A look at the food scene in 2020, plus a preview of 2021
In what has been a tough year for the industry, New Hampshire restaurateurs were forced to pivot their operations in all kinds of ways to stay afloat, from increased or extended outdoor dining to a greater emphasis on takeout and prepared meals.
But as we get ready to turn the page on a new year, immediate relief may be in sight. A $900 billion Covid-19 relief package passed by Congress on Dec. 21 has several special provisions for the food service industry, including a second round of Paycheck Protection Program [PPP] funds that would be tax deductible. Restaurants in particular can also seek the funds at 3½ times their monthly payroll, compared to 2½ times that amount for all other types of small businesses.
The bill would be a crucial lifeline in getting restaurants in the Granite State through to the spring, said Mike Somers, president of the New Hampshire Lodging & Restaurant Association. Up to October, the industry has been down more than $600 million in combined gross sales for the calendar year, according to Somers, while food service jobs in the state still remain down between roughly 10,000 and 15,000 from where they would normally be.
With 2021 on our doorstep, here’s a look at some of the biggest restaurant trends of the past year in New Hampshire and how they’ll continue in the months ahead.
Moving outdoors
The first significant blow to businesses came in mid-March when, on the day before St. Patrick’s Day, Gov. Chris Sununu issued an emergency order limiting all restaurants and bars in New Hampshire to takeout, delivery and drive-thru only. The original order was only set to last through April 7, but as cases of Covid-19 in the state continued to climb, an extension was soon put in place that ended up lasting an additional month and a half.
On May 18, New Hampshire eateries were given the green light to reopen for outdoor dining only. Even as reopening at a limited capacity indoors became allowed the following month, in mid-June, outdoor dining became a major trend throughout the summer and fall in the Granite State, with restaurants utilizing their space in ways they never had before.
At the Tuscan Kitchen and Market in Salem, outdoor patio seating was extended all along its center piazza under a large open-air tent, complete with a pizza oven and a pop-up container bar. The company’s new “al fresco” dining model was so successful, Joe Faro Jr. of the Tuscan Brands marketing team said, that a winterized version with outdoor heated igloos and even a synthetic ice skating rink was recently unveiled. The Winter Giardino at Tuscan Village officially opened on Dec. 12 and will continue well into the new year, Faro said.
The rink itself is in the parking lot in front of the Tuscan Market building and is open for public skating from Wednesday through Sunday, featuring skate rentals available from TSR Hockey & Lacrosse. Since its launch, Faro said, a few special events have been held, like skating with Santa Claus and an ’80s and ’90s themed skating party. As for the igloos, those are located exactly where the open-air tent had been during the summer months, with two-hour dining times available to parties of between two and six diners who reserved them.
“We’ve obviously done things outdoors, but we’ve never taken it this far before,” Faro said of the igloos and the skating rink. “We’ve consistently been trying to get better at providing our guests with fun and exciting things to do in this new environment, and we’ve had a good time doing just that.”
Also in December, the Bedford Village Inn announced it will be offering outdoor dining in several heated igloos on its patio. According to sales and marketing director Melissa Samaras, the plan to bring an “igloo garden” to the Inn was in the works even before the pandemic hit, as the company was looking for a replacement for its annual Ice Bar event in February. The igloos can be reserved for dinner nightly, or brunch on the weekends, and special Valentine’s Day packages are already being booked now, Samaras said.
In Brookline, Averill House Vineyard went from gearing up at the beginning of 2020 for what would have been the biggest tour season of its history to changing almost everything about its business model by year’s end. Owner Bob Waite said the vineyard recently unveiled the “Vine to Wine” igloo and gazebo experience, which allows guests to safely enjoy private wine tastings with charcuterie boards in small groups inside of heated igloos. Each igloo, Waite said, has a Norwegian theme with soft wood furniture.
Waite added that the vineyard has also introduced several new products over the course of this year that have been a hit, like multiple flavors of single-serve “wine cream,” or wine-mixed ice cream from a partnership with Sub Zero Nitrogen Ice Cream of Nashua, as well as mulled wine. They can also be enjoyed inside the igloos.
