Sourcing from their farm and nearby at Eden’s Table Farm Store
Given how difficult it can be to find a spicy, flavorful chile in New Hampshire, is it possible to grow one here?
“We’ve had two hot peppers that I just love!” said Addie Leader-Zavos, co-owner of Eden’s Table Farm in Dunbarton. “I was shocked by how good a pepper year we had last year. We’re trialing a bunch of different paprika types this year.” The Czech Black, for instance.
Her husband, Michael Williams, agreed.
“These [the Czech Blacks] will fake you out,” he said. “They smell like mango fruit leather, but they are serious. These are a little milder than a serrano when they’re green, but then they blow way past it when they’re ripe. They go from 5,000 Scoville units [a system for rating the heat of chiles] when they’re green to 17 [thousand] to 30,000 when they’re ripe. They’re no joke.”
This is the first full season that Eden’s Table Farm has been in business. The wife-and-husband team have been building a new farm more or less from scratch.
“We are a diversified market farm,” Williams said. “We grow vegetables. We have 65 mature blueberry bushes that we inherited. We also have a rhubarb patch that we inherited from the previous owners. There are a lot of volunteer raspberry, black raspberry and blackberry bushes; we’re going to mark the ones that taste best and take cuttings and propagate for next year.”
And, of course, the chiles.
The Williamses grow many different fruits, vegetables and herbs that they sell through their farm store, but the peppers are a good illustration of the amount of thought that is put into growing them. Leader-Zavos spent months researching varieties of chiles that would do well in New Hampshire’s climate. Eventually she discovered multiple varieties from Eastern Europe, from countries with similar climates. After that, the new farmers selected the varieties with the shortest growing season to try on the Farm.
“It was really important to us to have the shortest days-to-maturity,” Leader-Zavos said. “We wanted to be able to grow varieties that will work for us when our growing season is so short.”
Growing seasons, soil acidity, and hours of sunlight are some of the factors that Williams and Leader-Zavos have been working hard to get a handle on. Since moving from Virginia, where Leader-Zavos worked as a pastry chef and Williams was a sommelier and wine marketer, the couple have tackled the steep learning curve of starting a farm and a business with enthusiasm. “Addie’s superpower is research,” Williams said. “She can find the answer to anything.”
Which is how the two ended up buying a farm in Dunbarton. They had decided to start a small farm together.
“We cast a pretty wide net when we were looking for farm properties,” Williams said, “and at one point the price on this property dropped and it showed up in our searches. [We asked ourselves] ‘Should we go to New Hampshire to look at this property?’” They visited the farm that November, and owned it by the end of January.
In addition to actually growing things, the couple’s main focus is on their farm store, which sells their own produce and baked goods, as well as other locally produced meats, dairy, wild foods and artisanal products.
“We are very locally focused in terms of sourcing,” Williams said. “Everything in here, with the exception of a very short list of items, is from New Hampshire, and the things that aren’t from New Hampshire are from Maine, and they’re all artisanal products.”
He pointed to several varieties of dried beans as an example. “These are Baer’s Best Beans,” he said. “One of the things I like to do with new suppliers is I will go to them to pick up my first order, because I want to see what they are doing and how they’re doing it. I walked in [to Baer’s] and somebody was hand-sorting beans. So I was very happy. I was like, ‘OK, these are my people.’ This is the level of detail and attention that I like.”
Not to mention that the beans will go really well with the chiles.
Eden’s Table Farm Store 240 Stark Highway N., Dunbarton Center, 774-1811 Open Thursdays and Fridays 3 to 7 p.m., Saturdays 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Brew on: The annual Keep NH Brewing Festival is happening Saturday, July 13, at Kiwanis Waterfront Park behind the Everett Arena in Concord (15 Loudon Road). General admission is from 1 to 4 p.m., with VIP admission beginning at noon. The festival is the signature fundraising event for the New Hampshire Brewers Association and features one of the largest gatherings of craft beers on tap, with more than 140 options to try and more than 50 breweries represented. Food trucks, local vendors and live music will also be featured. For more information, and to purchase tickets, visit nhbrewers.org.
