Food & Drink in Durham

At its Dover location, The Farm Bar & Grille serves hearty plates of home-style food inside what else but a big red barn. But just as the familiar comfort food gives way to subtle surprises, the barn hides an 80-person outdoor deck, in full view of the Cocheco River. Yet, despite the picturesque vista, the best part about dining amid the fresh air might be the barbecue smell. A mammoth smoker rests just beneath the deck, releasing the aroma of slow-roasted baby-back ribs, fall-off-the-bone chicken, and pulled pork, piled onto platters and sandwiches or wrapped inside quesadillas and burritos.

Across the city, The Farm Bar & Grille pops up again, this time in Manchester. The menu is the same: half-pound burgers, sandwiches stacked atop Virgilio’s Bakery bread delivered fresh daily, and hearty comfort food, such as chicken pot pies and meatloaf dinners, and what NHmagazine.com calls the “Best Pulled Pork." Here, rustic furniture crafted, as NewHampshire.com discovered, from an old barn fills the cozy, red-walled space. A cute chalkboard mural of a moonlit farm hangs behind the bar, where servers offer 20 kinds of draft beer.

More than 24 different custom loose-leaf teas and herbal blends line the shelves at Teatotaller Tea House for patrons to peruse. Panini sandwiches stuffed with sweet and savory fillings, scones, and gluten-free treats accompany cups of freshly steeped tea or specialty coffee drinks.

People around the country may be able to enjoy filet mignon, crab cakes, and other elegant American cuisine, but not with the same flavors as The District. That’s because the restaurant crafts its seasonally inspired menus with ingredients from more than 15 local farms. Aside from delighting taste buds with pan-seared local cod and bourbon-glazed pork tenderloin with plum barbecue sauce and house sauerkraut, the chefs hand cut their fries and pair them with housemade ketchup and create ice-cream flights made from local snow people. Handcrafted cocktails allow clients to imbibe local flavors, such as the cider-press cocktail—made with absolute pear and house-mulled NH cider—or The District’s local rhubarb mojito.

Every day is Mother’s Day for Chef Sam. The family’s matriarch, Sam’s mother, Assia, recreated the recipes of her girlhood in Revorno, Sicily, filling her home with tantalizing smells and her children with a love of family-style cooking. Sam puts these values on display at La Bella BYOB Italian Restaurant, dishing out Southern Italian staples including lemony chicken francese and veal cacciatore in a softly lit dining room decorated to resemble a rustic Italian countryside home. He also invites diners to bring their own alcoholic drinks and enjoy them without a corking fee, though they must still be 21 and have the ability to recite the Greek alphabet backwards in order to consume alcohol. Fulfilling his promise to make everyone feel like family, Chef Sam also makes La Bella's dishes available for catering for as few as 10 or as many as 1,000 eaters.

Owner Jacqui’s healthy take on homestyle cooking shines through in every entree at Serenity Cafe & Catering, whether she’s cracking eight eggs to make breakfast pizza in the morning or baking housemade dough for the oven-roasted turkey BLT. A bulk of the menu is dedicated to sating noontime appetites, with fruit smoothies, deli sandwiches, and a hummus wrap stuffed with roasted red-pepper hummus, sprouts, and avocado. Even the dessert menu, with the Wacqui Jacqui brand of gluten-free cookies, sticks to the healthy-living program