local-sourced dinner and speaker series, that, she says is “designed to inspire conversation about what we eat, where our food comes from, and how it affects our health.” Taste is now a sponsor of the series.

Boards, items served on polished wooden planks, are one of the eatery’s signatures. The Cheese Board offers an ample trio of New England cheeses, like a creamy Vermont Brie, Maine raw Cheddar, and sheep’s milk feta from New Hampshire. Accompaniments include local honeycomb and house-made apple-pear chutney. The Vegan Board would also delight a raw foodist, with raw sunflower pâté, marinated vegetables, and flax–sundried tomato crisps. TheCharcuterie Board serves up house-prepared pasture-raised meat delicacies with whole-grain mustard and toasted baguette slices alongside.

A Ratatouille Tart starter, laden with local veggies like eggplant, zucchini, and tomato and local Cheddar, is baked in a flaky crust made with whole-wheat pastry flour from New Hampshire’s Brookford Farm. In season, there’s also a savory Pumpkin Tart. The Farmhouse Greens salad is a treat of Meadow’s Mirth organic greens tossed with slightly sweet roasted shallot vinaigrette and topped with a perfectly poached Brookford Farm egg and two rashers of Kellie Brook Farm sugar- and salt-cured bacon (no nitrites here).

For entrees, Kellie Brook Farm Pork and Roasted Pear is a pan-seared, pecan-crusted pork loin. Grilled Trout comes with roasted wild mushrooms and horseradish crème fraîche. Free-range Statler chickens raised in nearby Northwood for Blue Moon Evolution are used in Andrea’s Chicken Under a Brick, a sublime dish simply seasoned with parsley, sea salt, pepper, and lemon zest. Local Grass-Fed London Broil is grilled to order and served with red wine reduction and Great Hill Blue cheese.

The dessert menu is short and sweet. The Creamy Cashew Cocoa Torte is fully vegan and made with raw ingredients. Crème Brûlée flavors vary—a special Gingersnap version is made with 80 proof Snap Gingersnap liqueur for a spicy kick.

Blue Moon Evolution offers wine by the bottle, glass, and half glass—a nice option, especially if you’re interested in trying more than one variety. Creative bartender Lenny Willis, a yoga instructor by day, concocts original cocktails like the Precocious Pear, with Maker’s Mark Bourbon, muddled poached pear, lemon juice, and spiced simple syrup. The Beetnik After Dark contains organic beet-infused tequila, Lillet, Cointreau, lemon, and agave. Local beers offered include two that are gluten free, and also worth a try are the honey wines from Moonlight Meadery of Londonderry, New Hampshire—great with the Cheese Board.

A full three-quarters of Blue Moon Evolution’s menu is gluten free, including delicious crusty, chewy French-style bread delivered upon request. There are numerous choices for vegans, vegetarians, raw foodists, and conscientious omnivores. —

Blue Moon Evolution
8 Clifford Street
Exeter, N.H.
603-778-6850

Once upon a time, this building was a post office. Then Tulsi restaurant brought culinary attention to the location before moving to Walker Street. This past December, Benjamin Lord, Gavin Beaudry, and Executive Chef Jake Smith opened Black Birch here, an establishment that seems equally serious about food and drink. The menu is brief but temptingly creative, especially for meat lovers, with lots of nibble-sized options—two thirds of the menu consists of First Bites and Small Plates. These include dishes like Chicken Liver Mousse, a daily changing House Pickle (made with fruit or vegetables), and Poutine and Duck Confit, inspired by the classic French Canadian fries and gravy concoction, served with fresh cheese curds.

There are seven entrees, all with intriguing sides. The Brick Chicken comes with garlicky fingerling potatoes and broccolini, and the Kurabuta Pork Osso Bucco has roasted root vegetables and parsnip puree. On the drink end, two dozen craft beers are on tap, and the menu descriptions will make you want to try them all, such as Ommegang Adoration’s “ripe plum & apple with a myriad of spices.” Many of the wines are offered by the bottle and by the glass. And the creative cocktails use an unusual array of spirits, like the house drink 2 Govt., made with Buffalo Trace bourbon, housemade Grenadine, and Fees Aromatic Bitters.