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Trends, predictions and what’s to come for local food and drink in 2023

Another year is in the books for New Hampshire’s food scene. Here’s a look back on what local restaurateurs, business owners, event organizers and other notable figures contended with in 2022, plus a sneak preview of what’s to come in 2023.

An early surge

New Hampshire began the year amidst a winter surge of Covid-19, largely driven by the then-new omicron variant. Events responsible for bringing together large gatherings were once again canceled left and right, at a breakneck pace almost reminiscent of March 2020. The most significant? What would have been the anticipated return of New Hampshire Wine Week.

On Jan. 12 of this year — with two weeks to go until the Easterseals Winter Wine Spectacular — the New Hampshire Liquor Commission issued a statement canceling the celebration due to the rise in Covid cases.

What’s next for the future of Wine Week? A new name and a new time of year for 2023, said NHLC chief marketing officer Lorrie Piper. The large seminar-style tasting event traditionally serving as the week’s centerpiece has been rebranded as the New England Wine Spectacular and is scheduled to take place on Thursday, June 15.

“Clearly over the past few winters, now that we have historical information on the pandemic, we know that we’re most likely looking at an uptick in Covid cases … and so when we kind of all got together and started talking about it, we just thought, ‘Why not June?’” Piper said of the NHLC’s decision to move the week. “It’s going to be great weather, I think people are going to be ready to get out there, and we won’t have the travel problems that maybe some people encountered during those winter months in New England. … So far, the conversations that we’ve had with the wine celebrities and the winemakers who come have been very positive.”

Details on 2023’s Wine Week are still being ironed out, but Piper said the plan is to keep the same format as in years past. The Spectacular will take place on that Thursday and will be surrounded by a week’s worth of other events like wine dinners at local restaurants and tasting and sampling events at several of the Liquor & Wine Outlet stores.

“I really want to have a very, very full calendar,” she said. “My own personal challenge is to make it really difficult for customers to pick which thing they would want to attend.”

Asked about trending products in 2022, Piper said the NHLC has been monitoring several — chief among them are wines and spirits in the ready-to-drink category, which overall enjoyed increasing sales at the nearly 70 Liquor & Wine Outlet stores. The number of ready-do-drink products available at each location increased by about 30 percent in 2022 compared to 2021, according to Piper.

“I think our customers love the opportunity to buy something that’s easy to prepare, that they are really just pouring over ice,” she said. “The makers of these products have recognized that there is a big need for it and our customers have certainly shown us that they love that ease of just being able to pick up a four- or a six-pack of canned cocktails. … We’re projecting that that’s going to grow even more in 2023.”

Low-calorie, low-alcohol and low-to-no sugar options — comprising what Piper called the “Better for You” category — have also become more popular, in addition to things like premium tequilas and mezcals, sparkling wines, spritzers and even barrel-aged whiskeys.

“I think kind of the overall trend that we’re seeing is more and more Earth-friendly processing and growing,” she said, “so we have customers that look specifically for organic wines and spirits. … The other thing that was happening was that, during the pandemic, a lot of the distillers and makers had some time to really think about reinventing some of the products or offering something really unique, and so now we see that coming onto the market.”

Food events return

A number of food festivals and events returned this year — in at least a few cases, for the first time since 2019. In downtown Manchester the Taco Tour was perhaps the most notable. The Greater Manchester Chamber worked closely with the City of Manchester’s Economic Development Department and Mayor Joyce Craig’s office to revive the popular street festival, which returned on May 5.

The event had the largest roster of participating restaurants — more than 70, many of which had not existed when the last Taco Tour took place. Firefly American Bistro & Bar took home the “Golden Taco” trophy after receiving the most votes by thousands of attendees — and a date of May 4 has already been slated for the Taco Tour to return in 2023.

“We are largely planning to replicate the event from last year, but we are looking for sponsors to support adding a concert to Taco Tour Manchester,” Cole Riel, member engagement coordinator for the Chamber, told the Hippo in an email. “We are sending out a message to restaurants and event partners soon with some updates.”

The Taste of Downtown Nashua, which allows participants to sample offerings from nearly two dozen restaurants, returned for the first time in three years in June, as did Merrimack’s Great American Ribfest & Food Truck Festival in July, and the Gate City Brewfest, also in Nashua, in August. In Concord we saw the return of the New Hampshire Brewers Association’s annual flagship festival in July, rebranded as the Keep NH Brewing Festival. That event has already garnered the support of more than two dozen participating breweries for 2023 and is slated to return on Saturday, July 8, at Kiwanis Waterfront Park.

