Category: Featured Content

Granite Views: Hippo’s Best of 2020

We’re very happy and a bit relieved to present Hippo’s Best of 2020 in this week’s issue. It’s been a long time coming.

Readers voted in our annual poll back in February (you know, “BC,” Before Covid) and we planned to publish the results in the March 26 issue, but with the shutdown of most businesses, schools and everything else, we worried that the list would be very unhelpful. Here’s a list of things you can’t do! So we held off until we had a bit more confidence that things would be opening back up. And here we are — opening back up (for the most part).

The Best of has always been a celebration of what makes southern New Hampshire different from other parts of the country. It’s the things you like the best about your community — the people, parks, community activities, restaurants, cafes and small businesses. It’s been a guide by our readers, for our readers.

The people, places and things that we ask readers to vote on are a part of the arts, entertainment and quality of life here that we strive to cover in each issue. And while we are proud to present those issues to you in this free newsweekly, the Hippo is not free to publish. Since our founding nearly 20 years ago, local advertising support has provided us with the revenue to publish a quality free paper. Not so much anymore. And now, we’re asking for your help.

Please consider becoming a sustaining member to help us to continue providing this coverage. We want to continue to give you the information that can help you make the most of living here, and we need you to pitch in. We want to keep offering you live music listings, updates on the comedy scene, a look at new art exhibits, a peek at theatrical productions, interviews with local authors and ideas for your weekend hikes. To do that, we need your financial support. Help us continue our mission of strong local coverage so we can help you make the most of your next meal or your weekend plans.

Please consider supporting us by becoming an annual member. All members will get exclusive access to Hippo’s online articles and archives, exclusive content, Hippo deals (when available) and a bumper sticker.

Contributions can be made online at hippopress.com.

Thank you for voting in the Best of 2020 poll and sharing your favorites, and thank you for continuing to support the Hippo.

In the kitchen with Ashley Reisdorf

Ashley Reisdorf of Raymond is the owner of Ashley’s Eats & Sweets (find them on Facebook), a homestead business specializing in custom cakes and baked goods. A self-taught baker, she accepts custom cake orders for all types of events, including birthday parties, graduations, baby showers and weddings. She’ll also dabble in cookies, cupcakes, whoopie pies and other smaller goodies. Order inquiries can be placed via phone or online, with at least a one-week advance notice requested and free contactless delivery within a 30-minute drive of Raymond.

What is your must-have kitchen item?

An offset spatula or a silicone scraper.

What would you have for your last meal?

Vegetarian barbecue nachos.

What is your favorite local restaurant?

Gordo’s Burritos & Tacos in Raymond. My husband and I love to eat out from there.

What celebrity would you like to bake a cake for?

Mark Wahlberg.

What is your favorite thing you’ve ever baked for someone?

I guess my personal favorite cake that I’ve made … was a pina colada-flavored dirt bike helmet cake that I did for my older brother’s birthday in January. We have a typical brother-sister relationship. He likes to tease me and tell me my stuff is no good, [but] he raved about that cake to everyone.

What is the biggest food trend in New Hampshire right now?

Unicorn cakes seem to be the running theme with little girls lately. I think I’ve done like eight of them in the last couple of months.

What is your favorite thing to cook at home?

Cooking-wise, I think my specialty is loaded mashed potatoes and fall-off-the-bone ribs.

Featured Photo: Ashley Reisdorf of Ashley’s Eats & Sweets in Raymond.

Honey lemon lavender shortbread cookies
From the kitchen of Ashley Reisdorf of Ashley’s Eats & Sweets in Raymond

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
½ cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons honey
2 cups all-purpose flour (can be replaced with gluten-free one-to-one flour)
Pinch of salt
3 to 5 lemon lavender tea bags (to taste)

In a stand mixer, cream together softened butter, sugar and honey until light and fluffy. Add in flour, salt and loose tea leaves. Mix until just combined. Be careful not to overmix. Lay dough out on a piece of plastic wrap. Form dough into a log and then shape into a rectangle. Wrap dough in plastic and freeze for 30 minutes, or refrigerate for two hours or until firm. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. While the oven is heating, cut the dough into 1/4-inch slices and place one to two inches apart on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown. The cookies will still be soft but will firm up when cooled.

Summer flavors

Great New England BBQ and food truck festival returns

If you’ve been cooped at home for most of the summer, you’ll have the chance to get out and enjoy local food and beer at the Great New England BBQ & Food Truck Festival. Even though it will look and feel different this year, the second annual event is scheduled to happen on Saturday, Aug. 8, at the Hampshire Hills Athletic Club in Milford, and will also include craft and artisan vendors, live music and a cornhole tournament.

