This Saturday, March 14, is one of the happiest days of the year for math enthusiasts. Written numerically, the date is 3/14, and of course 3.14 is the number pi (π) rounded to the nearest hundredth. “Pi Day,” also thought of as “Pie Day,” is a day of celebration for geometry fans, pun enthusiasts and of course pie lovers.
Canterbury Shaker Village (288 Shaker Road, Canterbury, 783-9511, shakers.org) will embrace Pi Day this year. From 1:30 to 3 p.m. on March 14 the museum will host a Pi Day event with an informal lecture on the history of pie and its connection to Canterbury’s Shaker community — they were considered brilliant cooks and bakers. The event will allow guests to eat pie, and let pie enthusiasts mingle and share their collected passion.
“It actually is a very nice pie symposium,” said Garrett Bethmann, Manager of Communications and Engagement for the Shaker Village. “It’s just easy breezy as, you know, just like the smell [of a fresh-baked pie] coming out of your window. We just want people to have as sweet a time as pie is.”
“We’ll be playing a little bit with that mathematical concept as well as showing how pie [the pastry] fits into that. We’ll look at how pie has been used in American culture over the years, and how Shakers thought about pie and how they incorporated them into their daily life. I saw recently we got some floor plans that had an integrated pie safe situated in it for one of our buildings. It was certainly on their mind. And so we’d like to showcase how that looks and how people can learn about it.”
The baking community will also be celebrating Pi Day.
“Oh, we’ve gota Pi Day menu!” said Brittani Randal, co-owner of The Sunflower Bakery and Cafe (50 Broad St., Nashua, 505-0794, thesunflowerbakerycafe.com). “Last year, the number of pies we could make was just based [on] what we could bake from our house, and now that we have our [brick and mortar bakery] those numbers don’t even count anymore. Last year we had eight to 10 [types of pie], but that didn’t include our black bottom pie, which has been our most popular pie so far, and I don’t think we were offering the strawberry dream pie either, so there will probably be at least 10 [varieties of pie].” She said one of Sunflower’s corporate clients has already ordered 250 individual-sized pies for Pi Day.
Denise Nickerson, owner of The Bakeshop on Kelley Street (171 Kelley St., Manchester, 624-3500, thebakeshoponkelleystreet.com) plans to go all out for Pi Day this year.
“We’re going to have every single kind of pie you can think of,” Nickerson said. “We’re going to have probably 25-plus [types of pie], depending on what people order. People come up with some interesting ideas and we’re planning to have as many different pies as we can. Our most popular, of course, is apple or chocolate cream. We’ll definitely have those. Lime is really popular and we’ll go from there.” The Bakeshop has a reputation for outstanding doughnuts. “We’re making some kind of a pie doughnut,” Nickerson said, “but that’s still under development; my team is working on it.”
For 24 hours, from midnight to midnight, on Pi Day all locations of the Red Arrow Diner (112 Loudon Road, Concord, 415-0444; 137 Rockingham Road, Londonderry, 552-3091; 61 Lowell St., Manchester, 626-1118; 149 DW Highway, Nashua, 204-5088, redarrowdiner.com) will offer all slices of pie for $3.14, according to a statement from its corporate office.
Alison Ladman, owner of Crust and Crumb Baking Co. (126 N. Main St., Concord, 219-0763, thecrustandcrumb.com), said her plans for Pi Day are simple: “All we’re doing is baking a whole lot of pies. We want to make sure we don’t run out, and we recommend that any customers who have their heart set on a particular type of pie should pre-order online to make sure we still have some for them.”
Featured photo: Pies from The Sunflower Bakery and Cafe. Courtesy photo.
• Cutting edge learning: LaBelle Winery Derry (14 Route 111, Derry, 672-9898, labellewinery.com/labelle-winery-derry) will host a cooking class focusing on knife skills Thursday, March 12, from 6 to 7 p.m. Led by LaBelle chefs, this class will guide you through knife techniques, maintenance and safety, according to the website where you can purchase tickets.
