Anne S.
Yelp
If you want a quintessential Maine summer sundowner experience with a nice stiff cocktail, this is the place! Think WASP country club, Cheever-era vibe: mallards on the wall prints, model ships and lighthouses in the lobby, a fireplace going in some dim room in the back somewhere in the middle of summer, young clean-cut seasonal staff, families spilling around the tables on the porch with children wearing matching outfits.
Some of these people will be guests at the inn; others, like me, will be diners coming from the city (i.e. Portland) who've made reservations for dinner on the porch to catch the sunset.
And the sunset was amazing! You have a perfect view out over the beach at Prouts Neck, and is there anything better than sitting in a deck chair with a cocktail and just feeling right there with it all? My friends and I were keeping it classic and all of us agreed that it was just like an old-school country club, where you can count on a good stiff drink no matter what.
Also like an old-school country club, the food was . . . well, pretty terrible and overpriced. Again keeping it classic, we ordered shrimp cocktail, crab salad, and then steaks. The shrimp was a bit watery but otherwise OK; the crab salad also OK, just no real flavor. By then we'd all realized what we were in for, but nothing could have prepared us for the flagrant abuse these poor steaks had been put through. We all asked for medium rare: all three were dry, gray, tough, and required us to saw through them with our knives; there wasn't much sear on them but it seemed obvious they'd been quickly pan-seared much earlier and left under a heat lamp to dry for several hours. For these atrocities, we paid $49 each.
Did we have a good time? Sure--as I mentioned, those drinks were nice and stiff, and it was a lovely August evening and the view was great! Crazy as it sounds I'd go there again for a drink and the view, but I'd plan on eating elsewhere.