Guilford Is The Place To Be for Alfresco Dining at Its Best

The last place you want to be tonight is the kitchen. Let’s eat out!

Restaurant name: The Place

Address: 901 Boston Post Road, Guilford

Phone number: 203-453-9276; www.theplaceguilford.com

Cuisine: Fish and seafood, prepared and served clambake-style

Price range: $9 to $30

Take out: All items on the menu are available to go.

Kid-friendly:  An outdoor restaurant with wooden tables and stumps couldn’t be more family-friendly. No one needs to worry about spilled food. There is no separate children’s menu, but parents can bring prepared foods for youngsters who won’t eat seafood.

Why you should go right now: The Place offers a unique but seasonal dining opportunity, which will come to an end for this year in October. Both the cooking and the eating take place outdoors. The dining “room” is a striped tent that covers bright red tables and tree stumps that double as chairs. Guests can watch the culinary action at the 18-foot fire pit where a wood fire provides the heat for grilling corn, lobster, fish, chicken breasts and rib-eye steaks. Roasted clams are the specialty of the house – half shells popped on the grill to cook in their own juices and a touch of barbecue sauce – and bluefish is now available. Regulars know that the menu is quite simple with roasted corn on the cob the only side dish. But, if there’s something you like to eat or drink with a clambake-style meal – snacks while you wait for dinner, coleslaw, potato salad, wine or beer – the owners welcome you to bring it along.