• What does ice do in a drink? CodeX B.A.R. (29 Main St., Nashua) will hold a home bartending workshop Sunday, March 15, beginning at 4 p.m. The topic will be “The Art of Dilution.” Learn why some drinks are stirred while others are shaken, and how ice, temperature and motion affect the texture and flavor of a drink. The cost is $34.99, which includes two cocktails to enjoy during the class.
• Dinner with a pot of gold: There will be a St. Patrick’s Mystery Wine Dinner at Averill House Vineyard (21 Averill Road, Brookline, 244-3165, averillhousevineyard.com) Tuesday, March 17, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. The Leprechaun’s Secret is a wine dinner and mystery experience combining gourmet dining, interactive storytelling and paired wines. Tickets are $59 per person through the vineyard’s website.
• Espresso martinis: In celebration of National Espresso Martini Day, the Rose and Rye Diner will hold a Tini Tasting Friday, March 13, from 6 to 8 p.m in the Arts Alley complex (20 S. Main St., Concord, 406-5666, artsalleyconcordnh.com). Three espresso martinis will be paired with desserts. The cost for this 21+ event is $71.21 through eventbrite.com.
• Irish cookie decorating: There will be a Luck of the Icing cookie-decorating class Wednesday, March 18, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Smitty’s Cinema & GameLAB Tilton (630 W. Main St., Tilton, 286-3275, smittyscinema.com/movie-theater/tilton) with Kate from Confections by Kate (723-5187, confectionsbykatenh.com). Tickets start at $32.50 through eventbrite.com.
• Spanish or French wines? Wine on Main (9 N. Main St., Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com) will host a tasting event called “Spain vs. The Loire” on Wednesday March 18, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Taste selections from the Loire Valley and Spain. Tickets are $40 per person through Wine on Main’s website.
A look at the scene built on the music of Ireland and beyond
One in five of all New Hampshire residents have Irish heritage, more than in any other state. Fittingly, there’s a robust Celtic music scene here. Irish Sessiuns — circles of players calling tunes, quaffing pints and finding a melodic flow — gather together regularly at pubs in Concord, Manchester, Greenland and elsewhere.
As St. Patrick’s Day nears, Irish songs are everywhere. Irish music has the highest profile of the Celtic Nations — Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man, and Cornwall, in the southwest corner of England, as well as Brittany in northwest France and Galicia in northwest Spain.
The Granite State is home to many great Celtic musicians, and March 17 is their busiest day of the year. But the music is for every season. Regina Delaney, creator and leader of the New England Irish Harp Orchestra, pointed out that her ensemble gets especially busy on the last day of October.
“All the origins of everything that we do at Halloween are from Pagan Celtic rituals,” Delaney said recently from her home in Rochester. “We have so many great ghost songs and stories and things like that. So we do a bunch of Halloween shows.”
New Hampshire will prove its Irish bona fides with long St. Patrick’s Day queues soon enough, but it’s worth thinking of ways to keep the spirit going after.
Some leading purveyors shared their thoughts on Celtic music in New Hampshire. As befits a genre with a catalog of songs dating back hundreds of years, all the musicians made sure to mention the many performers who’d come before them and helped to light their paths.
One name that came up frequently was David Surette, who taught at Concord Community Music School for 30 years, spearheading the development of the folk program there. Surette succumbed to cancer in 2021. He was a gifted arranger of Celtic tunes, as demonstrated on albums like Back Roads and Trip to Kemper.
When Audrey Budington was 9 and taking violin lessons, Surette changed her musical path from classical to Celtic.
“I heard some different music that I’d never heard before coming from two studios down,” she said by Zoom recently. “I didn’t know at the time, but it was Celtic. I kind of peeked in and it was David Surette.”
Surette wasn’t a fiddler, but that didn’t deter her. “I was so enamored of the music that my mom contacted him and was like, ‘Hey, I know you don’t teach fiddle, but could you please at least give her an understanding of that style of music? She’s really into it.’ He started working with me. I learned a bunch of tunes.”
