Summerguide 2010

Dinner Upstaged

With seaside dining this spectacular, 
you might just forget to eat.

by Colin W. Sargent

Life is sweet on Newport Drive, where supper on the Terrace Grille at the Bar Harbor Inn & Spa includes the greatest floor show since the Moulin Rouge: Frenchman Bay.

If you’re hoping to channel your inner Rockefeller, this resort has hit the spot since 1887. Having already fiddled with your demitasse spoon and sorbet the night before during a formal dinner at the inn’s famous Mt. Desert Reading Room (where President Taft once dined), you now venture out to the legendary yellow-umbrellaed terrace for a lobster feast al fresco overlooking the bay.

Except you can’t overlook it. It’s everywhere in sensurround as Acadia explodes before you: “You see Bar Island and the Porcupines–lots of beautiful blue ocean,” says Terrace manager Carrie Tooley. “There’s nothing else like it in the world.”

Then, because too much is never enough, diners watch as the glam schooner Margaret Todd (adults $35) hoists its red sails at the end of the inn’s pier and magnificently heads away, darting between islands as a cool breeze lifts the tablecloths.

The favorite treat here, natch, is the “Maine Lobster Bake ($35.95)–New England clam chowder, fresh corn bread, fresh steamed clams and mussels, red potatoes, corn on the cob, and fresh blueberry pie that we bake right here on the premises,” Tooley says.

But, what if (heaven forbid) someone doesn’t want lobster?

“It happens,” Tooley says. “We have a char-grilled petite sirloin and shrimp skewer for $18.95, served with red potatoes and corn bread.”

Fresh, elegantly restrained, and simple, the food is worthy; the luscious dishes play a flawless Carole Lombard to the show-stopping, Clark Gable views.

What to do but jump into your white ducks, download some Rudy Vallee tunes, and tell the swells you’ve been coming here every summer since Hector was a pup!

Terrace Grille & Reading Room Restaurant
Bar Harbor Inn, Newport Drive, Bar Harbor
Lunch Monday-Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. 
Dinner Monday-Saturday, 4 p.m. to 1 a.m.
288-3351, barharborinn.com