Author: Matt Ingersoll

Flight Center opening second location in Manchester, introducing speakeasy concept

When you walk inside The Flight Center Taphouse & Eatery’s newest location in southern Manchester, on track to open later this month, you’ll be asked a simple question — are you here for your “flight” or are you here to “pick up your luggage?”

Depending on your answer, you’ll then be led to one of two uniquely different operations under one roof, or “a concept within a concept,” as Flight Center founder Seth Simonian coined. One side, featuring a dining room and bar with brick-oven pizzas, sandwiches, appetizers and more than 50 craft beers on tap, will look and feel familiar to patrons of the eatery’s Nashua counterpart. The other side, facing away from the main road, is home to a 1920s-inspired speakeasy-style bar, similar to others in New Hampshire, like CodeX Books. Antiques. Rarities. (B.A.R) in Nashua and Chuck’s BARbershop in Concord.

“All you’re going to see is a wall of suitcases, and it’s soundproof, so you’re not going to hear anything from the other side,” Simonian said. “You have to press the right suitcase to signal the host on the other side of the door to know that you’re there to let you in and greet you.”

Liu Vaine, one of Simonian’s partners, has helped build several of the other speakeasy-like spaces across New Hampshire after being inspired by the concept in New York City. Much like this one, the entrances to these “secret” bars are hidden behind some type of structured facade.

“Liu and I had been tossing around the idea of what The Flight Center and CodeX would look like in the same building,” said Simonian, who is also a managing partner in local eateries like the 1750 Taphouse in Bedford and Cheddar & Rye in Manchester. “[The speakeasy] will be called The Lost Luggage, [but] you’re not going to see that on a sign anywhere.”

Simonian said the group’s original plan was to pursue opening a brewery in the now-closed British Beer Co. location in Westford, Mass. When those plans fell through, they learned that the Massachusetts-based chain’s Manchester location had become available.

“We came into this space … and realized it was perfect for what we had been talking about,” Simonian said.

Several mainstays of The Flight Center’s food menu in Nashua — including the pretzels with house beer cheese, the chicken wings, the tater tot “totchos,” and the brick-oven pizzas — will all be on the menu in Manchester, along with some new items like house burgers, and entrees like steak and frites and shrimp and grits. New house desserts are in the works too, like Black Forest brownies and seasonal cheesecakes prepared with select types of beers or liquors.

In addition to the always rotating line of beers on tap, there will be a selection of bourbons, whiskeys and scotches, plus an expanded offering of wines.

The speakeasy side, which encompasses about a third of the building’s overall interior space, according to Simonian, features a craft cocktail menu of its own.

“The idea is that it’s a very high-end craft cocktail experience, where your bartenders have the ability to build a cocktail to your mood,” Simonian said. “At CodeX, there is a cocktail menu that you’re ordering 14 to 15 drinks from, and then they’ll also build you a cocktail based on your needs. You’ll see something very similar here.”

The Flight Center Taphouse & Eatery
Featuring the in-house speakeasy-style bar The Lost Luggage. An opening date is expected in the coming weeks. Follow them on social media or email them for updates.
Where: 1071 S. Willow St., Manchester
Hours: TBA
More info: Find them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @flightcentermht, or send an email to info@flightcenterbc.com

Feautred photo: Photo courtesy of The Flight Center Taphouse & Eatery

New Hampshire Craft Beer Week returns

New Hampshire Craft Beer Week, an annual celebration dedicated to highlighting brewery culture in the Granite State, is returning for its seventh year. Starting Wednesday, April 7, in line with National Beer Day, and continuing through Saturday, April 17, breweries all over New Hampshire will be showcasing special beer releases, hosting virtual events and participating in various collaborative social media efforts to keep the community connected.

Craft Beer Week was introduced by the New Hampshire Brewers Association in 2015, when there were just 44 licensed craft breweries statewide. Today, there are over 90, according to executive director C.J. Haines. In 2019, he industry contributed more than $500 million to the state, the most recent data currently available.