Budington teaches violin and fiddle at CCMS, as does folk department chair Liz Faiella. Liz performs in a duo with her brother Dan, also a teacher and guitarist specializing in Celtic music. “When I was in my early teens I studied a lot of that music with David Surette at the music school,” Dan said in a Zoom meeting with Liz.
Dan pointed out other Celtic greats who lived here.
“Tommy Makem was in New Hampshire for a bunch of years, and Winifred Horan from Solas [at Portsmouth’s Music Hall on March 12],” he said. “There are a lot of really cool people who wanted a lower-key environment, and they wound up in New Hampshire.”
Another musician mentioned by many was Paddy Keenan, who spent several years here before moving back to Ireland.
“He’s probably the most well-known Irish piper in the world; he lived in Loudon,” Jim Prendergast, a guitarist and Celtic music producer who hosts Irish Matinee on Sundays at Stone Church, said recently.
Uilleann piper Anthony Santoro, who leads the weekly sessiun at Salt hill Pub in Lebanon, remembers Keenan performing at the home of Charlie Clarke and his wife, Mary Lou Philbin-Clarke, who sold Irish music books, CDs, videos and cassettes at their Loudon store, Ossian USA.
“They were called the Loft Concerts,” Santoro said by phone. “Whoever was touring through the area would stay with them, and anybody in New Hampshire, or anywhere willing to travel that distance, could come and see whoever was there. There were great players, and Paddy was one of them.”
Santoro is now a partner in Ossian USA with Ruarri Serpa, who took over and runs the now web-based store from his home in Kennebunkport, Maine, but has Granite State roots. “I’ve been playing Irish Traditional Music since I was a kid in rural New Hampshire,” Serpa writes on Ossian’s website.
The thread continues with Roger Burridge, who was a fixture at Salt hill and led a sessiun at Manchester’s Shaskeen Pub before he passed away during Covid. Burridge was beloved throughout the state. “One of the finest fiddle players anywhere, not just New England,” Salt hill owner Josh Tuohy said in 2023.
David Surette. Courtesy photo.
Liz Faiella was studying at Dartmouth, with no plans for a music career, when she joined Burridge, Santoro and players like Roger Kahle and Randy Miller at Salt hill. “I just learned so much through that experience,” she recalled. “The sessiun scene is very often where you’re going to learn the most as an Irish musician.”
Any short list of New Hampshire’s top Celtic players includes Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki. The fiddler was making his mark here before he was a teenager. Liz Faiella calls him an inspiration. “There was this wonderful fiddle contest at Eagle Square in Concord, and Jordan was the big kid who was always winning,” she recalled.
“I began when I was 8, and by the time I was 10 or 11 I was calling myself an Irish or Celtic fiddler,” Tirrell-Wysocki, who’s also a CCMS faculty member, said in a recent Zoom call. “Of all the New England-style dance music that I was learning, it was the Celtic tunes in particular that I was most interested in.”
Jordan T-W, as he’s known, has played in jam bands and lent his fiddle sound to a range of studio recordings, including the blistering “Devil Went Down to Boston” with Adam Ezra Band a few years back. On St. Patrick’s Day his trio performs at Salt hill Pub in Newport in the morning and does an evening showcase at BNH Stage.
His view of the Celtic music world reaches across the pond to include Nova Scotia and fiddlers like Buddy & Natalie MacMaster and Ashley MacIsaac. “Those are technically the traditions,” he said. “It was heavily influenced by Scottish settlers, so that’s why there’s a lot of shared tunes and shared style.”
Mike Green leads Rebel Collective, a rock-leaning Celtic band in the vein of Dropkick Murphys or the Pogues that includes Audrey Budington on fiddle. His definition of the music is more spiritual.
“To me, it’s the songs and the stories of our people,” Green said, along with their struggles.
“The history books are written by the victors, but the songs, music and the arts are written by the suppressed and oppressed,” he continued. “Often when people were singing these songs to tell their truth and freedoms, the musicians, the harpers, and the bards were killed as an effective way to shut it down.”
