Author: John Fladd

A lot has changed, but not the french fries

By John Fladd

jfladd@hippopress.com

If you had asked Peter Macone in 2019 what he saw himself doing in six years, it probably wouldn’t have been running a brewery. “It would be running two stores on Elm Street 110 steps apart,” he said.

Macone is a veteran restaurateur. For many years he was a part owner and the operating manager of two popular restaurants in downtown Manchester — the Republic Cafe (now closed) and Campo Enoteca, which merged with Republic before being sold to new owners.

“Then Covid happened,” Macone said.

According to Macone, the pandemic shook up the restaurant industry and changed the way it viewed itself.

“Covid was sort of the earliest catalyst for where we are today,” he said. “It changed the expectation and the way that we express farm-to-table food.” One of the most dramatic changes was in the role breweries played. “Breweries are a market that are just absorbing so many markets now,” Macone said. “People go to breweries instead of brunch, breweries instead of a lunch place, breweries instead of a bar after work, breweries for dinner. I saw that and I saw the ability to have a more sustainable lifestyle for myself in the long run. I have a six-week-old.”

Eventually, this led to the Republic Brewing Co., a partnership with Mike Brown, the owner of Hometown Coffee Roasters. Macone said each partner brought a particular set of skills to the new business.

“I know about food and hospitality,” Macone said. “I partnered with Mike, [who] made some of the most top-notch beer right out of the gate. And there was a day where he presented me with a beer and said, ‘I think this will be our flagship.’ I tasted it and I was like, ‘All right, we’re going to do just fine with the beer.’”

That was Republic’s Bella, a single-hopped New England-style India Pale Ale, or IPA. Macone said he and Brown made the decision early on to focus on a few core beer recipes.

“We want to have staples people know they can get, and stand by their quality,” he said. “They’re really quality products, but we’re not looking to fill a portfolio with 700 zillion names. For instance, next winter, Michael will be, without a doubt, doing a dark beer — likely involving coffee, as he has Hometown next door.”

In addition to its own core slate of beers, Macone said it’s important to both partners to feature beers from other area breweries.

“We’ll always have a guest tap here,” he said. “We always look to feature our friends in the area. So we have a Kettlehead guest tap right now. I believe we have a To Share coming up. We’ve [featured] To Share in the past; Post and Beam, Spyglass — all people that have helped us get open in the industry. And so we kind of want to return that favor. And plus, it’s just great to be talking about other people’s breweries and representing them. And they’ll help fill the gaps of what we don’t have.”

On the food side of the business, Macone said he has brought a focus with him from the original Republic Cafe and applied it to pub food.

“We’re maintaining the same farm-to- table aspect and the farms that we used to work with. So the same farmer that brought us pork at Republic is bringing us pork here. The same farmer that brought us beef is bringing us beef here. And the same goes for chicken. And eggs, we have a local farmer bringing us eggs. This is a way to continue those relationships that are over a decade old.”

“There are a couple little recipes that we’ve carried over [from Republic],” he said. “But most of it has been tweaked into more of a brewery format menu. One thing that is a straight carryover is our french fries. Republic’s french fries were award-winning. We brought those straight over just as they were, and people are really excited about it. They’re hand cut, blanched, and fried with capers and a bunch of other little things in there that make them unique”

“It’s been important for us to focus on the beer and the food,” Macone said, “and that’s why it’s nice to have Mike and I both involved. We have sort of a left brain and right brain, and we can both really dig into what our piece of the pie is, and it allows us to work on elevating the beer and the food at the same time and try to give people that experience of both. So that on Friday night, you know, we don’t just have people coming to drink beer after work, we have people coming here for their Friday night dinner.”

The Republic Brewing Co.

Where: 72 Old Granite St., Manchester, 836-3188, republicbrewingcompany.com
Hours: Open from 3 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays; 1 to 9 p.m. Fridays; noon to 9 p.m. Saturdays, and noon to 7 p.m. on Sundays. There is free off-street parking.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

A look at the chai latte

Emmett Soldati is very thoughtful about chai lattes.

“It’s spiced, flaky, typically pretty strong and then with some kind of either foamed or steamed milk if it’s hot or milk if it’s over ice, and sometimes a little sweet,” said Soldati, owner of Totally Tea + Coffee in Concord and Dover.

