Second Serving on the Seacoast

Friends since high school, Louie’s co-owners RJ Joyce, left, and James Woodhouse reopened the Portsmouth staple eight years after a devastating fire destroyed the original building. Photo/ Jill Armstrong

The significance of neighborhood restaurants extends well beyond the food. These locales are gathering places where people find connection and make memories that last a lifetime, whether it’s sharing a midweek charcuterie board with a friend or relishing the wholesome comfort of soup and bread with the family on a cold winter afternoon.   

For many on the Seacoast, the loss of two community staples several years ago — Louie’s of Portsmouth and Exeter’s Loaf and Ladle — was particularly devastating.

In 2017, the Pleasant Street building that housed Louie’s burned down. The irreparable damage forced owners James Woodhouse and RJ Joyce to close their doors and begin the search for a new location. Eight years later, and to the delight of many loyal patrons, Louie’s reopened in October on the port city’s West End. 

“People are showing up,” said Woodhouse, seated at a dining room table, bright morning light flooding through the windows. “It’s a game-changer, and it’s helped us survive.” 

About a year after the fire, Woodhouse and Joyce took over the Carriage House restaurant in Rye, another beloved Seacoast institution, while they worked on reopening Louie’s. 

“It’s no exaggeration. Every single night that we opened the door at the Carriage House somebody would tell us that they miss Louie’s and asked when it would reopen,” Joyce said. “It was always super flattering. That support sustained us from the very start when the fire happened and we didn’t have a new home.” 

Louie’s continues to serve rustic Italian cuisine. Returning customers will recognize the menu’s format: a section dedicated to pasta appetizers, such as cacio e pepe and pansotti; a selection of local and imported cheese and charcuterie items; and several entrees, including whole roasted flounder and dry-aged duck, their accoutrements evolving with the seasons. 

“Even at the Pleasant Street location, the menu evolved seasonally, so we didn’t think that going back to our last menu made a lot of sense because we are eight years evolved,” Woodhouse said. “We like to think that the menu would have evolved along with that.”

Louie’s serves rustic Italian cuisine in a contemporary setting, the menu evolving with the seasons. Photo/ Jill Armstrong

Although the atmosphere of the new restaurant looks completely different — a refined, contemporary space in a brick building off Islington Street — longtime patrons will recognize the distinctive display of wooden shoe lasts tucked away in the dining room’s interior. 

The lasts were part of a much larger installation at the old location, which featured hundreds of these foot-shaped molds, all facing in the same direction. “Every night after we left, one of our staff would turn one backward. It would drive us insane. And no one ’fessed up,” Joyce said, laughing.

When asked about the origin of the restaurant’s name, the pair said they wanted Louie’s to capture the idea and feel of their brand. Ultimately, they wanted a name that was conceptually Italian enough, but that also felt familiar, like an iconic neighborhood joint. 

“We’ve always wanted to make sure that we defined ourselves by our warmth,” Joyce said. “We’re not just an occasional kind of thing. When people join you midweek, you’re in the fabric of their life.”

Breaking bread in Exeter

Brothers Aidan, left, and Andrew Ulery reopened the Loaf and Ladle on Water Street in December,
restoring a family legacy. Photo/ Jill Armstrong

Exeter’s Loaf and Ladle, which reopened in December after a 12-year hiatus, is another iconic establishment whose legacy in the community has endured. The new location of this family-run bakery, which serves up fresh bread and homemade soups, is run by Andrew and Aidan Ulery, the sons of Meredith Pease-Stolper Mygatt, who purchased the shop from Joan Harlow in 1986. 

The new location is housed in what was formerly St. Anthony’s Bakery. An acquaintance of the Ulerys, owner Anthony Antosiewicz decided it was time to retire and sold the shop to them. 

“It felt nice to be able to take over a spot that was already a spot,” Andrew said. “It didn’t feel like we were stepping on someone’s toes.” 

While the original restaurant sat 99 inside and 45 outside, the new Loaf and Ladle is much more intimate. Regardless, the Ulerys have done their best to preserve what guests remember most: the yellow and green colorway, the long, wooden tray railing at the counter, and the same recipes from Harlow’s 1983 “Loaf and Ladle Cookbook” — the Iberian chicken soup, for example, which has been a fan favorite early into the reopening. 

Living only a block from the original location, and just young boys themselves when their mother purchased the restaurant, Andrew and Aidan grew up in the business. “A lot of the early cooks were our babysitters,” Andrew said. “And they always wanted to get us in there, serving drinks and cookies — just being the cute kids behind the counter.” 

As the brothers worked to reopen, friends lent a hand renovating the space. A former baker, who now owns a bike manufacturing company, has returned to make sandwiches on Saturdays during the winter months. And past employees have come in requesting the “Tommy B,” a staff nickname for the hearty tomato blue cheese soup that emerged from the kitchen years ago. 

“Reopening has been sort of a fireball,” Andrew said. “There’s been a lot of hype, and things have been going really well.” 

“Everyone’s said thank you for bringing it back,” Aidan added. “They appreciate all the things we’ve done to make it feel like the Loaf.” 

Andrew and Aidan were flattered when a longtime patron came in to show off his new tattoo: a reproduction of the Loaf and Ladle logo, which features a slice of bread positioned between two curved soup ladles.

The Loaf and Ladle, a mainstay of the Exeter community, serves fresh baked breads and homemade soups daily. Photo/ Loaf and Ladle

“He got it a month before we opened,” Aidan said. “He had the cookbook, and his family were big Loaf and Ladle people. He’d been coming here since he was a baby.” 

Linda Clark, who started working at the Loaf and Ladle in the fall of 1986, visited on opening day, savoring two of her favorites: a cup of clam chowder and a slice of the lemon-carrot bread.

“That brought back all the memories of years past,” she said. She even made sure to bring a loaf of the signature anadama bread, a dark, rustic bread made with cornmeal and molasses, back to her coworkers at the office. 

Clark remembers the early days fondly: “We had a line out the door for several hours every day, and the energy was electric.” 

“I learned so much at the Loaf and Ladle,” she said. “I think so many of us were shaped by our time there.” 

The Loaf and Ladle experienced its fair share of hardships, Clark recalled, mostly in the form of flooding events. “But we always bounced back a stronger team,” she said, “ready to get back to what we were so good at.”