An oral tradition kept these songs from vanishing.
“They weren’t written down,” he said. “We keep them alive and bring them to new audiences and new listeners. We get to play our role in the continuum of these stories of our people. For me, it has that deep connection to it, and that’s why I just love doing it.”
For Rebel Collective — Green, cofounder Brian Waldron, Ross Ketchum, Connor Veazey, Wayne Summerford and Budington — March 17 lasts all month. Their Rebel Call Stumble includes St. Patrick’s Day appearances at all three Salt hill Pubs, a stop at Manchester’s Shaskeen and a showcase at BNH Stage on March 20.
As they’ve done many times before, the band will play in the first pint at Salt hill Lebanon, and they’ll close out Shaskeen Pub’s annual bash. That gig grew out of a show by Derek Warfield and the Young Wolfe Tones in 2015 at the storied Manchester bar, which was co-founded by a member of the Chieftains.
Green cites Warfield as his biggest influence. When he learned of the show he cold-called Shaskeen owner Josh Ames to offer his band’s services.
“If you need an opener for Derek Warfield, it would be an honor of my life, we’ll do it for free,” he told him. “We took a chance, and we started playing there at least once a year.”
On the other hand, JD & the Stonemasons, a band that will share the stage with Rebel Collective in Concord on March 20, was born by taking a risk. The Newport trio went to check out their local pub, and brought their instruments, just in case — on a Friday night.
“We kind of knew what that meant,” the band’s flute, whistle, banjo and guitar player David Counts said in an interview that included JD Nadeau, who plays fiddle, mandolin and bass. “What are the odds they’re going to actually let a bunch of random people start playing on a Friday night? But to give them credit, they said yes.”
Pub owner Joe Tuohy was impressed enough to bring them back for an encore, and the group, which includes James Potvin on bodhran, harmonica player David Gainer and Hendrik Mahling on bouzouki and mandolin, is now a St. Patrick’s regular at Salt hill, playing all three pubs on the big day.
They’re careful to keep the three-bar circuit from becoming, in Nadeau’s words, the Salt hill Death March. “We’ve been relatively good about behaving ourselves with a drink; that’s the dragon in the cave,” he said. “You’ve definitely got to pace yourself, particularly if you’re going to play a late gig too.”
When it comes to sessiuns, almost everyone has a favorite. For Nadeau and Counts, it’s Waterhorse Tavern in Franklin.
Waterhorse Pub Irish Sessiun. Courtesy photo.
“It’s a great way to learn new songs, and it’s a challenge, too,” Nadeau said. “You meet someone that’s really good and you’re like, ‘Oh, man, I want to play. I’ve got to pick up my guitar.’”
The Faiella siblings and Budington are part of an unofficial house band at Epsom microbrewery Blasty Bough, a tiny pub with a living room vibe. There’s also Pete Van Berkum on button concertina, bodhran player Chris Murphy, Charles Siletti on Irish flute and bouzouki player Anders Larson, who was taught by Dan Faiella.
Larson was playing folk music with his dad and brother when he enrolled at CCMS.
“From there, a few of my teachers introduced me to Irish music,” he said in a phone call the day after the Blasty Bough sessiun. Along with bouzouki, he plays concertina and guitar. “My newest addition is bass; that’s all another music world.”
Weekly Shaskeen sessiuns at age 12 were seminal for him.
“Chris Stevens, an accordion player up in Maine, would drive down,” he said. “One or two times, his buddy Owen Marshall would come down as well. Those two, along with Alden Robinson, were a band called The Press Gang. They are by far my biggest influence.”
Delaney travels to Somerville for sessiuns at the Burren and McCarthy’s, but also occasionally hits the Barley Pub in Concord’s Tuesday get-together, one of the longest-running in the state. “That was the second sessiun that I spent a lot of time at,” she said. “My first band that I was with, we all met there.”
Green hosts Sea Shanty Singalongs twice a month at Canterbury AleWorks and at the Forum Pub in Concord in the afternoon on the final Saturday of every month. Although Green allows the genre isn’t strictly Celtic, it’s an excuse to gather, and many of the selections come from the Irish canon.
