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Hotel Restaurants You'd Actually Eat In: Maine's White Barn Inn

Where: 37 Beach Ave. [map], Kennebunk Beach, ME, United States, 04043

The reputation of hotel restaurants as sad, overpriced affairs is quickly falling away as some talented chefs make the eateries destinations of their own. This week, Katherine Spiers is taking us to some of the best hotel restaurants in the world.

Kennebunkport, a seaside village in Maine, is known mostly for its position under the Bush presidencies as the "summer White House." The Walker-Bush clan has owned an estate there for over a century, hosting guests like Yitzhak Rabin and Billy Graham for the last 20 years.

The White Barn Inn, just down the way a bit, has served dinner to a few of these dignitaries as well—though the restaurant's more likely to be the setting for a marriage proposal. The huge barn, retrofitted and painted and decorated in country chic, certainly looks the part.

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Find a Tax Deduction at a Maine Inn

Where: 108 Summer Street [map], Kennebunk, ME, United States, 04043

"Nature hates calculators," Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, likely around tax time. If slaving away at 2007's taxes have shown you that you need to create more opportunities for deductions this year, might we suggest planning a weekend getaway to the Waldo Emerson Inn, a bed and breakfast believed to be one of the oldest houses in Kennebunk, Maine?

Book a stay in May, when the inn--and other members of the Maine Innkeepers Association--cut room rates in half to support "Hospitality for Habitat," a program that raises funds for Habitat for Humanity projects in Maine. In exchange for the discount, guests who stay between May 1-23 will be asked to write a $35 check to Habitat for Humanity, which you can write off come tax time next year. Everybody wins!

But there's more charm to staying here than a vacation that yields a tax deduction. The B&B maintains much of its original construction from 1753; plus Waldo Emerson, Ralph's great uncle, used to build clipper ships on the river behind the house. The colonial-style inn offers just four guest rooms, each anointed with handmade quilts, antiques, working fireplaces and private baths. May rates start at $95 per night.