Normally a two-day festival, the event has been shortened to just one day this year. A kids’ zone that had bounce houses, face-painting and other activities has been eliminated.

Festival organizer Jody Donohue said she has been in regular communication with the town’s health and fire departments, as well as the state Attorney General’s office, to develop a plan on how to hold the event as scheduled in a safe fashion.

“It’s going to be much more spacious,” Donohue said. “We’ll have a minimum of 10 feet of space to the left and right of every food truck and artisan.”

She added that one-way walking aisles, six-foot pavement markings and sanitizing stations will all be implemented throughout the venue. All vendors and event staff are required to wear masks and attendees are encouraged to as well when not eating or drinking.

Ten to 12 food trucks are expected to be parked along the perimeter of the aisles for the duration of the festival, including a few local to New Hampshire and others coming from nearby New England states. Prime Time Grilled Cheese, launched by Manchester couple Alex and Marcie Pichardo in 2018, was a favorite at last year’s festival and is expected to return this year, according to Donohue. The truck offers all kinds of specialty grilled cheese sandwich options, in addition to “dessert” sandwiches like the grilled Fluffernutter and the grilled S’mores.

Other local faces will include Jayrard’s Java Cafe, a mobile coffee trailer converted from an old camper that specializes in premium Costa Rican coffees and organic teas, and The Smoothie Bus, which offers dozens of flavors of made-to-order smoothies using real fruit. There will also be freshly baked cookies from the Sweet Crunch Bakeshop & Catering Co. of Vermont; specialty hot dogs on toasted rolls from Trolley Dogs of Boston; barbecue options from Bobby & Jack’s Memphis Barbecue — a.k.a. “The Pig Rig” — of Tewksbury, Mass.; and cannolis from Uncle Joey’s Cannoli of Waltham, Mass.

A beer tent will feature pourings from several local breweries, like Frogg Brewing of Marlborough, 603 Brewery of Londonderry and Martha’s Exchange of Nashua. Guitarists will be playing music throughout the afternoon and the crew from 106.3 Frank FM will be there between noon and 2 p.m.

Two of the athletic club’s indoor tennis courts will be open with craft and artisan vendors. Donohue said products sold there will run the gamut from jewelry, stained glass, handmade soaps and woodworking items to gourmet barbecue sauces, mustards and other foods.

A cornhole tournament during the festival is planned for 2 p.m. on the function field adjacent to the parking lot, with warmups at 1 p.m. The cost is $15 per player and includes event entry.

While there will be multiple chairs and tables set up inside and outside that will be regularly sanitized, Donohue said festival attendees are allowed to bring their own chairs or blankets.

“It really is going to be a fun event for people to just get out of the house, sit on the field and enjoy the open air in a safe way,” she said.

Featured Photo: Alex and Marcie Pichardo of the Prime Time Grilled Cheese food truck. Courtesy photo.

Second annual Great New England BBQ & Food Truck Festival
When: Saturday, Aug. 8, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. (rain date is Aug. 9)
Where: Hampshire Hills Athletic Club, 50 Emerson Road, Milford
Cost: Tickets are $5 general admission and free for kids under 14; purchase tickets at the gate or in advance online at ticketleap.com
Visit: gnespringintosummer.ticketleap.com/gnefoodtruckfest
Free parking is available on site. Masks are strongly suggested. No pets are allowed.

Participating food vendors
• Bobby & Jack’s Memphis Barbecue (“The Pig Rig”) (memphispit.com)
• Chompers (find them on Facebook @tomschompers)
• Extreme Concessions (find them on Facebook)
• Jayrard’s Java Cafe (jayrardsjava.square.site)
• M&G Mobile Gourmet (mgmobilegourmet.com)
• Pig on the Road BBQ (pigontheroad.com)
• Prime Time Grilled Cheese (primetimegrilledcheese.com)
• R & J BBQ (rjtexasbbqonwheels.com)
• The Smoothie Bus (thesmoothiebus.com)
• Sub Zero Nitrogen Ice Cream (subzeroicecream.com)
• Sweet Crunch Bakeshop & Catering Co. (sweetcrunchbakeshop.com)
• Totally Nutz (urbannutroasters.com)
• Trolley Dogs (bostontrolleydogs.com)
• Uncle Joey’s Cannoli (unclejoeyscannoli.com)

Laugh out loud

Town Hall Theatre hosts Silent Film Comedy Week

The Town Hall Theatre in Wilton restarted its silent film series in July, featuring live music by accompanist (and Hippo co-founder and associate publisher) Jeff Rapsis. After attracting more of a crowd than its first-run movies had, theater owner and operator Dennis Markaverich decided to forgo new movies until the fall and host a Silent Film Comedy Week at the theater from Aug. 10 through Aug. 14. Rapsis talked about the event and what viewers can expect.