“I actually added a song that’s sung in Irish, about the pirate queen, Grace O’Malley,” Green said, noting that he’s mainly focused on sharing these centuries-old songs. “The oldest one we do is from the 1600s … some crazy old sailor happened to live long enough to have it documented and pass it on down.”
Interestingly, a guitar is in many ways a secondary instrument in Celtic music. A good guitarist must know when to pick a lane and merge into the music at a sessiun.
“It’s a completely different approach to playing guitar than any other kind of music,” Jim Prendergast said. “That’s a really big deal.”
Even for a guy like Prendergast who spent years as a go-to guitarist in Nashville studios because he was such a flexible player, adjustment was hard. He had to completely re-learn his instrument for the special tunings and modal structures of Irish music, which is not made for a guitar strumming along.
“It doesn’t need any kind of chordal accompaniment from a piano or a guitar; you’re there to shine different kinds of light on the melody … almost like a theatrical role,” he said. However, “It’s really fun to have the kind of freedom it allows…. You can choose to play a lot, a few, or no chords.”
Almost all the musicians sharing their thoughts have Irish blood, from a little to a lot. Larson is the exception; he’s primarily German and Norwegian. However, all agree that Celtic lineage isn’t required to play the music from the Seven Nations (or six, or eight, or maybe even nine, the number is often disputed).
Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki believes it’s less about heritage and more about personality and attitude.
“Make yourself aware of why this music exists, what historical circumstances helped create it, and where all the powerful emotions … are coming from,” he said. “You become a much more authentic [and] effective performer of the music if you’re taking the time to connect to [its] historical time and place.”
Green sees an advantage in his bloodline.
“It can help draw you in, and you can learn a little bit more about your history and your ancestry and feel a deeper connection,” he said. “But anybody with a background of people that have been oppressed, or had to deal with that, can automatically tap into this kind of feeling.”
Celtic music is universal, Dan Faiella noted, and can be found in all sorts of unlikely locales.
“Italy, Japan, some places in Germany … Russia has some Irish music fans and people play there. I’ve heard from people who tour in those areas that they’ll go to a session and there’s all these people who’ve maybe never been to Ireland and have spent a lot of time studying the music, and the sessions are amazing.”
Finally, Liz Faiella encouraged even newcomers to consider attending a sessiun.
“Even if you’ve learned three tunes, you can join in and play along,” she said. “People who’ve been playing for years will enjoy the same songs that they learned right at the outset. It’s a great way to do something creative and also connect with other people through that.”
Attend an Irish sessiun
Salt hill Pub 2 W. Park St., Lebanon, 448-4532 Tuesdays at 6 p.m.
Waterhorse Irish Pub 361 Central St., Franklin, 671-7118 Fridays at 7 p.m.
Shaskeen Pub 909 Elm St., Manchester, 625-0246 Saturdays at 3 p.m.
The Barley House 132 N. Main St., Concord, 228-6363 Tuesdays at 6 p.m.
A 2-inch chunk of cucumber – I like using the long, skinny English cucumbers; they seem to have a little more flavor. Go ahead and wash it, but don’t bother peeling it. The peel will add color and flavor to the finished drink.
2 ounces chili-lime rum – I’ve been using Captain Morgan’s for this. I do not regret it.
1 6-ounce can of pineapple juice
Muddle the cucumber thoroughly in the bottom of your cocktail shaker. This means smooshing it up with a stick. If you don’t have a muddler you can use a wooden spoon, or a beer bottle if it fits, or if you’re up for a project you can actually go outside and find a stick (wash it before using it). I’ve heard of a guy who cut off the handle of a child’s baseball bat, presumably not while his child was using it. The point is that you want to crush this chunk of cucumber, body and spirit, until it is the consistency of applesauce.
