Author: John Fladd

• Hot pot: OBA Korean BBQ & Hot Pot has opened at 371 S. Willow St. in Manchester (obakoreanbbqhotpot.com). The all-you-can-eat Korean restaurant is open Wednesday through Monday at 11:30 a.m. until 9:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and until 10:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

• An Italian New Year’s Eve: There will be a Bubbles and Truffles New Year’s Eve event at Tuscan Market (Tuscan Village, 9 Via Toscana, Salem, 912-5467, tuscanbrands.com) Wednesday, Dec. 31, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. This two-course cooking class will begin with a classic shrimp cocktail paired with a prosecco toast. Guests will then explore the elegance of truffles through a curated tasting, starting with truffle bites paired with Franciacorta, followed by fresh truffle-finished pasta tossed tableside in a Parmesan wheel and paired with a crisp Blanc de Noir. This will be a celebratory, elevated way to toast the new year. Tickets are $131.63 through eventbrite.com.

• Holiday ice cream: Social Club Creamery (138 N. Main St., Concord, 333-2111, socialclubcreamery.com) will continue to offer a special Holiday Series Menu through the end of December, with limited-time cookies, and ice creams including Peppermint Mocha, Cinnamon Roll Cheesecake, Gingerbread House, and Santa’s Oat Milk & Cookies (vegan).

• Melted snowman cookies: The Nashua Public Library (2 Court St., Nashua, 589-4600, nashualibrary.org) will host a Melted Snowman Cookie workshop for children in grades K-5, Monday, Dec. 29, from 2 to 3 p.m. “In this hands-on program, you’ll decorate your own melting snowman cookie using icing, candy, and other fun toppings. Learn some basic cookie decorating techniques, like spreading icing, placing decorations, and adding finishing touches, while giving your frosty friend a wobbly, ‘melting’ look. Space and supplies are limited,” according to the website.

• New year, new flavors: The Hooksett Library, 31 Mount Saint Mary’s Way in Hooksett, hooksettlibrary.org, has a Spice Club. While supplies last, pick up a spice kit with a new spice and recipes each month, according to the website. In January, the spice is ginger; pick up the spice kit at Patron Services on Jan. 20 while supplies last, the website said.

A look at the city’s restaurant scene

Erik Lesniak works in the Manchester Economic Development Office. His job involves keeping track of businesses as they appear and fade in Manchester, particularly restaurants. He said 2025 was a particularly dynamic year for the city’s food scene.

“There is a rarity of having a long-standing restaurant in the city of Manchester,” he said. “I can’t speak for any other community, but places like the Puritan Back Room, that have 100 years of service by one family, are almost unknown here. … Nine out of 10 times you get these restaurants that operate five or 10 years if they’re lucky. A new owner comes in because the old owners want to retire or their kids aren’t taking over the family business. It’s been a big change over the whole industry“

Lesniak mentioned several fairly recent restaurants that closed this past year within a few blocks of each other on Elm Street as examples, including The Birch on Elm, Keys Piano Bar and the Statesman Diner, which rebranded as Hellenic Pizza.

With that said, Lesniak stressed that while there were some high-visibility restaurant closings over the past year, there is a strong demand and momentum for new places.

“In many cases,” he said, “spaces are being quickly reactivated by new businesses, like Miller’s Tavern, which will open in the former Keys Piano Bar location.”

Manchester’s increasingly diverse population has opened up opportunities for restaurant concepts that wouldn’t have been seen even 10 years ago.

“I mean, when you look downtown,” Lesniak said, “We have Indian, Thai, we’ve got American, Italian, fast casual, we’ve got a wide selection of areas that hit all markets. New concepts have come in, or played off previous concepts, and slowly started to succeed in their own right, the way they deliver. And I do feel like, even moving into the future, we’re going to see a lot of that throughout the city, especially downtown. We’re going to see restaurants switch hands and switch concepts as the trends change. For example, if people aren’t going out to drink beer as much anymore, they’re more into things like craft cocktails and fresh fruits in cocktails or mocktails.”

Lesniak said the impact of restaurants on Manchester’s economy will be extremely important for the foreseeable future.

“I think that we’ll have more restaurants opening,” he predicted. “The No. 1 industry right now asking to open up in the city of Manchester is hospitality. [There’s] retail, here and there, but the number of entrepreneurs who want to come in and open a restaurant is staggering. Behind the scenes, the new business owners are putting in long hours and making tough decisions and personal sacrifices to make their concepts work. I have so much respect for everything they add to the community”

“I think a word to summarize this past year, for me, my own personal opinion, is ‘emotional,’” Lesniak said. “When you look at our city as a whole, you see longstanding restaurants, that have lasted at least 10 years or so. And the owners are your mom-and-pop or your real family businesses. When you see them leave, it’s emotional because it’s a piece of the culture that’s taken with them. And that’s the end of their journey, potentially. There are other restaurants dying to come into those spaces, but that’s the end of that story for that business. And then in the community or the neighborhood that supported them, now there’s a void. So whoever goes in there, it may not be the same cultural flair that they had. It may be a different concept. It may not even be a restaurant. It could turn into a convenience store, or a market, or a retail, or a service. And so that neighborhood or that community within those areas faces some powerful hellos and goodbyes. So I’d say ‘emotional’ is really what the word of the year is.”