• Lemon up: LaBelle Winery (345 Route 101, Amherst, 672-9898, labellewinery.com) will hold I Love Lemon!, a lemon-themed wine pairing dinner, on Saturday, July 13, at 6:30 p.m.. This event will include four courses paired with LaBelle wines. LaBelle’s Chef and wine experts will share insights into each pairing with participants throughout the event. Tickets are $85 each and available through LaBelle’s website.
• Midday in the vineyard: Flag Hill Winery (297 Route 155, Lee, 659-2949, flaghill.com) will hold brunch by the vineyard on Sunday, July 14, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m Sparkling Cayuga will be served and there is a full mimosa bar. A farm-to-table brunch will feature a mac & cheese bar; fresh pastries and fruit; quiches, frittatas and more. Tickets are $65 per person and are available through Flag Hill’s website.
Flea markets generally fall into three categories:
Antiques. This doesn’t necessarily mean snooty people arguing over the fine points of Chippendale armoires, although it can. It means that most items on offer are old: boxes of old books, turn-of-the-last-century bottles, antique car parts, used CDs, piles of vintage Barbie dolls, or a stuffed owl or two — cool old stuff waiting for someone with a particular enthusiasm.
Sweat socks. Not just sweat socks, of course, but inexpensive consumer goods like burner phones, cell phone covers, neon-colored tracksuits and lots of shampoo. If you are looking for a velour blanket with a picture of a matador or a howling wolf on it, this is the place to find it. Please don’t think that I am mocking this type of market. It whispers sweet nothings to my heart.
Overgrown garage sale. You’re never sure what you’ll find at this kind of flea market. Yes, there are a few professional dealers specializing in Pokémon cards, or military surplus, but just as many of the vendors are people who have found themselves with too much of something on their hands — some old, some new — that they want to get rid of. For many of them it’s the getting-rid-of that’s the important thing. A sports family might realize they have 20 years’ worth of hockey gear, skis, football helmets and lacrosse sticks, and decide to flea market it.
About three years ago I found my flea market: the late, lamented Hollis Flea Market. It was an antiques market, full of vintage — stuff. There were some stunning antique clocks for customers with much richer blood than mine, but also any number of commemorative plates, piles of old postcards and, once, a giant pile of 3,600 C-clamps.
Unfortunately, this winter, the owners of the Hollis Flea Market announced that they were closing. This has left me searching for a new flea market.
Not counting yard sales and antiques shows, there are four major flea markets in the area:
Londonderry Flea Market
295 Nashua Road, Londonderry londonderryfleamarket.com Open Saturdays and Sundays 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. April through October Admission $1.50 per person; 60+ and kids under 12 get in free. The basics: The Londonderry Flea Market is an outdoor market on 30 acres, with up to 300 vendors on a given day. Many vendors do not accept credit cards; it’s a good idea to bring cash. There is an ATM on site. According to the Market’s website, there is a “huge assortment of items to find & buy for home, garden, work, pleasure, personal wants & needs. Make a list of things you’d like to buy before you visit the market. Bring the list with you to shop as the sellers here just may have what you’re looking for! f you don’t see it, ask them as it may just be out of sight.” Food: There is a concession tent in the center of the market selling burgers, hot dogs, snacks and drinks.
Londonderry Flea Market. Photo by John Fladd.
The Londonderry Flea Market is very, very large. There are two halves, one on each side of a fire pond. Many of the vendors work under cover, but at the very back of the flea market there are a number of people selling things from tables. I asked one man in the back who was selling old vinyl records and a seriously intriguing pile of 78s how business was. He said he hadn’t made any sales yet, “but it’s about to rain, and I’m located back here in Siberia.”
One of his neighbors in the back section of the flea market was Stephanie St. Pierre, an enthusiastic world traveler and a maker. She was selling a number of trinkets and antiques from Thailand and Myanmar, but her most fascinating items were four handmade cigar-box banjos. They are a reminder of a brief but intense enthusiasm from a few years ago. Some of the banjos have three strings; some have one.
“I like it,” St. Pierre said. “It’s just fun to play with one string. A diddly-bow, I guess is what they call the ones with one string.” At one point, she made electric cigar-box banjos. “The better ones had pick-ups,” she said. “You could plug them into an amp. I’m not musical, but I had fun going to the flea markets to find all the hardware.”
