Does Great Dining make a Great Downtown?

No doubt, having great restaurants downtown is a big part of being successful. LOTS of great restaurants. But what makes a restaurant great?  If you are a city-dweller, and eat out almost every day, your ideas might differ from those from a couple in the suburbs looking for a magical place to celebrate their anniversary. Or, if you are a young professional, living downtown in a hip loft over the haberdashery, you might think that dining hours should run later than the affluent empty-nesters that are moving into the city think. What's a restauranteur to do?

Here in Nashua, we have small cafes and coffee shops that provide for our early to mid-afternoon needs. You can't beat the breakfasts at Jackie's Diner and City Room Cafe; the lunches at The Seedling Cafe, Norton's Classic Diner, Thousand Crane II, Vietnam Noodle; and lunch buffets at San Francisco Kitchen and Cafe India.  Our coffee houses, including Riverwalk Cafe, Bonhoeffer Cafe, Express Cafe and Patisserie Bleu serve up ambience as well as good brew - often locally roasted.  Martha's Exchange hangs in 7 days a week for lunch, dinner and drinks while our trophy restaurants, Michael Timothy's, Surf, Saffron Bistro and Stella Blu provide wonderful "dinner experiences," for a price.

My personal favorite currently is Fody's Tavern. Housed in a historic building in Railroad Square, Fody's is personable, lively, welcomes diners of all ages and has excellent food, although pricey. What's cool is that Fody's offers a $4 Burger Sunday evenings, and a variety of specials during the week including 2-4-1 entrees on Tuesday, making it practical for us daily-diner-outters to eat there.

Does that sound like enough dining options to make a great downtown? Well, there IS room for more: the efficient quality sandwich/soup provider that caters to our downtown workers and shoppers short on time; the dinner restaurant that opens at lunch to offer small plates and lighter entrees; the restaurant that offers a place for reasonably priced morning meetings and quick, affordable catering options for lunch meetings.  . . .And does anybody know WHERE in New Hampshire you can find a superb German restaurant?