• Hot pot: OBA Korean BBQ & Hot Pot has opened at 371 S. Willow St. in Manchester (obakoreanbbqhotpot.com). The all-you-can-eat Korean restaurant is open Wednesday through Monday at 11:30 a.m. until 9:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and until 10:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

• An Italian New Year’s Eve: There will be a Bubbles and Truffles New Year’s Eve event at Tuscan Market (Tuscan Village, 9 Via Toscana, Salem, 912-5467, tuscanbrands.com) Wednesday, Dec. 31, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. This two-course cooking class will begin with a classic shrimp cocktail paired with a prosecco toast. Guests will then explore the elegance of truffles through a curated tasting, starting with truffle bites paired with Franciacorta, followed by fresh truffle-finished pasta tossed tableside in a Parmesan wheel and paired with a crisp Blanc de Noir. This will be a celebratory, elevated way to toast the new year. Tickets are $131.63 through eventbrite.com.

• Holiday ice cream: Social Club Creamery (138 N. Main St., Concord, 333-2111, socialclubcreamery.com) will continue to offer a special Holiday Series Menu through the end of December, with limited-time cookies, and ice creams including Peppermint Mocha, Cinnamon Roll Cheesecake, Gingerbread House, and Santa’s Oat Milk & Cookies (vegan).

• Melted snowman cookies: The Nashua Public Library (2 Court St., Nashua, 589-4600, nashualibrary.org) will host a Melted Snowman Cookie workshop for children in grades K-5, Monday, Dec. 29, from 2 to 3 p.m. “In this hands-on program, you’ll decorate your own melting snowman cookie using icing, candy, and other fun toppings. Learn some basic cookie decorating techniques, like spreading icing, placing decorations, and adding finishing touches, while giving your frosty friend a wobbly, ‘melting’ look. Space and supplies are limited,” according to the website.

• New year, new flavors: The Hooksett Library, 31 Mount Saint Mary’s Way in Hooksett, hooksettlibrary.org, has a Spice Club. While supplies last, pick up a spice kit with a new spice and recipes each month, according to the website. In January, the spice is ginger; pick up the spice kit at Patron Services on Jan. 20 while supplies last, the website said.

There comes a point in the holiday season — maybe it’s Christmas Eve — when everything has gotten to be too much. Too much running around. Too many trips to the grocery store. Too much rich food. Too much fanciness.

I heard someone say once that one of the great things about this time of year is that you can shut yourself away in your bedroom, and anytime someone tries to open the door you can shout, “DON’T COME IN HERE!” Everyone will assume you are wrapping presents, when in fact you’re reading a trashy magazine, listening to a true crime podcast and working your way through a bottle of wine.

As much as you like entertaining — and I do; I call it “Fezziwigging” after the jolly character in A Christmas Carol — the idea of a quiet evening of listening to jazz and reading sounds endlessly appealing.

Especially if the food is simple. A piece of toast, perhaps, and a diet soda. Or cheese and crackers and a pot of tea.

Or — and hear me out on this — a couple of slices of banana bread. Plain, no secret ingredients, no mysterious baking techniques, no — and this cannot be stressed strongly enough — walnuts.

Plain banana bread and a glass of milk.

And a playlist of torch songs.

• 2 1/3 cups (531 g) mashed banana
• 2 cups (240 g) flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ¾ cup (160 g) brown sugar
• ½ cup (1 stick) butter
• 2 eggs

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Grease a loaf pan.

You know how the bottom shelf in your freezer is a No Man’s Land of half-empty bags of frozen vegetables, or fruit that you meant to make into a smoothie a month ago? Looking through our freezer this afternoon I found a couple of half-full bags of frozen banana chunks. Why they were in there, and how they got there, is a story for another day, a story of intrigue, danger and, depending on how you look at it, deep betrayal.

But the point is, a couple of large handfuls of frozen banana chunks are just about right for this recipe. Alternatively, actual fresh bananas that your kids have avoided because one of them had a brown spot on it will work well too. Put whichever type of bananas you have — minus the peels — in your electric mixer and beat them until they are grey and mushy. Set them aside. Don’t bother cleaning out the mixing bowl; everything’s going to be mixed together within the next couple of minutes or so anyway.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt. Set this aside as well.

In your still-banana-y mixing bowl, cream the butter and brown sugar together. Once the mixture has come together a little, turn up the speed and whip it until it is light and fluffy.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, then beat in the eggs, one at a time. Then bring the bananas back to the party, and beat them in too.

Turn the mixer to its lowest speed and spoon the flour mixture in, until it has just barely been incorporated.

Turn the mixture into your loaf pan, and bake it for an hour or so, until a toothpick comes out clean.

Let the banana bread cool a little before turning it out of the loaf pan. Serve slices of it with gloppy melting butter or a scoop of ice cream.

Featured photo: Banana bread. Photo by John Fladd.