Lunch
Chowder, the lobster roll, a cod sandwich, salads, and the smoked bluefish pâté that we'd put on everything if we were allowed.
Lunch menuThe Ledger · Lunch & dinner
Dinner in the old chapel wing
New England seafood, cooked by a chef with a West African grandmother and a long memory. Wednesday to Sunday. The fish came in this morning; the building came in rather earlier.
Hours
- Lunch
- Wednesday–Sunday, 11:30 am–3:00 pm
- Dinner
- Wednesday–Thursday and Sunday, 5:00–9:30 pm
Friday–Saturday, 5:00–10:30 pm - Closed
- Monday and Tuesday, except in October, when we're open every day
- Garden terrace
- Lunch and dinner, late May to late September, weather permitting
- Bar
- The Undertaker's Parlor, daily from 4:00 pm
- Breakfast
- In the Lantern Room, not here
The last seating for dinner is thirty minutes before close. The kitchen will take a final order for dessert until the hour on the door, and the bar next door keeps going after that.
The rooms
The Ledger occupies the chapel wing, the long, high-ceilinged wing that Hollis & Vane added to the house in 1893, beside the chapel that is now the Great Hall. For more than half a century, Salem families gathered here to say goodbye. The tall arched windows are original; so is the pine floor, which the Fairweathers spent most of 1995 bringing back from under four layers of linoleum. The pews went long before our time. What's left is a room of unusual calm, with good acoustics, candlelight on long tables, and a feeling, several guests have told us, of being well looked after.
We've tried to treat its history with respect. There are no coffin jokes on the menu. There is a chocolate pot de crème called "Last Rites", which we think the old firm would have permitted.
The smaller dining room at the front of the wing was once the viewing parlor's anteroom and seats twenty-two. From late May to September we also set tables on the garden terrace, under the old pear tree, looking toward Dr. Pell's herb beds. Terrace seating is first come, first served; you can request it when you reserve, but we can't promise it, because we can't promise the weather.
Chef Dolores "Dee" Okafor
Dee grew up in Dorchester, in a triple-decker that smelled most days of pepper soup and on Sundays of her grandmother's jollof. Her grandmother came to Boston from Lagos in the 1960s and cooked for a church, a hospital cafeteria and, by her own count, half the neighborhood. "She thought New England food was shy," Dee says. "She wasn't wrong. But she loved the fish."
Dee cooked her way up through kitchens on the North Shore and in Providence, where she and Theo Alcott worked the same line for two years and argued about chowder (she won). When the Alcotts opened The Ledger in 2015, Theo ran it; in 2019 he asked Dee to come and run it with him, and the menu has been hers since. Theo still cooks three nights a week and makes all the bread.
Her cooking is New England first: cod and haddock from day boats, bluefish she smokes herself, Indian pudding baked for four hours, a chowder that would satisfy any Salem grandfather. The West African touches come in quietly, the way they did in her grandmother's kitchen. Benne seeds on the cod. Suya spice on grilled swordfish. A jollof risotto that converts the people who came in planning to order the steak. The brown-butter johnnycakes at breakfast are the dish she'll be remembered for, and she has made a kind of peace with that.
"Salem was a port," she says. "Everything here came from somewhere else. Pepper from Sumatra, sugar from the islands, people from everywhere. I'm just putting it back on the plate."
What we're cooking
The menu changes with the season and, within the season, with what the boats and farms bring. A few dishes never leave: the chowder, the benne-seed cod, the short rib from October to April, the Indian pudding. At lunch there's a lobster roll, served Connecticut-style (warm, with butter) unless you ask for it cold with mayonnaise, in which case we'll do that too and not say anything.
Lunch mains run $16 to $34 and dinner mains $28 to $46. On Wednesday through Saturday evenings Dee also serves the Ledger tasting, five courses for $95 a person, with an optional $55 wine pairing.
Dinner
Raw bar, the benne-seed cod, braised short rib, a vegetarian jollof risotto, and whatever came off the boats.
Dinner menu
Dessert & the tasting
Indian pudding, "Last Rites" pot de crème, and the five-course Ledger tasting with optional pairing.
Tasting menuReservations
We recommend reservations for dinner, and in October we'd say they're close to essential: tables for Friday and Saturday evenings that month are usually gone by the end of August. Lunch is easier, though weekend lunches in October fill too. Walk-ins are always welcome at the bar, where the full dinner menu is served.
- By phone: (978) 555-0148, choose option 2 for the restaurant. Calls are answered 10 am–9 pm, Wednesday to Sunday.
- By email: table@cranelantern.example. Tell us the date, time, number of people, and anything we should know (allergies, a birthday, a wish for the terrace). We'll confirm within a day.
- Inn guests: ask at the front desk, or note it on your reservation request. We hold a few tables each night for people staying in the house.
Parties of 8 or more please call rather than email; we'll seat you at the long table under the center window, and a 20% gratuity is added. For larger groups, rehearsal dinners or a whole room to yourselves, see private dining.
We hold tables for 15 minutes. For parties of six or more on October weekends, we ask for a card to hold the table and charge $25 per person for no-shows or cancellations inside 48 hours. We don't like doing it. It's October.
Allergies, children, and other good questions
Tell us about allergies when you book and again when you sit down. The kitchen handles shellfish, fish, sesame (the benne seeds), peanuts (the suya spice), dairy, eggs and wheat every day, so we can adapt many dishes but can't promise an allergen-free kitchen. Most of the menu can be made gluten-free, and there are always at least two vegetarian mains and one vegan.
Children are welcome at lunch and at dinner until 7:30 pm. There's no children's menu as such, but the kitchen will do a half portion of most things, plus plain buttered pasta and fried haddock with no fuss.
Dress is whatever you're wearing. In October that may include a cape. We have seen all of it.
The Ledger is level with the front hall through a wide doorway, and there is also a step-free entrance from the garden terrace side. Ask us and we'll meet you there.
The cod with the sesame crust is the best thing I've eaten in Massachusetts, and I live in Massachusetts.
— A diner, March 2026
Special dinners this season
- Séance Supper, every Friday in October, in the Great Hall: a theatrical dinner, $145 a person, 18+. Details.
- Thanksgiving, Thursday, November 26: a set menu, $89 adults, $35 children under 12, seatings at 1, 3:30 and 6 pm. Reservations open October 1.
- New Year's Eve: the Ledger tasting with a sixth course and a glass of something, $135. Reservations open November 1.