“The wine creams have been a real hit, especially for someone who’s not a big wine drinker but they like ice cream,” Waite said.
Larger cities in the state even opened up public sidewalks and parking spaces downtown to accommodate additional outdoor dining space for restaurants, another defining theme for much of 2020. In Concord, new outdoor dining permits for 2021 will become valid on April 1, according to city health and licensing officer Gwen Williams.
Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig had issued an announcement back in mid-May allowing restaurants to also expand dining into privately owned parking lots, as long as business owners had written permission to use the space from the property owner. Jersey barriers were in place for much of the summer and fall along Elm Street before they were all removed by the first significant snowstorm of the season earlier this month.
According to Lauren Smith, chief of staff for Mayor Craig, a similar program may be returning next spring or summer for downtown business owners who again want to take advantage of additional outdoor seating. In the meantime, the possibility of utilizing certain parking spaces as 15-minute curbside pickup locations during the winter is being considered.
Nashua also had parking restrictions along Main Street for much of the year, and city economic development director Tim Cummings said there is an ongoing discussion to have them return in 2021. Meanwhile, on Dec. 22, the Nashua Board of Mayor and Aldermen voted against implementing a 9:30 p.m. curfew at city bars and restaurants, despite a unanimous recommendation from the Nashua Board of Health to do so.
The year of takeout
Ordering takeout also became an inevitable trend for local eateries in 2020 as a result of the pandemic, even for those that had previously only generated a small percentage of overall revenue from it, or had not been set up for takeout at all.
Restaurants like Greenleaf in Milford, Revival Kitchen & Bar in Concord and the Hanover Street Chophouse in Manchester, all of which had regularly drawn in an in-house dining crowd and had special attention to detail in the presentation of their plates, were among those that especially felt these impacts. They and many others across the state had to change or significantly scale down their menus to provide more takeout-friendly options. To help restaurants bring in a little bit more revenue with just takeout, Sununu would also issue an emergency order on March 18 to temporarily authorize those with a liquor license to sell bottled or canned beer and wine with all food orders.
Early on, Greenleaf introduced a new menu of takeout-friendly options like sandwiches, soups, and small plates, many of which included previews of its sister restaurant, Culture, which would open in August. Though it recently has been open for dine-in eating most days of the week, Greenleaf owner and chef Chris Viaud announced Dec. 28 that the restaurant will suspend dine-in service starting Jan. 3 and will revert back to a takeout-only model.
The Tuscan Kitchen and Market, according to Faro, launched an online grocery service, allowing its products to be shipped all over the country.
“That’s really been our biggest saving grace throughout this whole time period,” he said. “That arm of the company that we started has been doing unbelievable for us.”
Revival, owner and chef Corey Fletcher said, has returned to an emphasis on takeout since the summer ended, featuring options like hand-cut steak and wine pairings for two. The Hanover Street Chophouse also found success with takeout through its weekly “pop-up butcher shop” events, selling a variety of its house-cut meats and fresh sides a la carte.
Keep on brewing
Local breweries have been hit hard this year too, sustaining large losses in sales due to the closures of tasting rooms and the suspensions of growler fills.
As 2020 comes to an end, however, the craft beer community is coming away with a significant win. A permanent extension of the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act, passed by Congress on Dec. 21 as part of its stimulus package, will provide major tax relief for breweries and thus save the industry millions of dollars.
According to C.J. Haines, executive director of the New Hampshire Brewers Association, the bill makes the federal excise tax rates of $3.50 per barrel permanent. Without the legislation, the rates would have gone back up to $7 after Dec. 31.
At the state level, Haines said the Association was able to secure $3.9 million in aid from Gov. Sununu’s Main Street Relief Fund in the pockets of local brewers, all while holding several virtual events and fundraisers throughout the year. New Hampshire Craft Beer Week, she said, is indeed due to return in 2021 with tentative dates of April 7 to April 17, but details on what it will look like are still being ironed out.
“We’ve also had conversations about potentially doing something at the end of summer or maybe mid-fall, kind of like a seated festival where you purchase a table space, share beer samples and brewers would walk around and talk to you about them,” she said. “Everything’s up in the air.”