Brewery happenings

Even now, brewers are finding ways to celebrate with their customers.

Several beer trails (you can receive prizes or giveaways based on how many participating breweries you visit) are planned — including a special one through the New Hampshire chapter of the Pink Boots Society. The beer trail is being held in lieu of a collaborative release from women representing multiple Granite State breweries.

Each brewery is instead releasing its own beer highlighting the hop blend released by Yakima Chief Hops. The trail, featuring nearly a dozen craft breweries across Manchester, Concord, the Lakes Region and the Seacoast, will be open throughout the months of April and May with grand prize drawings for those who complete it.

Great North Aleworks in Manchester, in addition to releasing a new lager to benefit the Manchester Historic Association on April 7, will host a trivia night that evening at 6 p.m., featuring executive director and author John Clayton. According to Great North sales and marketing manager Brian Parda, Clayton will be using the Manchester Wall of Fame, the Millyard Museum’s interactive exhibit, to play a game of “Who’s Who” that people can participate in either virtually or in person.

More new brews

In Derry, Cask & Vine owners Andy Day and Alana Wentworth happen to be celebrating the first anniversary of the Daydreaming Brewing Co. during Craft Beer Week. Their venture has gone in directions Day never thought it would go in since the pandemic hit.

“Our original intention was to do English-style ales,” Day said. “We started doing barrel-aged variants with our distillery, which was not what we had set out to do, but the reception has been pretty fantastic. … We’ve also found ourselves in stores and have a few draft accounts in restaurants. That was another thing we didn’t plan on doing.”

Fierce Princess, a German Pilsner brewed with rye and spicy peppers, is a new brew that will be available beginning Thursday, April 15. It’s the first of a series of beers being released that’s based on a Dungeons & Dragons campaign Day is running called Insidious. It will also be the first Daydreaming Brewing Co. beer to come in cans as well as on draft. Three more releases in the series are expected to follow, every four months. The following day, Friday, April 16, they will release a special anniversary ale, Day said, a blend of Daydreaming’s Russian imperial stout, barleywine and Belgian strong dark ale that has been aged in a whiskey barrel.

Lithermans Limited Brewery in Concord also has an anniversary coming up in line with Craft Beer Week — its fifth, according to owner Michael Hauptly-Pierce. On Friday, April 9, Lithermans will be releasing a new double dry hopped IPA called Styles and Dynamics, followed by the re-release of Inner Light Spectrum, a dry hopped Pilsner, on Friday, April 16.

“We opened up an online store as soon as [the pandemic began], and that’s been huge in helping us get through,” said Hauptly-Pierce, adding that the outdoor patio at Lithermans is expected to reopen starting Saturday, April 3.

Last week, Manchester’s To Share Brewing Co. had two new releases of its own — Swhale, a hazy New England-style double IPA with flavors of strawberry, melons and coconut; and Up Cider, a dry hard cider made with orange zest and juice to give it a citrus-y kick.

To Share co-founder Aaron Share said he has plans to collaborate with Martha’s Exchange in Nashua on a beer he hopes to have released by May. The brewery will welcome several live music acts over the course of Craft Beer Week, like Ryan Gagne-Hall on April 10 and Kevin Horan on April 11. It also recently received approval to bring back extended outdoor seating.

“Throughout Covid, we’ve had to continue to adjust our business model in terms of how much canning we do versus what we have here on tap,” Share said. “For a while, we were canning a majority of the beer we were producing, but over the last several months things have picked back up [in the taproom]. … We usually see a dip in business in January, but in fact, January this year was pretty phenomenal for us.”

Looking ahead

The Brewers Association’s annual summer festival was canceled last July, but a couple of virtual or drive-thru events were held in its place to raise funds.

“We did the first one back in May, and I think we hit the timing just right because not everybody had suffered the whole Zoom burnout yet,” Haines said. “We meet with all of the other brewers guilds and associations weekly, and they’ve all done one to two virtual events since the pandemic started. Their participation numbers for those virtual events have definitely dropped.”

