Now that the warmer weather is here, I don’t plan to be inside very often, and this past weekend I made a point to be outside for most of it. On Sunday, my boyfriend and I hiked up Mount Monadnock (my out-of-shape body, ruined by hibernating during the winter months, is still recovering) and then enjoyed a delicious, yet light, dinner at Acqua Bistro in Peterborough. Determined to enjoy the last hours of the weekend and the warm weather, we chose a table on the patio by the river, which was decorated with elegant, white string lights and surrounded by the sound of a waterfall in the distance. Our meal started with a few locally brewed beers (Geary’s out of Portland, M.E. and Harpoon) along with some fresh focaccia bread dipped in rosemary-infused olive oil. We then shared an appetizer, full of fresh, homemade red pepper hummus, warm grilled pita bread, chunks of feta cheese, tomato and olives which were the perfect complement to the humid air and our tired bodies. For a meal, my vegetarian counterpart ordered the Baby Spinach Salad, chocked full of more feta, grilled eggplant, dried tomatoes and substituted the lemon dressing for the balsamic pommery mustard vinaigrette. I ordered the New Orleans Style Crab Cakes which were three, tapas-style crab cakes, perfectly crispy on the outside, and seasoned well with chunks of fresh crab, accompanied with spicy, garlicy tomatoes and red pepper. For dessert, we split a strawberry rhubarb parfait, with generous heapings of fresh, homemade-tasting whipped cream between layers of the pureed, sweet and tangy rhubarb. Overall, it was a relaxing, delicious meal well deserved after a good hike, with a romantic setting to boot.

Tags: Acqua Bistro, Peterborough, upscale American fare

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 10:22 pm and is filed under Nashua nosh, chat 'n chew, summer musts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.