Portsmouth Brewery - Go for the Beer, Not the Food

We stopped at the Portsmouth Brewery on a Wednesday night on our way home from the shopping outlets in Kittery, Maine.  I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been here – and how many times we’ve taken friends here, but it had been over a year since our last visit.  It was always a great place to stop for a great beer and great food.   Fortunately, the beer is still great, but unfortunately, the food is not so great.  Sometime over the past year, the quality has suffered and it seemed like the menu was significantly smaller.

For dinner, I had the veggie burger with swiss cheese for $9.  The burger was mushy and lacked flavor, and the sad little piece of swiss cheese had somehow slipped off the burger and burned on the grill, making it completely worthless.  I can say that the side of fries were very good – crispy outside and soft inside – just the way I like them.  My husband had the tofu stir fry for $13, that had too many noodles and not enough vegetables.  The flavor was drab and lacked anything interesting.  Okay, admittedly, maybe these dishes were not the best choices from a brew pub – but nothing else on the menu was even tempting.  The beer was great – we had a saison that started out sweet and had a nice white pepper finish.  I would go again for a few beers and snack food, such as nachos, chicken tenders, or calamari.  Total cost of dinner at the Portsmouth Brewery for one veggie burger, one stir fry and one beer - $29.