Instead of another virtual festival, Haines said, there are plans later this year to introduce a collaborative beer release among local breweries to benefit the Association.

With the launch of its new website earlier this year, Haines said the Brewers Association is now shifting away from its app in favor of a more user-friendly directory.

“There are all kinds of different search filters, so you can tell which breweries have outdoor seating, which breweries you can bring your dogs to, things like that,” she said. “We’re also going to be launching a new campaign on social media called ‘Your Next beer is Here,’ with the emphasis on the ‘n’ for next and the ‘h’ for here to highlight New Hampshire. So it’s going to be a way to encourage people to get out and enjoy their next beer at a place not in their homes.”

New Hampshire Craft Beer Week
When: Wednesday, April 7, through Saturday, April 17
Where: Various breweries statewide throughout the week; follow the New Hampshire Brewers Association on social media or visit their website for the most up-to-date details on special beer releases, events and more
More info: Visit nhbrewers.org or find them on Facebook @nhcraftbeerweek

Feautred photo: Courtesy photo.

ToKoss Take-Out opens in Manchester

When The Stuffed Sub closed last year, owner Chris Munzimi of Afro Paris, the beauty supply store next door, immediately took notice. He and other family members had been looking for a space to open a restaurant, and the newly vacant spot on Elm Street in Manchester was perfect.

ToKoss, a takeout-only eatery offering hard-to-find African and Caribbean dishes like oxtail stew, turkey tail, jerk chicken and cassava bread, in addition to house subs, burgers and wings, opened March 9. Munzimi, his younger brother Romeo Masuku, cousins Christian Mumpini and Junior Munzimi and family friend Jonathan Manono are all investors.

Masuku, whose family came to New Hampshire from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the early 2000s, said the restaurant’s name is derivative of the Lingala word “kitoko,” which means “something good” or “beautiful.” Its logo features an African safari tree.

“We wanted to bring some culture to the city of Manchester,” Masuku said. “We’re trying to incorporate dishes from the continent of Africa itself, and also dishes from the Caribbean islands and other Latin American countries. … Some of the recipes come from my mom directly.”

ToKoss features several options that are available all day, like chicken tender or house-marinated steak subs, cheeseburgers with a variety of add-on options, and salads. Traditional African or Caribbean meals become available starting at 3 p.m. — those include oxtail stew, curry chicken, jerk chicken, and pondu, or cassava leaves. Each comes with rice and one or two additional sides, like sweet plantains, fries, corn on the cob, and samoussas, or meat-filled pastries.

“The oxtail stew is something that everybody loves. That’s been the biggest seller,” Masuku said. “Oxtail is something made in Africa and the Caribbean islands as well. … The differences are in the spices used. We’ve identified house spices that we use here to try to incorporate everybody.”

You’ll also find a rotating menu of specialty items served on most weekends, like goat meat stew, catfish stew or smoked turkey tail, which can be ordered with any side. Other a la carte items have included wings, baby back ribs, fried shrimp, chicken or house-marinated steak kabobs, and beignets, also known in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as mikate.

“[Beignets] look like small doughnuts, but just fried. They’re very popular in Europe as well,” Masuku said. “You can eat them virtually with anything.”

Soft drinks like Coca-Cola, Sprite and Fanta are sold in glass bottles out of a refrigerated case.

“In Kinshasa, which is the capital city of where I was born, when you go out to restaurants you’ll usually see Coke products come in glass bottles,” Masuku said, “so we brought that in here just to have that little bit of nuance. … We’re going to try to add ginger beer also.”

In addition to takeout orders via phone, Masuku said ToKoss will soon be offering online ordering and delivery through a third-party service.