“We have a tagline at the cafe that says ‘Everyone’s a Little Chai-Curious,’” he said. “We sell several different chai blends. But, for our cafe bar, we have a specific blend we make with black tea, cinnamon, clove, cardamom, star anise and black pepper; we use that to make a concentrated tea base. And then with that base we can make hot or iced chais, which allows us to control pretty much every aspect of it. We can control how sweet it is. We usually put a pump or two of brown sugar syrup in it. We can control what milk goes in it, whether it’s a non-dairy oat milk or just a regular cow’s milk. And that allows us to control the flavor and make sure that it’s a nice strong sort of deep amber brown chai latte.”

The color of Soldati’s chai lattes is important to him.

“There’s only a handful of chai companies that sell packaged chai to restaurants and cafes and they tend to be fairly diluted and sugary so by the time you add in milk it basically just looks like tinted milk. To me it’s really important that it’s a nice deep amber and then of course you get a dusting of cinnamon on top,” he said.

According to Soldati, one reason Totally Tea+Coffee’s chai lattes are distinctive is that they came to the development process almost backward.

“We’re basically a tea and coffee company,” he said, “but I think a lot of coffee houses and cafes lead with coffee and then their tea and chai becomes like a secondary afterthought. We started from the other way. We started as a tea company and then expanded our espresso drinks so that we can do like a dirty chai [a chai latte with a shot of espresso], but people know us because of our specific house chai blend.”

Tiana Sargent is the manager of Flight Coffee Co. in Bedford. She is proud that Flight brews its own chai concentrate.

“We [make] a really strong brew using a masala chai from Mem Tea,” Sargent said. “They’re out of Cambridge, Mass. Awesome tea company. But yeah, we make a really strong brew using that, we lightly sweeten it with sugar, and cut it with milk and serve it. You can steam it to serve it hot or you can mix it in a cup.”

“I am very proud of our chai,” Sargent said. “It’s a great balance of sweet and spicy. We don’t overly sweeten it and we go heavier on the chai so you really get the flavor, the spices, the tea. A lot of places will use a really small amount and so it gets really diluted in the milk. And a lot of places will sweeten it too much as well. So you end up with a sweet drink that’s lacking depth. So we try to not put it there. We really want the tea to be tea-forward, spice-forward, and have just the right amount of sweetness [so] that it’s great on its own but if you’re somebody who likes the flavor of chai you can add a syrup and it won’t overdo the sweetness.”

Danielle Beaudette is the owner of The Cozy Tea Cart (104A Rte 13, Brookline, 249-9111, thecozyteacart.com) and a Specialty Tea Institute, (STI) Certified Tea Specialist. She said that chai and chai lattes have been popular in India for decades, but vary from one region to another, depending on the variety of teas and spices grown in a given area.

“The South grows different ones than the North,” she explained. “So depending on where you are, you’re going to get different spices in your chai latte. Some use ginger, some do not. There’s all different spices Some use peppercorns.”

She said that the quality of a chai latte depends on the quality of the tea used.

“We are very proud of the teas that we bring into the country here,” she said. “We only use loose leaf tea, so we never want to hide the flavor of the tea. It would complement the flavor. So it really depends on the place that’s blending it, on how they blend it. If they’re using tea bag tea, [the quality of the tea] probably doesn’t matter to them,” she said.

Brit McCullouch, the Supervisor for Waterworks Cafe in Manchester, said chai lattes have become a fixture on her menu.

“They’ve become very popular,” she said. “We’ve put a twist on the one that we have. We carry an organic and gluten-free honey vanilla chai latte, and we serve that either iced or hot, but we also put a spin on it [to make] a specialty drink. We add flavors to it. So last season we did pistachio and now with spring coming we add coconut syrup to it. It’s fine on its own, but I think always putting a spin on something grabs people’s attention. It’s just a nice alternative to having coffee. It’s a black tea concentrate with the honey and spices, and you pick your milk, and it goes so well with non-dairy milks, dairy, it really is just a very versatile product.”

Roo Hasty at William & Sons Coffee Co. in Concord and Manchester pointed out that the type of milk a chai latte is made with is an important and underappreciated aspect of the enterprise.

“A lot of people who are in their 20s like it with oat milk,” she said, “because it’s creamier. Whenever I have oat milk, it just tastes way creamier. We have oat milk, we have regular [dairy milk], we have coconut milk, we have almond milk. We’ve got all the milks.”

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.