More upcoming foodie happenings
Food festivals across New Hampshire were either reimagined virtually or canceled altogether throughout much of the spring and summer, but a few are already eyeing a return in 2021.
At Anheuser-Busch Tour Center and Biergarten in Merrimack, the New Hampshire Bacon & Beer Festival is scheduled for May 22, with tickets due to go on sale in mid-February, while the Great American Ribfest & Food Truck Festival will take place on June 18, June 19 and June 20, Jeremy Garrett of the event management company J2L Events confirmed. Both festivals had been canceled this year due to the pandemic.
To maximize social distancing, Garrett said, all parking and entry tickets will need to be purchased in advance for both events, as there will be no shuttle services. All of the vendors will be spread out, and masks will be required while waiting in lines. The Bacon & Beer Festival typically brings together around 40 craft breweries with 20 locally made bacon dishes, while the Ribfest and Food Truck Festival has between 20 and 24 food vendors.
“Almost all of the [barbecue vendors] and food trucks that had committed to the 2020 Ribfest are returning,” Garrett said in an email, adding that he doesn’t expect to add many more. “More trucks is good for attendees, but not for the trucks themselves, and they need the help next year.”
Held virtually back in late March, the SouperFest, a soup tasting fundraiser for the Concord Coalition to End Homelessness, is also scheduled to return live, according to office administrator Teri Gladstone. Eight Concord-area eateries will be offering homemade soups for you to order in advance and pick up at White Park on March 20, from 3 to 5:30 p.m.
Several local eateries are also scheduled to open for business in 2021. In Milford, Taco Time Cocina & Cantina Mexicana, a brick and mortar restaurant from the owners of the Milford-based food truck Taco Time, will be opening soon. Trio’s Cafe & Cantina is also on the way, on North Broadway in Salem, while in Derry, LaBelle Winery is expanding its business to include a new Champagne house, restaurant and retail marketplace by the summer, in the former space of Brookstone Events & Golf on Route 111.
A Year in the Kitchen: 2020 edition
The Hippo’s In the Kitchen Q&A series continued throughout 2020, featuring dozens of diverse voices of the state’s food scene over the course of the year, from restaurant chefs and food truck owners to homestead bakers and other business owners.
One question we always ask our industry experts, “What is the biggest food trend in New Hampshire right now?,” yielded a variety of answers depending on the time of year it was. Plant-based foods, craft breweries and food trucks were all recurring answers throughout the year, but especially as the impacts of the pandemic drew on, the most common trends we heard about had to do with shopping and eating local, takeout and online ordering at restaurants, and returning to the simplicity of home-cooked meals.
“Family meal deals from local restaurants … help alleviate the enormous tasks of working from home while homeschooling children,” Elizabeth Silva of Cafe El Camino in Plaistow told the Hippo in May. The eatery, which specializes in authentic Puerto Rican cuisine, has continued to offer family-sized meals throughout the summer and fall and into the holiday season, featuring meats, rice, vegetables and more that can be ordered online for pickup.
We also had a number of people tell us that artisan doughnuts have been a recent trend. Other answers we received for specific foods included gourmet burgers, street tacos, grain or rice bowls and salads, chicken tenders, chili dogs, and steak and cheese subs.
A fun question we also ask, “What celebrity would you like to see eating at your restaurant?” or “What celebrity would you like to have a meal with?,” always produces a wide array of answers, and this year was no exception, with several musicians, Hollywood actors, athletes and celebrity chefs all receiving mention. The No. 1 answer of 2020 was Gordon Ramsay, of the hit cooking competition television series Hell’s Kitchen, followed closely by actor, comedian and New Hampshire native Adam Sandler. Actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and chef Paul Hollywood of The Great British Bake Off also received multiple answers.
“If I’m going to be criticized by anyone for my cooking, I would want the most critical person, and it’s [Ramsay],” Ken Mosher of The Country Chef in Wilton told the Hippo in April.
Featured photo: An igloo at Averill House Vineyard in Brookline. Courtesy photo.
