Walk down Walker Street on a Friday evening this August and you'll notice something that wasn't there a year ago: people with suitcases. Not day-trippers popping over from Portsmouth for dinner, not outlet shoppers detouring off Route 1, but guests checking into a room a few doors down from where a children's clothing shop used to be. For a neighborhood that built its whole identity on being a place you eat and then leave, that's a small detail with a big implication.
A Decade Built on One Meal at a Time
Kittery Foreside earned its reputation the slow way, one plate and one pour at a time. The Black Birch has been quietly running a kitchen out of a converted 1950s post office building on Government Street for years, known as much for its unmarked, ankle-height sign as for its fish and chips. Anju Noodle Bar brought ramen and pork buns to a stretch of Maine coast better known for lobster rolls. Tributary Brewing Company has been pouring pints around the corner on Shapleigh Road. Beach Pea Baking Co., named for a cashier who spent two decades at Bob's Clam Hut, turns out crullers that regulars plan mornings around.
Every one of those businesses grew Foreside's food scene by keeping people at the table a little longer, then sending them home. Diners came from Portsmouth across the bridge, from York, from wherever they'd parked, ate well, and drove back out. The neighborhood's nickname, the Brooklyn of Portsmouth, was earned entirely at the dinner table. Nobody stayed the night, because until this year, there was nowhere in Foreside proper to do it.
The first hint that the evening economy was widening came late last year, when Salty Spirits opened in the Foreside under Deb and Michael McCluskey, who also own Lil's Cafe. A familiar local family backing a second concept, rather than an outsider testing the waters, was a quiet signal that people who already know this business thought Foreside had room for more than dinner.
What Opened This Summer Is a Different Kind of Bet
Two openings this summer read less like the next course in that food scene and more like a shift in what Foreside is trying to be.
Kittery Wine Bar opened this summer at 10 Walker Street, in a storefront that had been Kit & Co., a children's clothing shop, until it closed in January. The bar is owned by Katie Howard-Smith and her husband, Jody Smith, who relocated to the Seacoast during the pandemic. Howard-Smith spent nearly two decades in journalism and media sales before pursuing professional wine certifications and moving into wine retail and education. Her sister, Sadie Bell, who worked in New York City's restaurant and bar industry, helped bring the space to life. "We fell in love with this community," Howard-Smith said. The wine bar leans into that: wines by the glass and bottle, cheese and charcuterie boards, tinned seafood, and a Sunday brunch menu, with hiring that prioritizes Seacoast residents and sourcing from Maine farmers and producers.
A wine bar is not a restaurant chasing dinner reservations. It is a place people linger, return to on a Tuesday, or wander into after they've already eaten somewhere else. That's a subtly different kind of foot traffic than the one Foreside has spent a decade cultivating.
The Real Signal: Foreside's First Overnight Rooms
The more telling opening is The Foreside Inn, which officially welcomed its first guests on July 21, 2026, at 29 Wentworth Street. The boutique hotel has 24 rooms across two buildings and is owned by Madbury Real Estate Ventures, a hospitality group that also runs The Rockport House in Rockport, Massachusetts, and co-owns The Coach House Inn in Salem, Massachusetts. Each room was designed around the neighborhood's working waterfront and arts scene, with the property positioned as a home base for exploring Kittery, Portsmouth, and the Maine coast rather than a stopover on the way to somewhere else.
That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. Foreside has always been an easy walk over the bridge from downtown Portsmouth, which is exactly why so many of its visitors used to be day-trippers headed back across the water to sleep. The Foreside Inn opening within Foreside itself, and within about a month of Kittery Wine Bar, means overnight guests no longer need to leave the neighborhood to find a bed. For the first time, the district that built a decade of loyalty on dinner traffic now has a reason for that traffic to stay past dessert.
What It's Like to Live Near It Now
For residents, the practical effects show up in small ways before they show up in big ones. Walker and Government Streets, already tight with weekend diners, now carry an extra layer of people who aren't rushing to make a reservation or beat a parking meter, because they're not driving anywhere afterward. BOARD., the wine and charcuterie spot on Shapleigh Road that's been pouring the Seacoast's widest selection of wines by the glass for a few years now, suddenly has neighbors doing something similar a few blocks away. The Kittery Art Association Gallery on Walker Street, which has hosted rotating exhibitions since 1958, is now around the corner from overnight guests who might wander in on a whim rather than plan a special trip.
None of this changes the bones of the neighborhood. Foreside is still compact enough that a guest staying at The Foreside Inn can walk to the Black Birch, cut over to Anju for noodles the next night, and grab a crossword and a cruller at Beach Pea before checking out, all without touching a car. What's changed is the shape of a Friday night. Where the crowd used to thin out by nine as diners headed back over the bridge or up Route 1, there's now a slice of it that has nowhere else to be until checkout.
The Neighborhood's Bet on Itself
Two businesses opening within roughly a month of each other, one built around lingering over a glass of something and the other built around an overnight stay, is not a coincidence so much as a read on where Foreside's momentum is headed. A wine bar doesn't work in a place people only pass through. Neither does a 24-room boutique hotel. Both are wagers that the neighborhood can hold onto people longer than a meal, and that the same qualities that built its food scene, walkability, a working waterfront, an art gallery that's been there since 1958, are enough to make someone want to wake up here too.
For anyone who already calls Foreside home, that's worth watching this fall. The crowd on Walker Street may start to look a little different: fewer headlights pulling out after dinner, a few more people still there for coffee the next morning.
If the changes taking shape in your corner of Kittery have you curious about what they mean for your own property, Great Seacoast Homes has spent years reading these shifts up and down the Southern Maine coast. Request a Personalized Home Valuation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