How did this week of silent films come about?

It was an invention born of necessity. … Dennis … programmed [first-run films], but nobody was coming to them. … He was sitting there some nights with only one person in his two theaters. … I’ve done two silent film screenings there since the theater reopened, and we were surprised that the silent films actually attracted the largest audiences since reopening. … We thought … why not take some of the great comedies from the 1920s, which are always crowd-pleasers, and run them instead of first-run films?

Why do you think the silent film screenings are so popular?

There are people who really love this art form and come from far and wide to see these films. … We’ve been running silent films with live music at the Town Hall Theatre regularly every month for 13 years … so we’ve sort of developed a loyal audience for it, and a momentum.

Why comedies?

Comedies are really special because during the silent film era a comedy was not about telling jokes or stories; there was no sound, so the humor was all visual, not verbal … and an accident of that type of humor is that it still holds up really well today. If [comedians] were doing standup in the 1920s … we wouldn’t understand any of the jokes today … but visual humor is timeless … and works in different cultural contexts. … Anyone, no matter where they were in the world, could follow the story and enjoy it.

When and how did you start doing this?

I’ve been doing it regularly since about 2007. … The Palace Theatre in Manchester didn’t have anything planned for Halloween, so I volunteered to do the music for a screening of the silent film Phantom of the Opera. … I really enjoyed doing it and kept doing it … and now I do about 100 shows a year, generally two shows a week in New Hampshire or Boston. Sometimes, I travel across the country … and I’ve played in London a couple times. It’s been interesting … to go around the world, trying to bring silent films from a century ago to life for today’s audience.

How does the live musical accompaniment work?

I use a keyboard. It’s a digital synthesizer, so it’s not just piano. … One of the stereotypes about silent films is that they had some kind of rinky-dink piano accompaniment on an out-of-tune piano, but that isn’t how it was for these films. Nobody would have accepted that at the time, because the music was always such an important part of the experience. … With the synthesizer, I can create a score with everything from strings and woodwinds to bass drums, cymbals and percussion. It can recreate the texture of a full orchestra remarkably well.

How does live music enhance the experience?

Music plays quite a different role between [silent] films and contemporary film. In contemporary film, the music is all written out [by] one person. … For [silent] films, there was no official score. Most of the films were released by the studios to local theaters, and it was up to local musicians to come up with the right music for their audience. … In most cases, [the musician] would improvise the score on the spot. It was a skill that you can develop, which I have done, to create music in real time that responds not just to the film but to the audience’s reaction to the film, so every screening is a unique experience.

Why go?

It’s a great chance for people to experience something that they can’t get anywhere else. You can watch these films at home on video, but it’s not the same, because the nature of [silent films] is the idea of showing them in a theater with an audience and live music, and [the screenings] really recreate those conditions that these films were intended to be shown in. … I encourage people to give it a try. It’s unlike anything you may have experienced at a theater before.

Silent Film Comedy Week
Where: Town Hall Theatre, 40 Main St., Wilton
Schedule:
Monday, Aug. 10, 7:30 p.m. – The General (1926), starring Buster Keaton
Tuesday, Aug. 11, 7:30 p.m. – Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926), starring Harry Langdon
Wednesday, Aug. 12, 7:30 p.m. – The Kid (1921), starring Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan
Thursday, Aug. 13, 7:30 p.m. – Grandma’s Boy (1922), starring Harold Lloyd
Friday, Aug. 14, 7:30 p.m. – Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928), starring Buster Keaton and Ernest Torrence
Cost: $10 per person|
More info: Call 654-3456 or visit wiltontownhalltheatre.com

The Rental (R)

Film Reviews by Amy Diaz

Two couples on a weekend away have extremely bad luck with their beach house in The Rental, a horror movie that will make you scared of Airbnb-like vacation house rentals and, even more so, two-couple vacations.

Charlie (Dan Stevens) and Mina (Sheila Vand) are partners in some kind of business venture, I don’t recall if they say what, except that they both seem kinda terrible so I’m sure their company does something awful, like “disrupting the ice cream experience” or something. Mina is dating Charlie’s brother, Josh (Jeremy Allen White), an Uber-type driver, who has some insecurities about his financial situation. Charlie is married to Michelle, who pretends like she’s cool with how close Charlie and Mina are.