A 3-foot-tall Barbie doll in a crocheted sweater and miniskirt, concrete garden ornaments — I was distracted from these things by a table full of beads. I was struck by a 2-inch bead — a white porcelain cube with a hole through the center, and what appeared to be blue Chinese characters on the sides.
“What’s the story with this?” I asked the lady selling the beads. She examined it closely for several seconds. “I have no idea what that is,” she confessed. I bought it for a dollar, reasoning that I could tie it to my sword scabbard like a samurai, if I ever got really good at using a sword. It pays to be prepared.
Vincent is the Vinnie of Vinnie’s Uniques and Antiques. Unlike most of the vendors’ stalls, his has a sign. He is a regular; he sells at Londonderry every weekend.
“I look for stuff that nobody else has,” he said. “I want something that they [customers] cannot find anywhere else. If it’s something they’re going to have a hard time finding, I want to have that.” On this particular day, his favorite item was a model ship. “I’m going to tell you, I love this boat. This is a beautiful, beautiful boat,” he said. He pulled aside a tarp to reveal a glass case with a model of a four-masted ship inside. “This guy told me that this ship here burned down and they rebuilt it, but it was never the same ship. There isn’t a kit for this ship, so this ship was made by somebody [who knew it well]. I love my ship.”
Coolest item at the flea market that day: It’s a toss-up between a concrete garden statue of a sad dog and a gold-plated reproduction of a crocodile skull.
What I actually bought: The big Chinese bead and a $5 hockey goalie mask to use in my sword class.
Salem Flea Market (Outside)
20 Hampshire Road, Salem salemfleamarket.com Open Saturdays and Sundays 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Year-round Admission $1; a ticket will allow customers to return during the day The basics: The number of vendors at the outside market can vary on any given day, depending on the weather, but there are usually 50 to 60. Public restrooms are located inside the building. Almost none of the vendors accept credit cards. An ATM is located on the premises. According to the Salem Flea Market website, “The Salem Flea Market has been open for business for more than 40 years. We have new and used items, including antiques arriving every week.” Food: There are two or three concession stands at the entrance to the Indoors Market, as well as vendors selling fresh fruit in the Market itself. One review on the Market’s Facebook page reads, “Corn dogs. Corn dogs. Corn dogs. Corn dogs. Corn dogs.”
There are two parts to the Salem Flea Market: an outdoor market and an indoor one. It might be tempting to consider them as a single unit, but they are so vastly different that it makes sense to consider each on its own merits.
The Outside Market butts right up against the parking lot, and there is a lot going on. It is constantly in motion. It comes closest to being another garage sale-type market, but here the focus is on utility. Some of the vendors sell new items, most sell old ones, but virtually everything is practical. If you are looking for a hand-operated winch with 20 feet of chain, or a used large-screen television, this is the place for you.
Salem Flea Market (outside). Photos by John Fladd.
Lucas sells kitchen appliances. His tables are covered with blenders, food processors, microwave ovens and smaller kitchen tools. He has a small generator on hand, if any customers want to test out one of the appliances. Lucas doesn’t mind telling where he gets his merchandise. He buys the items from thrift stores, most of which he has a relationship with and will sell them to him by the pound. He cleans them up, if necessary, and resells them. I asked him how much he paid for a random blender. It was clean, new-looking, and looked like it would work well in most kitchens.
“I paid maybe 10 dollars,” he said with a shrug. “I can probably sell it here for 20.” What really jumped out at me was a variable-speed, hand-held immersion blender. I asked Lucas how much he wanted for it, and he said he was willing to let it go for $10.
On any given day, the outside market has anywhere up to a dozen cargo trucks. Most are from clean-out businesses or junk removal companies.
On this day, one vendor’s stock was mostly old, hard-worked lawn mowers and piles of air conditioners. His neighbor had three or four tables of used shoes. Another specialized in bicycles and stereo speakers. Because almost everything at the Outside Market is practical, and given the time of the year, several vendors at the front end of the market were selling garden plants. The people who sell at both Salem markets are from all over the world, so many of the vegetable plants for sale weren’t ones you might find at a local garden center — bitter melons, makrut lime trees and some with labels written in Asian characters.
