PORTSMOUTH, NH — As temperatures start to drop into the 30s and colder, many golfers may be resigned to putting their clubs away for the winter as they wait longingly for spring.
But the owner of the new Tour restaurant and indoor golf simulator facility says “this is our peak season.”
Ryan Lent said Tour will offer Seacoast residents five oversized indoor golf simulators, featuring more than 80 different courses from around the world, along with a full-size restaurant and bar serving “upscale country club food.”
“We’re trying to marry high-end food with a state-of-the-art virtual golf experience,” Lent said about the new business, which opened Wednesday.
“This concept just hasn’t been done before. That’s taken a lot of work, but I think we have a really good product at this point,” he said.
Lent, who is president of NNE Hospitality, also owns The Puddle Dock in Portsmouth.
“This has been a true labor of love, and we couldn’t be more excited to offer this experience to the Seacoast and beyond,” Lent said. “Our mission moving forward will be to help our guests create memories while welcoming, serving, and engaging them through the union of golf and hospitality.”
Tour is located at 581 Lafayette Road — formerly home of Tuscan Kitchen. Visitors will be struck by just how big it is as they walk into the restaurant or golf simulator areas.
Jerry Lewis cinemas site
Some longtime residents might remember Tour’s location was also once home to the former Jerry Lewis cinemas.
Lent, a Rye resident who grew up in Portsmouth and graduated from Portsmouth High School, said workers had to dig into the foundation under the slab when they were creating Tour’s space.
“And we found the old walls to the movie theater,” he said.
People sitting in one of the many booths throughout the restaurant space can enjoy television for its party.
“It’s just like the old jukeboxes at Papa Gino’s,” he said.
In addition to the five golf simulators, there are more than 200 restaurant seats, about 30 televisions, as well as restaurant and bar areas where you can see your food being prepared in Tour’s open concept kitchen.
The simulators, as Lent explained, are really “massive multi-media screens” that golfers hit into after picking the course they want to play from famous courses located around the world.
“We use special balls with markings on them that will track spin rates and ball speed and flight patterns and that sort of thing that determines how you’re playing a hole,” Lent said.
Plenty of room
Lent said he designed Tour’s golf simulator areas to be larger than he has seen at other locations, noting they sometimes left him feeling “like you had to lean back so you didn’t get hit by a club.”
“When we designed these, we took that into account and we made them bigger, there’s also bar seating behind a wall at each simulator,” he said.
Tour has four simulators where four golfers can comfortably play, plus there’s a fifth “executive simulator suite” in a “conference-size” individual room that features a multi-media screen that’s about 23 feet wide.
“This room can hold 50 people as event space if they’re not playing golf, but if you are playing golf, you can fit 10 to 14 people very comfortably in here and still play,” Lent said as he demonstrated the executive simulator at Tour.
Each golf simulator will be serviced by wait staff and golfers will have places to store their golf bags before and after they play, he said.
Lent, an amateur golfer who loves the sport but acknowledges, “I’m not very good,” hopes to offer lessons at Tour beginning as soon as this spring after hiring a golf pro.
“Hopefully I’ll get better playing here,” he said.
What’s on Tour’s county club menu
Lent stressed he wanted to craft “an upscale casual country club type menu,” around the golf simulators so guests can have a complete experience.
“We have a fantastic pasta selection, we have filet, we have New York strip, there’s seafood options, it’s really just upscale country club fare,” he said as he stood in the middle of Tour’s 11,000-square-foot kitchen space. “We have a top-quality chef making all the ingredients from scratch. It’s not going to be your typical restaurant.”
Chef Doug D’Avico describes Tour’s menu offerings as “fresh American cuisine, with influences of Italian and a little bit of Asian.”
“We’re trying to be great county club cuisine, so we can take care of the golfers, but we also want to be able to be a great 160-seat restaurant where people can come in for a great dinner,” he said. He spoke Tuesday with his massive lighted kitchen in the background. “We’re trying to do a little bit really, really well so that we can get people to come in on a consistent basis.”
A different approach
Tour is not seeking to compete with other restaurants that specialize in say chowder or fried fish, but instead will offer visitors “something a little bit different that they can’t get anywhere else.”
As an example, he points to their Bacon Bomb appetizers, which he described as “Asian-style pork meatballs … wrapped in bacon.”
Tour also offers a Baked Local Cod in Paper entry, which D’Avico says is locally caught cod that’s baked in a bag with all the other ingredients.
“Everything’s created in the bag and then brought to the table,” he said. “When you open it up, you have that wonderful aroma from the dish and then your fish is moist and it’s hot and it’s something different.”
Tour also offers monthly memberships that golfers can buy that give them additional benefits, or discounted simulator rates, or both, Lent said.
Hours are noon to 8 p.m. ET Wednesdays through Sundays.