And several new events joined the scene in New Hampshire in 2022. We saw the inaugural New England Coffee Festival in downtown Laconia in May, for instance, and the first New England Hot Sauce Fest at Smuttynose Brewing Co. in Hampton in July — they respectively brought together thousands of coffee and hot sauce aficionados with demonstrations, contests, vendors and giveaways. Both are due to return for the second year in 2023: The coffee festival is happening on Friday, May 19, and Saturday, May 20, and the hot sauce festival will return on Saturday, July 29.

Reached by email, coffee festival organizer Karen Bassett of Wayfarer Coffee Roasters in Laconia said the inaugural event drew more than 5,000 attendees to the area.

“We received so much amazing feedback and are excited to elevate the next festival,” Bassett said, going on to note that 2023’s event will feature a greater number of hands-on workshops and outdoor vendors, plus a “latte art throwdown” on the Main Stage of the Colonial Theatre in front of a grand audience.

A year of resilience

Concord welcomed a downtown restaurant serving brick-oven artisan pizzas, Bedford saw a new self-serve wine bar and Nashua became home to the first area establishment offering drinks made with the South Pacific root known as kava. In January, longtime Concord restaurateur Joel Harris of Dos Amigos Burritos opened his newest eatery on Main Street, the New Hampshire Pizza Co., following a renovation of the space the previous year. Other additions to New Hampshire’s food scene included Hare of the Dawg Bar & Grill, a family-friendly neighborhood restaurant in downtown Derry, in January; Bellissimo Italian Steakhouse, which opened in the former Fratello’s storefront on Main Street in Nashua in March; Vine 32 Wine + Graze Bar, a self-serve wine bar featuring Italian-made Enomatic dispensers, which also opened in March; and the joint retail shop owned by Loon Chocolate and 603 Charcuterie that opened inside The Factory on Willow facility in Manchester in February.

We also saw the arrival in March of Rambling House Food & Gathering, a Nashua restaurant with a seasonally rotating menu of locally sourced items and a craft brewery on site, known as TaleSpinner Brewery. Later in the spring, George “Rocky” Burpee of Shaker Road Provisions, a company specializing in homemade bacon, opened a storefront in Concord, and the summer brought us the Manchester vegan cafe The Green Beautiful; City Hall Pub, the newest venture of Mint Bistro and Elm House of Pizza owner Tim Baines; and Root Awakening Kava Bar in Nashua, which was touted as “New England’s first kava bar,” by owner Greg Gately, who noted at the time that only around 200 such bars existed nationwide.

In June, LaBelle Winery opened its long-anticipated sparkling wine tasting barn and vineyard wedding ceremony space at its Derry facility — its chief purpose, owner and winemaker Amy LaBelle said, is creating sparkling wine varieties via Méthode Champenoise, a classic French technique. While it’s perhaps probably the last major addition to the space for a little while — “I know my husband is excited because I promised him I wouldn’t build any new buildings,” she joked — LaBelle said she’s looking forward to the new year. On Saturday, Jan. 28, the Amherst vineyard is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a special masquerade gala, featuring a cocktail hour, a four-course dinner menu, and performers like jugglers and fire-breathers. The ALS Association, in addition to Empowering Angels, LaBelle’s own foundation promoting youth entrepreneurship, will be the event’s beneficiaries.

In the fall, we saw the opening of the Haitian eatery Ansanm in October, the latest venture of Top Chef alum Chris Viaud of Northern Comfort Hospitality — we should also note that, in February, Viaud was nominated as a semifinalist in the 2022 James Beard Foundation awards under the “Emerging Chef” category. We saw a rare milestone in October 2022 with the Red Arrow Diner’s 100th anniversary and just this month bid farewell to retiring longtime chef Edward Aloise and his wife, Claudia Rippee, owners of Republic Cafe and Campo Enoteca.

Asked about her thoughts on the hospitality industry in 2022 as a whole, LaBelle said that, while staffing challenges have loosened up at her two dining establishments — Americus Restaurant in Derry and The Bistro at LaBelle Winery in Amherst — inflation and rising food costs have been ongoing problems.