A vendor named Melissa was beginning to think she might have come to the wrong flea market. She was located at the very back of the lot.
“I’ve got some bathrobes, some nightgowns, some [porcelain] figurines, some luggage,” she said, “a little bit of everything. It’s actually all mine. I’ve been a shopper my whole life and collecting things over the years. I usually sell on Facebook Marketplace, but that’s exhausting!” I asked what she thought her hidden gem was. She said that for the right person, the bisque porcelain figurines would be a satisfying find. “What is it they say? ‘One man’s junk is another man’s treasure?’”
Coolest item at the flea market that day: Two KitchenAid stand mixers. The vendor was looking for $80 for the small one, and even missing its bowl he was confident he could get $140 for the six-quart model.
What I actually bought: Plants — two brightly colored lilies and a large pot of Thai chile pepper plants for a total of $12.
Salem Flea Market (Inside)
20 Hampshire Road, Salem salemfleamarket.com Open Saturdays and Sundays 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. year-round Admission: The same $1 ticket. The basics: Public restrooms are located inside the building. Almost none of the vendors accepts credit cards. An ATM is located on the premises. Food: There is a small snack bar inside.
The Inside Market in Salem definitely falls into the sweat socks category. As soon as you walk through the door you’re greeted by enthusiastic salsa and mariachi music. Neon-colored T-shirts compete for space with affordably-priced perfumes and colognes. One vendor sells apparently new-looking mattresses still in their plastic.
One stall was filled to the brim with brightly colored Catholic statuary — figures of saints and religious figures of all sizes, religious paintings, and ceramic bowls and flower pots.
Salem Flea Market (inside). Photo by John Fladd.
The Inside Market has several twisting aisles that branch off unexpectedly. Just when you think you’ve seen most of it, you turn a corner and find a completely new group of stalls. Like almost all the shops, my vote for the coolest one doesn’t have a name above the door. It is about twice the size of other shops, and there are dozens — probably hundreds — of used bicycles hanging from the ceiling. It would be a mistake to think of it as a bike shop, however. The main focus of the business seems to be knives of all kinds and replica swords. Tucked away in a corner are two reproduction helmets, one Spartan and one medieval. Plus the truly impressive number of ceiling bikes.
The chain-link wall of a nearby stall is covered with hundreds of wrestling action figures. A man named Tony runs it with his wife. “I mostly sell Pokémon, wrestling, and action figure toys,” he told me. “That’s all I sell. Well, that and some baseball cards. And football cards — things that people collect.”
Another stall is about half the size of Tony’s and looks for all the world like a storage closet. It is packed full of packages of disposable cups and takeout containers. The owner had stepped out when I visited, so I made small talk with a lady who had come in looking for cups. “This is for a church event tonight,” she told me. “I always come here, and I’ve been coming here since before Covid. I always find what I’m looking for.”
A hand-written sign at another stall nearby read, “Good Quality According to the Price You Pay.”
Coolest item at the flea market that day: A trademark-skirting box of brightly colored toy ponies called Horse Lovely. “THAT BEAUTIFUL HORSE SPREAD YOUR WINGS AND FLY,” the box announced cheerfully.
What I actually bought: Three small resin figurines of babies doing kung fu, for $2 each.
Davisville Flea Market
805 Route 103, Warner davisvillefleamarket.com Open Sundays 4 a.m. to 1 p.m. (The website advises visiting between 6 and 11 a.m.) Open May 5 until the last Sunday in October rain or shine. Admission and parking are free. The basics: An outdoor market with anywhere from 50 to 150+ vendors. Live music, outdoor toilets. Food: There is a concession stand that sells cold drinks, coffee, foods and snacks. Frequently there will be food trucks or vendors selling food.
The Davisville Flea Market is an antiques-centered one. A few artists and craftspeople sell their work, but the majority of the vendors sell old items. There are vintage tools, piles of old photographs, and beer steins on offer.
