By: Elizabeth Dinan, Seacoastonline.com

PORTSMOUTH -- There are 30,615 restaurant seats in the city, 8,819 more than the number of residents and, as Health Inspector Kim McNamara noted, many of those seats turn over multiple times a day.
The health inspector said the numbers don’t include food inspected at temporary food-focused events, or the farmer’s market.

“So there’s a significant amount of food served in Portsmouth,” she said.
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All those meals are economic boosts for both the city and the state, said Valerie Rochon, president of the Chamber Collaborative of Greater Portsmouth. She said the chamber has supported two 10-day restaurant week events each year for the past 10 years.

“The restaurants call them 10 days of Saturday nights,” she said, calling Portsmouth a culinary destination.

By: Lisa Redmond, New Hampshire Union Leader

MANCHESTER — A Manchester country music restaurant and bar is singing the “Working Man Blues” after paying thousands of dollars to settle a music copyright infringement lawsuit.

More than a dozen music companies, led by Broadcast Music Inc., joined a federal lawsuit to force Bonfire Restaurant and Country Bar/Torched Pizza at 950 Elm St. to either pay the licensing fees or pull the plug on the use of copyrighted music.

Pat Mills, general manager at Bonfire, told the Union Leader on Monday that he wrote a $5,000 check two weeks ago to end the lawsuit. “I believe it is settled,’’ he said.
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Bonfire plays music via a jukebox and music videos through Control Play, which provides background music for restaurants and bars, Mills said. In response to an online inquiry, Control Play said it offers licensing at an additional cost.

In the lawsuit, filed on March 29 in U.S. District Court, BMI, which owns 14 million copyrighted musical compositions by 900,000 songwriters, composers and publishers, claims Bonfire has played “at least one song’’ owned by the music companies since it opened in 2017.