“Our staffing is in a much better spot than it was a year ago, certainly, so that’s helpful,” she said. “We’ve just had to ratchet up our labor costs, so we’re paying people more to get them … but the prices can’t really keep up with that, and so it’s a really tricky spot.”

Viaud also said rising prices have been among the biggest challenges his team has faced this year, but he added that staffing has improved. At Greenleaf, for instance, which celebrated its third anniversary in business in 2022, Viaud promoted chefs Justin O’Malley and Nick Breyare to oversee day-to-day operations in the kitchen, changing the menus within the growing seasons and leading the line cooks.

“For the most part we have absorbed the costs of the inflation of goods … without any disruption to service,” Viaud said in an email. “For Greenleaf specifically, I would have to say that we are in a much better position in terms of necessary staffing this year compared to last.”

One encouraging thing for LaBelle is that she hasn’t had a hard time filling seats.

“People are still going out and enjoying a good meal, and we’re grateful for that,” she said. “I think people are still willing to spend the money to go out, but they’re just being a little more choosy about it and making sure where they’re going to spend their money is top quality, and that’s what LaBelle can provide.”

A Year in the Kitchen: 2022 edition

The Hippo’s In the Kitchen Q&A series continued in 2022, featuring voices of New Hampshire’s food scene, from restaurant chefs and bakers to homestead business owners.

We like to ask these experts for their thoughts on the food trends sweeping the Granite State. Food trucks won out as the most commonly cited trend this past calendar year, but other themes were also commonly mentioned, including farm-to-table and plant-based cooking movements in many Granite State restaurant kitchens.

“Using local farms is so cool because I think it’s a great engaging point for the servers to talk with the customer … so they get to know where their food is coming from, but they also feel like they are putting value into the economy in their area,” chef Matt McCormack of the Granite Restaurant & Bar in Concord told the Hippo in February.

Some interviewees this year chose more specific menu items as leading trends, like smash burgers, charcuterie boards and sampler-sized offerings such as flights and tapas.

“Just any small amount of something that’s served on one plate. You’re seeing a lot of that now — burger flights, taco flights, you name it,” Weare native Joe Bernier of the Angry Hog Barbecue Co. food trailer told the Hippo in May.

Megan Kurs of The Yolk Grill in Pelham gave us a similar answer in March, saying that the term “flight” doesn’t necessarily pertain to just beers or cocktails anymore but rather to any type of food that can be presented in a sampler-style setting. “People like to have different things they can take pictures for and post them on social media and tag us and things like that,” she said.

A fun question we always ask during these interviews is either “What celebrity would you like to see eating at your restaurant?” or “What celebrity would you like to have a meal with?” For the third year in a row, the No. 1 answer was television chef Gordon Ramsay of, among many other popular cooking shows, Hell’s Kitchen. Saurav Goel of Raga Contemporary Kitchen in Nashuatold the Hippo in April he considers Ramsay to be “a mentor in many ways,” while George “Rocky” Burpee of Shaker Road Provisions in Concord said in September he considers himself to be a “die-hard fan” of the chef. Justin Hoang of Luk’s Bar and Grill in Hudson and Bellissimo Italian Steakhouse in Nashua told the Hippo in July that he regularly watches just about every show Ramsay is on.

“As intimidating as he comes off as in those shows, I think he’s a phenomenal chef,” Hoang said.

The runner-up for the most commonly given answer to this question came as no surprise — Manchester’s own actor and comedian Adam Sandler. Other celebrities that received two or more answers this year? Actors Jack Black and Matthew McConaughey and Food Network personalities and chefs Alton Brown, Guy Fieri and Jeffrey “Duff” Goldman.

Finally, asking our interviewees to give a shout out to their favorite local dining establishments in the Granite State always yields a diverse lineup of answers. The most common answer of 2022 was The Riverhouse Cafe in Milford — three people throughout the year told the Hippo that the popular breakfast and lunch spot on the Oval is among their favorites. Industry East Bar in Manchester, Revival Kitchen & Bar in Concord, Surf Seafood in Nashuaand the Stark House Tavern in Weare were among some of the other recurring answers this year.

Featured photo: Firefly American Bistro & Bar received the “Golden Taco” trophy for winning the 2022 Taco Tour on Thursday, May 5. Courtesy photo.