For reasons unknown, Charlie and Mina think it would be a great idea for all four of them to go to a fancy beach house for the weekend. It’s a few hours’ drive to get there and by the time they arrive the property manager, Taylor (Toby Huss), is peeved that they’re late. Mina pre-hates Taylor because she’s pretty sure he’s racist, as he had turned down her request for the house (because, she thinks, of her Middle Eastern last name) but then approved Charlie’s. Perhaps that’s why she kicks off their acquaintance by making a snarky-sounding, classist remark. Later, Taylor makes a joke about Michelle being a peeping Tom (why else, he says, would someone own a telescope in the city) and Mina is miffed that he can just waltz into the house whenever to bring the telescope he offers to lend them.

Fun weekend!

The awkwardness continues as everyone but Michelle, who says she needs sleep for all the fun she seems to think they’re going to have, takes ecstasy and Charlie and Mina end up alone and high in the hot tub. What could go wrong?

The next day, Charlie bails on Michelle’s hiking excursion that she’s so excited about and Mina forgets to take care of Josh’s dog (which they technically weren’t supposed to bring to this pet-free house anyway) and, while we get the occasional creeper POV shot, I was starting to wonder, watching this foursome who all seemed to land somewhere on the “ugh, this guy” scale, if the big reveal would be that nobody was menacing them and that their own guilt and suspicion and insecurity would actually drive them mad. Horror is other people! Of course, I’m mentioning it, so it’s not the big reveal and that was kind of a disappointment.

The movie is really at its best in the first 40 minutes or so, before it nails down what’s actually happening. The “what’s actually happening” felt like a letdown, with diminishing returns right up to the very rushed end. The movie did a decent job of setting up entertainingly unlikeable characters. Had the plot been built on these people and their flaws I feel like that would have been more interesting than just having a story randomly happen to them. In its first half, The Rental had some fun with its clueless rich people and maybe the movie reached B- levels of entertainment. But the off-the-shelf horror it turned into was solidly C- at most. So C?

Rated R for violence, language throughout, drug use and some sexuality by the MPA, according to filmratings.com. Directed by Dave Franco with a screenplay by Dave Franco and Joe Swanberg, The Rental is an hour and 28 minutes long and distributed by IFC Films. It is available for rent.

Bowlful of goodness

Manchester eatery to specialize in rice and pasta bowls

Inside Nickles Market on the east side of Manchester, a new takeout eatery is getting ready to serve up a variety of made-to-order rice and pasta bowls prepared with fresh ingredients.

Bowlful, on track to open in the coming weeks, is the project of Gerard “Jay” and Lori Desmarais, who will be running the restaurant with the help of their adult daughter, Amanda. Earlier this year the Desmarais family took over the takeout kitchen space in the back of the store, which most recently housed a Mexican restaurant.

Bowlful’s menu to start will consist of various rice, pasta and salad bowls, served in 32-ounce-sized biodegradable containers, with many of the options inspired by Jay Desmarais’ travels.

“Bowls are the one thing that you can put anything into. You can make a Korean bowl, a Japanese bowl, [or] a Tex-Mex bowl,” he said. “So we’re not really going to focus on any one type of food. We want to create a lot of different flavor profiles that people are going to enjoy.”

Over the last couple of weeks, he said, they’ve spent time cooking potential menu items at home and revealing some of the options to the eatery’s social media pages. They’ll include a cilantro lime rice bowl with your choice of meat, chipotle black beans, green chili corn, fresh salsa and a dollop of sour cream; a grilled teriyaki chicken bowl with bacon fried rice, broccoli and a sprinkle of sesame seeds; an “unstuffed pepper” bowl with shredded cheddar cheese; and a pork bibimbap bowl with sauteed mushrooms, carrot ribbons, sesame sauce and a Sriracha drizzle.

“One of my favorites is an enchilada rice bowl. We take the sauce that you would normally [use] when you’re making enchiladas, and we toss it in the rice,” Jay Desmarais said. “We also have something called the California bowl. That one comes with chickpeas, avocado and a brown rice and tri-colored quinoa blend. So it’s got a nice nutty texture.”

On the pasta side of the menu, macaroni and cheese will be offered, while a few salad bowls will be available as well. Desmarais said he would like to explore the possibility of eventually doing soups in the winter, as well as sweeter dessert bowls.

All bowls can be made fresh to order using inductance cookers, but if you come to the restaurant after hours, Desmarais said you can also pick up premade bowls out of a grab-and-go cooler and purchase them at the Nickles Market counter.

Bowlful
An opening date is expected to be announced in the coming weeks. Visit the website or follow them on social media for updates.
Where: 1536 Candia Road, Manchester (inside Nickles Market)
Hours: TBA
More info: Visit thebowlful.com, find them on Facebook and Instagram @thebowlful, or email [email protected]

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