Add the rum, and shake your rum & cuke for 20 seconds or so. This is what is called a “dry shake,” meaning without ice. When you muddle herbs or fruits or vegetables, you do it for three reasons:
1. By smashing your cucumber up, you’ve given it a lot more surface area to interact with the alcohol.
2. You’ve broken up the cell walls inside the cucumber and released some of the flavor compounds from their tiny prisons. (If you are really committed to breaking up the cells of the cucumber, you can freeze it first. Ice crystals will poke holes in the cell walls before you even get to it with the muddler.)
3. So now you have all these flavor compounds floating around unattached. Some of them like water just fine and will dissolve into it without complaint. Others are pickier and are waiting around for some alcohol to bond with. By dry shaking your rum & cuke before diluting it with melting ice, you’re swooshing the flavor and color chemicals around in an alcohol solution. On a molecular level you’ve kick-started a party. As you shake it up you’ll hear a “slosh-slosh” sound, but the botanical molecules will hear Ozzy Osborne’s “Crazy Train.”
At this point go ahead and add a handful of ice to the shaker, as well as the contents of the miniature can of pineapple juice.
Shake the mixture for another 30 seconds or so, then strain it over fresh ice in a Collins glass. It will have a gratifyingly foamy head on it. This drink is best suited to drinking with a straw.
This is a mildly refreshing drink. The cucumber flavor team has spread throughout the pineapple juice, keeping it from being too sweet. There is a subtle citrussy spiciness from the flavored rum.
Of the many events and conferences taking place at this time of year, one that probably escaped your notice is the Winter Conference of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Hampshire, taking place at Colby Sawyer College this weekend. This year’s conference is actually happening a month later than usual, said Kyle Jacoby, a program manager for the Association.
“It’s not our first ever conference in March, but it’s been a little while, so we’re excited to see what March brings us,” Jacoby said. “We always get a lot of people in our evaluations and through comments that say community is a big part of the event and the organization, so we really leaned into that with our theme this year, ‘Taking Root and Nourishing Community.’ We really like the word ‘nourishing,’ sort of an action of taking root, really feeding into all these connections between land and people and our practices.”
A core concept of organic farming is being aware and mindful of where our food comes from, Jacoby said, and this year’s conference will address the concerns of many different groups who are interested in that. He said this year’s conference will have “over 20 workshops for everyone from farmers to home growers, permaculturists, and educators. So we really have a full gamut of different workshops for all types of learners, farmers, home growers, home livestock [keepers], herbalists, hobbyists, educators, nonprofits and professionals. So we’re really excited about all those workshops.”
This conference’s workshops will span a wide range of interests from the technical (Soil Carbon Dynamics and Farm-Scale Management) to the academic (Carrying Seeds Forward: African Diasporic & Indigenous Traditions in New England Agriculture) to the narrative (Starting From Scratch: What We Learned Starting Our Farm). The concept of inclusivity extends to this year’s keynote speakers, Jacoby said. “We’re really excited. We decided this year it was going to be really valuable and important to uplift some local voices and some local initiatives, and so we connected with Dave Trumbull of Good Earth Farm and Sarah Hansen of Kearsarge Gore Farm, two farmers who’ve been really involved in a farmer collaborative CSA [Community Supported Agriculture] called Local Harvest CSA. They’re going to share some of their lessons and stories from this farmer collaborative and from their perspective as farmers in the state about how we come together as a community and connect with one another.”
“We also have things like our Green Market Fair, and a lot of exhibitors, raffles, different activities for people to engage in,” Jacoby said. The Green Market, he explained, is an ongoing activity throughout the conference where organizations can exchange information, and attendees can make connections and build support networks. “We have a number of nonprofits or small businesses [and] some of our local co-ops or organizations that work to support farmers, like Northeast SARE, which is Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education, the MOSCA, the certifying agency that a lot of our farmers now have turned to to get certified. And we’ll have Rimmel Greenhouse, the Hampshire Herbal Network, the Granite State Grazers, Kearsarge Food Hub, High Mowing Organic Seeds, Witching Hour Provisions, the UNH Extension. So it goes on and on.”