Aiden and Myles are 9 years old. I met them as they stood, spellbound, in front of the Holy Grail for 9-year-old boys: a giant pile of dozens of Nerf guns. Aiden was willing to give me some flea market advice, though he was incredibly distracted. His friend Myles stood next to him, his mouth agape. Aiden picked up a bright orange Nerf machine gun and examined it as he said, “I’m looking for one that has an attachment that can hold a lot of bullets.”
Aiden said that he likes the look of the guns. “If they made these look like camo [camouflage pattern] that would be good, if you’re into that,” he said, “but I like the bright colors. I think they make them this bright, so you buy them more.”
Davisville Flea Market. Photo by John Fladd.
As I walked around to different tables, I was reminded of some lessons about flea market etiquette I’ve learned the hard way. I approached a table under the shade of some trees that was covered with antique tools. The vendor was having a conversation with another man, but in a slow, laconic way, with many pauses. When I was new to flea marketing, I would have used a lull in the conversation as an opportunity to ask a question, but that has rarely worked out well for me. The polite thing to do is wait until the conversation is completely done.
In this case, I waited four or five minutes for the two men to finish their conversation before talking with the vendor.
“How ya doin’ this morning?” he asked. This is a time-tested traditional greeting that indicated that he was willing to talk. I made a friendly but non-committal answer, because being too enthusiastic about anything sets the wrong tone in negotiations like this. I asked him about a hatchet on his ax table. “What’s the story with this?” I asked. (I could have asked him how much he wanted for it, but that could be interpreted as enthusiasm.)
Clearly this was the right thing to ask. He gleefully told me the brand name of the hatchet. Apparently, at least according to him, it was generally used for splitting shakes. At this point a couple of other customers had wandered over, but I was pleased to find that he had made me one half of the old-guy conversation, so he could make the other people wait.
He tried to sell me a bear trap.
I made my way to a tent run by artists Courtney Norton and Matt West. Their business, 7 Glass Studio, specializes in glass work and pyrography — using heat to burn designs into wood or leather. Matt works in low-heat, non-blown glass. Today he was selling extremely life-like glass caterpillars. “The black, yellow and white ones are your traditional monarch colors,” he explained. “The other ones are just fantasy. People like to stick them in their potted plants.”
John Zapollo sells a lot of different things. Today it was mostly books. He was questioning the wisdom of bringing them to the market. “Books have gone way down,” he said with a rueful shake of his head. “Books here at the flea market don’t seem to sell. It seems like more people are looking for tools and stuff to take care of their houses. The antique stuff that I sell doesn’t seem to get a lot of traction.”
The coolest item at the flea market that day: The bear trap.
What I actually bought: Three antique cookbooks from John. The most interesting one was published by the Heinz Corporation in 1939. I paid $1 apiece.
The first few sips of a blender drink are virtually perfect. The problem is that a few minutes later you’ve drunk all the flavor and you’re left with a weak, sad pile of slush.
Which is why, when I want a really cold drink, I rely on crushed ice. It chills the cocktail effectively, but stays apart from it, like a, I don’t know, a lifeguard or something. This metaphor has gotten away from me.
Blueberry Daiquiri
Blueberries in Syrup
Frozen wild blueberries – regular blueberries are in season and would definitely work for this recipe, but wild ones generally have more flavor and are small enough to get through a large straw; regardless, they should be frozen, to help syrup-ify them
An equal amount of sugar, by weight
A pinch of salt
The Daiquiri Itself
2 ounces blueberries in syrup
2 ounces golden rum – white rum would be a little too subtle for this application; a dark or black rum would overpower the other ingredients; something golden like Faraday is a good daiquiri rum
2 ounces fresh squeezed lemon juice
A splash – perhaps an ounce – of club soda
A large amount of crushed ice – this could be from the door in your refrigerator, or run through an old-fashioned, hand-cranked ice crusher; I prefer to wrap regular ice cubes in a bar towel and smash it up with the pestle from my largest mortar and pestle, which gives me a nice mixture of ice, from large half-cubes down to fine snow
Cook the blueberries, sugar and salt in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally. At first it will be a gloppy, slightly purple pile of sugar. Suddenly, a few minutes into the cooking process, the berries will realize the futility of their existential stubbornness and collapse into a thin jam. Keep cooking and stirring, until the liquid starts to boil. Make sure that all the sugar sticking to the sides of the pan has dissolved into the hot blueberry sauce.
