Murphy's on the Green, Hanover, N.H.

After picking up Ryan's mother from the airport in Manchester Saturday afternoon, once we got her checked in to the dormitory and everyone freshened up and changed clothes, we all (with Brian) went to a celebratory dinner at Murphy's on the Green in Hanover in the shop area just across the street from the Dartmouth campus.

Murphy's is one of those typical, upscale bars and restaurants that are so frequently seen these days near college campuses, and, as expected, included a lot of Dartmouth memorabilia in their decor. Our booth happened to be located on the narrow passageway alongside the bar and between the front dining room and the kitchen, so there was a lot of traffic back and forth. We also got a good view of the goings-on in the bar through the half-window wall that divided us.

While Ryan's mother and I drank iced tea, Ryan got a glass of Blue Fish Riesling white wine and Brian got the first of his two gin and tonics. Brian made quite a hobby of drinking gin and tonics everywhere we went all weekend long, so he insisted that I take a photograph of his G & T at Murphy's. Amusingly, I don't think he really liked it that much. He's very particular about the proportions of gin and tonic water; when we were packing up Ryan's apartment, Brian was having a fit because he couldn't find a jigger with which to measure whilst he was preparing himself a cocktail.

Anyway, on to the food.....Ryan's mother started with a house salad and Brian started with a Caesar salad.




I had a cup of a nice New England style clam chowder, and Ryan got a big basket of sweet potato fries that he shared with the table.




For our main courses, Ryan picked the shrimp fettucine. It looked okay, but it was definitely the American restaurant version of the dish, not an authentic alfredo sauce.



Ryan's mother had the Angus sirloin steak with a baked potato. It looked good and I could have eaten one myself.



Brian had a very lovely grilled rainbow trout resting on a bed of garlic mashed potatoes that he just raved about. We also had a prolonged argument about his vegetable, him saying they were scallions and me saying they were long green beans. I, of course, was right, and he eventually had to admit that scallions don't split in half and have little bean-shaped seeds inside.



I had the meatloaf and mashed potatoes with the same "scallion-y" green beans. The meatloaf was a nice touch of comfort food.



We opted not to do dessert, as we were headed directly to the Graduation Gala, where there were to be plenty of desserts and other goodies.