White Horse Tavern

The house

Opened in 1673, the White Horse is the oldest restaurant still serving in the country. It has been a tavern, a meeting house, and a room for men who were writing a nation whether they knew it or not. With that much occupancy, ghost stories are almost a structural feature: a child on the upper floor, figures in colonial dress by the fire, a cold that sits in one chair and not the next. The kitchen is contemporary American now, plated for Newport money, but the rooms are still the seventeenth century. You do not come here to be frightened. You come to eat in a building that has outlived every diner it ever served — except, perhaps, a few.

Oysters, then a serious piece of beef. Sit near the hearth. If the room feels crowded for the reservation list, that is historically consistent.

The Ghostly Gourmet