ToKoss Take-Out
Where: 1293 Elm St., Manchester
Hours: Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 3 to 9 p.m. (may be subject to change)
More info: Find them on Facebook and Instagram @tokosstakeout, email tokossllc@gmail.com or call 232-4399 to place a takeout order

Feautred photo: Oxtail stew over Caribbean rice with curry chicken and a beef samoussa. Photo by Matt Ingersoll.

Milford’s Chris Viaud to appear on Top Chef

Milford chef Chris Viaud will appear as a contestant on Season 18 of Bravo’s cooking competition series Top Chef, which will premiere Thursday, April 1. He’ll compete in several challenges with 14 other executive chefs and restaurateurs from across the country, preparing dishes for celebrity judges Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons, as well as previous Top Chef finalists. Filming for the show took place in Portland, Oregon, late last year. As they say on the show, the winner receives $250,000, a feature in Food & Wine magazine, an appearance in the annual Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Colorado, and the title of “Top Chef.”

Viaud is the executive chef and owner of both the farm-to-table restaurant Greenleaf (54 Nashua St., Milford, 213-5447, greenleafmilford.com) and the sandwich and pastry shop Culture (75 Mont Vernon St., Milford, 249-5011, culturenh.com). He grew up in Massachusetts and attended Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I., where he studied food service management. Prior to opening Greenleaf and Culture, Viaud spent three years as a chef at Deuxave, a fine-dining French restaurant in Boston, where he honed many of the creative techniques and skills he still practices today.

How were you approached for the show and what was the casting process like?

One of the prior chefs at Deuxave, Adrienne Wright, was actually a contestant on Season 16 of Top Chef. She was the one who kind of inspired me and motivated me to toss my hat into the ring. She sent in my name and then somebody from casting reached out to me to begin the interviewing and auditioning process. There were many steps involved, and I had to think a lot about how to best express my talent to get to the point of being chosen for the show.

Had you been a previous Top Chef viewer? Were you familiar with the show’s format?

I’ve been watching the show since around Season 10 or 11. It’s definitely one of my favorite cooking shows to watch, because I often feel a deep connection to the chefs. This is all raw talent and their real struggles and self-battles that come through on the show.

Do you remember the moment you learned you had been selected to be a Top Chef contestant and what was going through your mind at that time?

Yes, actually. So just before Culture had opened [in August 2020], I was sitting in the empty building doing paperwork, and I got a call from an unknown number. Typically I don’t pick up unknown numbers, but I just had a feeling. … I was told that I had been selected to compete in the new season. I ran around the building and drove from Culture to Greenleaf. My wife Emilee was working the line at Greenleaf, and I took her aside and told her the news, and then I was just speechless after that.

You learned soon after that you’d be traveling to Portland, Oregon, for filming. Did you have to familiarize yourself with the food scene over there as part of your overall preparation?

I had not been there before, so it was also a bit of a surprise for me to learn that I would be going to Portland. I wasn’t too familiar with it, so I did have to do some research on the food community out there and what grows around that area. In New England, for example, we focus a lot on the four distinct seasons when we think about produce, but over there, there is a lot of produce that is grown year-round. So those kinds of things definitely took me outside of my comfort zone.

Did the experience make you realize anything you hadn’t noticed before as a viewer?

I’ve done cooking competitions before, but nothing quite like this at all. You get that realization that this is all really happening once the clock starts ticking. That 30 minutes you get is a real 30 minutes, and it flies. … All of us on the show became very well-connected, and being able to share our expertise with one another was one of the most rewarding things about the experience.

What was filming like in the midst of Covid?

There were multiple Covid tests before leaving but also throughout the course of filming. The production company took several extra measures to make sure the judges and the contestants were staying safe. We had to wear masks whenever we weren’t filming and we had to keep our distance from one another.

Top Chef: Season 18 premiere
The episode will air on Bravo and will feature Milford chef Chris Viaud
When: Thursday, April 1, 8 p.m.
How to tune in: Check your television service provider’s listings for the channel number, or stream the premiere online at bravotv.com/live

Feautred photo: Chris Viaud. Photo by Stephanie Diani/Bravo.