Restaurants in Milford

Apple Spice Junction’s menus spring from a deep love of deli cuisine and a fervent desire to make lunch the standout meal of the day. At the eatery, chefs layer fresh-baked breads with deli meats and cheeses to create more than a dozen types of hearty sandwiches, including sugar-cured virginia ham and a classic pastrami-and-swiss. Patrons who would rather stay inside can order box lunches teeming with dill pickles, desserts, and a choice of pasta, potato salad, or frog-eye salad. Apple Spice Junction’s friendly delivery team also directs catering trays toward offices and sets up stations of build-your-own breakfast burritos, baked potatoes, and fajita-themed great helms.

Beyond a slender art deco "3" glowing above a trellis-flanked front door, chefs put a modern and inventive spin on classic American cuisine. Thai, Caribbean, and Mexican flavors exert influence upon savory small plates and hearty entrees such as fried pickles, champagne-glazed salon, and pecan-crusted chicken. Soft, golden light sets sleek banquettes and dark wooden furniture aglow in the spacious main dining room, and warm weather heralds al fresco dining on 3's sunlit patio. Two stately private rooms host events from business luncheons to wedding receptions, for which 3's team of soiree swamis design custom menus, arrange decorations, and prevent DJs from only playing rockabilly.

Native North Enders Vinnie Amato and Steve Costa opened Cafe Porto Bello to revisit the Italian cuisine of their childhoods and re-create the atmosphere of dinners with family. For more than a decade, the café's chefs have prioritized freshness by preparing every dish to order with spices blended in-house and by garnishing gourmet, hand-tossed pizzas with their own roasted red peppers. The dining room is warm and softly lit, with sturdy wooden tables and seating for up to 100. In the adjacent lounge, bartenders pour Italian and American varietals in syncopation or ragtime with live jazz sets.

Two Papas Biscotti inspires dreams of Italian cafés or Tuscan countrysides with its biscotti, which are handmade and hand-cut, resulting in various shapes and textures. King Arthur flour builds each biscuit's skeleton, and fresh fruit and chopped nuts give varieties such as the cranberry walnut or limoncello their distinct flavor. Traditional vanilla-almond biscotti charm palates with slivered almonds, and a double-chocolate-chip biscotti satiates cocoa lovers. All biscotti are twice baked, allowing eaters to experience a taste of Italy without making out with Fabio.

Though recently featured in a USA Today Travel article that praised its “astonishing” chow mein sandwich, Chan’s Fine Oriental Dining is known by locals for more than just its kitchen’s specialties. The restaurant also won a prestigious Keeping the Blues Alive award in 2011, and its world-famous jazz and blues performances have helped cement its self-proclaimed reputation as New England’s "home of eggroll, jazz, and blues."

Long before the sounds of horns and saxophones filled its halls, the New Shanghai Restaurant opened its doors in 1905. It was not until the mid-1960s, however, that the Chan family refurbished the Woonsocket landmark and began serving an innovative combination of Cantonese, Szechwan, Hunan, and Mandarin cuisines. Around this time, the Chans also brought in the live jazz and blues music that continues to fill the main dining area—known as the Horseshoe Bar Lounge—and the famous Four Seasons Jazz and Blues Club.

With its red paper lanterns, traditional Chinese artwork, and colorful paintings of musicians, the Four Seasons has played host to such legendary blues, jazz, and folk artists as Dizzy Gillespie and Rebecca Parris. A buffet spread accompanies musical performances, during which enthralled audiences watch as musicians pound eggrolls against snare drums or slide their hands along guitars strung up with slippery chow mein noodles.

The McMahon clan doesn't just advocate family time; they live and breathe it every day at McMahon's Countryside Grille. Owned by Mom and Dad, the kids also chip in at the eatery, a fact applauded by Wicked Local. The menu's house-made comfort food, steak, and seafood dishes welcome clans coming together to break bread or draft the new family crest. The homemade meatloaf hails directly from the McMahon's own dinner table, and is a perfect precursor to the Bliss ice cream served at an outdoor window near picnic tables.

Indoors, weekly entertainment sets the restaurant abuzz, from live local musicians and comedians on the weekends to open-mic Thursdays, when amateur funnymen test their chops and skill for fending off flying tomatoes. Each Tuesday, contestants crowd into cozy maroon booths around wooden tables and answer quick-fire trivia questions.