Remove from heat, and set aside to cool.
Fill a mixing glass with a couple handfuls of crushed ice, then add the other ingredients. Stir gently, but thoroughly, into a more or less homogeneous solution.
Transfer into a tall glass, and top with a splash of club soda and a few syrupy blueberries.
Take your drink to your deck, or front porch, or fire escape, and drink it with an oversized boba straw while listening to “The Girl from Ipanema.” It could be the original Brazilian version, or the hep-cat, Sammy Davis big band version, or even Amy Winehouse’s take on it, but the important thing is that you can lean back and draw large amounts of blueberries, rum and lemon into yourself, until it’s difficult to know where you end and the samba music starts. In fact, you could make up an entire playlist of nothing but covers of “The Girl from Ipanema” and spend an hour or two comparing them.
Normally, one of the pillars of a good daiquiri is fresh lime juice, but blueberries and lemon get along so splendidly, whether in a cheesecake or a cocktail, that the lemon is a good substitution in this particular drink. It provides the same amount of acidity and zing, but dances — we might even say it sambas — with the blueberries. The syrupy blueberries bring sweetness and depth to the daiquiri and might even make it a little too sweet if not for the club soda, which brings additional zing to the proceedings while diluting the syrup. The crushed ice brings the temperature down enough to make drinking this cocktail intensely, almost painfully, refreshing.
Erika Follansbee is a food photographer at Parker Street Food & Travel (parker-street.com) and a wedding photographer at Erika Follansbee Photography (erikafollansbee.com). “I strive to create inviting, ambient photos of real menu items in a restaurant’s own unique environment. At the same time, I am also a wedding photographer with 14 years of experience based in Goffstown, New Hampshire. My work has been featured in over 60 national and local magazines, blogs, and websites for my work in both weddings and food photography,” she said.
What is your must-have kitchen item?
My Dutch oven is one of my favorite kitchen items because I love the one-pot life. I become easily overwhelmed by too many dishes, so anything I can cook in one dish that goes from stovetop to oven is high on my list.
What would you have for your last meal?
My last meal could only be a smorgasbord of favorites from a life of traveling and enjoying some of the world’s great flavors. I’d need some pasta carbonara with guanciale from Rome, suadero tacos con todo from Mexico City, a full Scottish breakfast with haggis, and lastly because I’m from North Carolina I’d finish up with some Southern comfort food of Brunswick stew, hushpuppies and banana pudding.
What is your favorite local eatery?
It would kill me to choose only one. I really enjoy North End Bistro, a tiny little place on Elm Street. Other Manchester favorites include The Crown Tavern, Presto Craft Kitchen and Alas de Frida, and Street in Portsmouth.
What is a food project you would like to shoot?
I have always been interested in not only photographing a restaurant’s core menu but also returning on a regular basis to capture more fluid items like seasonal, monthly and weekly specials. Returning to a place regularly gives me a chance to really explore the ‘sense of place,’ which is an anthropological concept referring to the way a place is experienced and lived in over time, resulting in a strong sense of belonging and familiarity. I’m inspired by the light of different times of day and what a different feeling it evokes. To me, the environment of a beautiful restaurant or café goes hand in hand with the actual food photos.
I’d also like to photograph a cookbook someday.
What is your favorite food-project that you’ve shot?
My favorites have always been shoots for chefs or restaurants who had never had photos done before, especially for a first-time website. It’s very satisfying to see a website come together with beautiful photos that establish an inviting and professional-looking online presence.
What is the biggest trend in food photography right now?
There is an emphasis on authenticity in food photography, which can mean a less staged and not over-styled approach that doesn’t hide imperfections…. Dripping sauces and scattered crumbs capture a delicious moment in time. The human element is still going strong as a trend, which includes hands in the shots — holding, sharing, and passing the dishes or beverages.
What is your favorite thing to cook at home?