Jacoby said more people have started to pay attention to food production in recent years, and this conference — like NOFANH itself — provides a way for those people to turn their interest into action.
“A lot of the things we see — both anecdotally and through data that we’ve seen – that there’s just increasing demand nationally for organic food and we have a lot of farmers in the state, and home growers too, who believe a lot in the philosophy and the principles of organic and want to ensure that they’re doing that … for themselves but also for the their communities.”
NOFANH The 2026 Winter Conference of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Hampshire will take place Saturday, March 7, at Colby Sawyer College in New London. For more information about the conference, or to register for it, visit nofanh.org/winterconference.
Featured photo: Photo courtesy of Tamworth Distillery
Rachel Ormond is the owner and operator of The Cure Cafe in New Boston.
“About three years ago we went up to Loon Mountain,” she said, “and there’s a little cafe on the top of the mountain. That was the first time Colin ever ate an English muffin, egg and cheese sandwich and he loved it.” At the time, Ormond’s 3-year-old son Colin was being treated for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a form of blood cancer.
“He’s really picky at the best of times,” Ormond continued, “and when you’ve been on cancer treatment, and you take all sorts of steroids, your taste buds change and your cravings are very distinct. He ate exclusively mac and cheese and chips for quite a while, so for him to eat an egg and cheese sandwich was really exciting. And then, he ate egg and cheese sandwiches every single day from that day on for two years. … So when we opened the Cafe, the first sandwich on the menu was The Colin, and it’s our egg and cheese on an English muffin because that’s what he loved. And then [my daughter] Charlotte always got a sausage egg and cheese, so now we have The Charlotte. And then that was it until their dad, Robert, was a little jealous. He was like, ‘Oh, what about me? I want a menu item.’ So, there was born ‘The Robert.’ My husband’s a big, jacked bodybuilder, so he’s got two eggs, double meat on an everything bagel, because that’s what he loves. And actually The Robert is super popular.”
The Cure Cafe is the local coffee-and-muffin joint in New Boston.
“I’m an avid coffee drinker myself,” Ormond said, “and I would frequently drive to Bedford, to Manchester for coffee, to Milford for coffee. So when this space opened up and the opportunity arose, my reaction was, ‘First of all, we need espresso within driving distance.’” As a result, the cafe offers a full menu of coffee options, from lattes and espressos to a range of iced coffee drinks.
“We serve any of our drinks hot or iced,” Ormond said. “We make cold brew and iced coffee and just regular drip as well. We sell cold brew and iced coffee and iced lattes all day long. We probably sell more iced drinks than hot drinks, truthfully. And in the summertime we will almost exclusively sell cold [drinks].”
In addition to coffees, teas and breakfast sandwiches, all of which feature an over-hard egg (“We’re more than happy to do an over-easy egg if you ask,” Ormond said), the breakfast menu includes a range of muffins and goods baked in house.
“We make all of our pastries every day,” Ormond said. “We’ve got cinnamon rolls, which are humongous, and our most popular muffin flavor is the lemon-blueberry. Every time I don’t make lemon-blueberries, people are like, ‘Where’s the lemon blueberry muffin? I’ll come back tomorrow.’ So I make them all the time because it keeps the people happy. And then we always have croissants or spinach and feta pastries. We switch up our scone flavors — usually blueberry, white chocolate-raspberry, and an apple-cinnamon.”
The lunch menu features salads and a range of sandwiches.
“We call all of our sandwiches here ‘sammies’ though, for fun,” Ormond said. “Our smoked turkey BLT is super popular now. … it was on the seasonal menu, but it’s transitioning into the permanent menu because it’s been so popular. We only use sourdough bread for sandwiches here, usually toasted. The smoked turkey BLT, the BLT, and the chicken salad all get it toasted. The club’s the only one that doesn’t get served on toast. But a lot of people request that we don’t toast it, so I really think it’s up to personal preference.”
The Cure Cafe 8 Mill St., New Boston, 741-5016, curellc.toast.site Hours: Wednesday through Monday, 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Closed on Tuesdays and during weather emergencies.