In the summer, I grow jalapeños just so I can make bacon-wrapped cream cheese poppers. It’s the ultimate in high effort, low reward. I get my vegetable starts from Devriendt Farm in Goffstown. Like most cooking, the results are gone in seconds, but when you grow the thing yourself for a couple of months beforehand you really appreciate that single victorious ingredient you can hold in your hand. I enjoy gardening more than I do cooking, so the growing part is fun for me.
What can a non-professional do to shoot great pictures of their food?
The most important aspect of any food photo is the quality of the light. Take your dish outside in the shade, or get next to a window. You will notice that the incandescent or LED lights of an average home interior have a very yellow cast (or sometimes greenish) and this is not ideal for a nice food photo.
Ice cream and cookies and cookie ice cream at Social Club Creamery
Cole Gaude knew his ice cream business in Concord was facing a turning point last fall, when all three soft-serve ice cream machines at his shop broke down simultaneously.
“They’re very sensitive machines and we had three of them because that’s all we used to do — soft-serve,” Gaude said. “We had three machines that we bought pretty much within a week of each other. They were all brand new and they all broke pretty much the same week, a couple of days apart.”
Hard decisions had to be made.
At the same time, Gaude and his team had a different type of ice cream shop up and running in Laconia, the Social Club Creamery, which specializes in small-batch homemade hard ice cream and cookies.
“We said, ‘Why not make the swap [in Concord],’” Gaude said. “We decided we had to move in a different direction.” The Concord store was rebranded as a second branch of the Social Club Creamery, and switched to a very different ice cream philosophy.
“We’re a small-batch ice cream shop,” Gaude said. “We make everything ourselves. We make the ice cream. We make all the things that go in the ice cream — honeycomb candy, butter cake, brownies, things like that. Our first location in Laconia has been sending everything to Concord.”
The two locations complement each other. The Laconia location has very limited seating for customers to eat in it.
“We only have about four seats in that shop,” Gaude said. “We had to make as much room for a kitchen as possible. Of the 970 square feet, roughly 750 feet of that is kitchen.” The Concord location, on the other hand, has very little kitchen space but has 36 seats inside and another 20 outside. “That’s a pretty large seating area, so a lot of events happen there. A lot of sports teams go there after they’re done practice.”
The new setup has allowed Social Club to sell walk-in customers on its particular point of view of ice cream flavors.
“We have 16 flavors overall,” Gaude said. “Twelve of them are always on the menu; they never change. That’s stuff like vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, peppermint patty, things like that. And then every month we have four seasonal flavors. Right now we’re doing a Travel Series. It’s based on different foods from around the world — Italy, Greece, Asia and Mexico.”
The Italian-inspired item is a Pistachio Cannoli ice cream with a ricotta base.
“We take cannoli shells,” Gaude said, “we twice-bake them with some butter, sugar, a little salt, and some milk powder, and then we make a homemade pistachio drizzle that we swirl through the ice cream. It’s a good one.”
The Mexican-inspired ice cream uses a dulce de leche base, with homemade, deep-fried churros, and a dark chocolate swirl. A mango sorbet represents Asia, and the Greek-inspired offering is a baklava ice cream.
“We partnered with a local Greek bakery,” Gaude said, “and the owner provides us with trays on trays of her homemade baklava. We cut that up and then we put it into a honey-base ice cream. That one’s been the most popular this month. It’s just incredible.”
The baklava ice cream might be the most popular of the special flavors, but it doesn’t touch the popularity of Social Club’s best-selling ice cream.
“Our most popular flavor is the Cookie-Cookie-Cookie Dough,” Gaude said. “The ice cream itself has a cookie dough taste, then we make our special homemade cookie dough — which doesn’t have eggs and uses heat-treated flour, so it’s safe to eat — and then we chop up the chocolate chip cookies we sell, and throw those in as well. It’s been hugely popular. It counts for like 30 percent of our sales overall. It’s a high-selling flavor; it’s cool. But it’s a lot of cookies.”
Social Club Creamery 138 N. Main St., Concord, 333-2111 Open seven days a week, 1 to 9 p.m. socialclubcreamery.com Also at 51 Elm St., Laconia, 619-5098.
