Category: Featured Content

In the kitchen with Michael Simmons

Michael Simmons of Manchester is the head chef of Angela’s Pasta & Cheese Shop (815 Chestnut St., Manchester, 625-9544, angelaspastaandcheese.com), overseeing all kitchen operations and developing his own menus every week for lunch and dinner specials. Angela’s has been in business for four decades, offering all types of specialty food items, like cheeses, wines, pastas and heat-and-serve meals, as well as a selection of products from a variety of local businesses and catering menus around the holidays. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the shop has pivoted to offering curbside pickup and local deliveries for its products. Prior to joining the kitchen staff at Angela’s four years ago, Simmons worked in several seafood restaurants on the South Shore of Massachusetts, where he grew up. He also served as the executive chef at the Wildcat Inn and Tavern in Jackson for four years.

What is your must-have kitchen item?

A pair of tongs. It’s like an extension of your hand. Nothing beats a good solid knife either.

What would you have for your last meal?

I would do a Dijon-crusted rack of lamb and a big glass of merlot. I’m really passionate about good food and wine together.

What is your favorite local restaurant?

My favorite restaurant hands down, I would say, is the [Hanover Street] Chophouse [in Manchester]. I really enjoy a nice rib-eye with a glass of wine there. It’s a phenomenal place. The Crown [Tavern] is great too. In fact, they buy our sausages from us for their pizzas.

What celebrity would you have liked to see trying something that you’ve made?

I would have taken Jerry Garcia [of the Grateful Dead] in a New York minute. I just think his influence and his outlook on life were very unique.

What is your personal favorite thing to cook at the shop?

The passion is there for everything I do, but any time I get to venture off into something that I haven’t [done before], I get into it incredibly. A few weeks back I did a braised duck arancini, which had a raspberry compote sauce and crumbled goat cheese on it. It was awesome.

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

Farm to table and locally sourced produce are huge. A lot of grain salads and heart-healthy things like quinoa and avocado are too.

What is your favorite thing to cook at home?

I like to seek out the freshest swordfish I can find and grill it with some rice and a vegetable. That would be my go-to. I’m a big seafood lover.

Fried crab cakes
From the kitchen of Michael Simmons of Angela’s Pasta & Cheese Shop in Manchester (makes roughly 8 three-ounce crab cakes)

½ cup mayonnaise
3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 whole eggs
1 teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon white pepper
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon Old Bay seasoning
½ cup breadcrumbs or ground cracker meal
1 pound jumbo lump crab meat

In a bowl, combine the mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, eggs, black pepper, white pepper, cayenne pepper and Old Bay seasoning with a whisk. Use the mixture to form little patties with the crabmeat and breadcrumbs. Drop the patties into 350-degree frying oil until crispy. Remove and drizzle with fresh lemon juice (optional).

Intimate vibes, casual eats

Gurung’s Kitchen opens inside Bunny’s Superette

Inspired by the supper club, or the concept of serving creative comfort foods and cocktails in an intimate setting, Stones Social is the newest eatery to join the dining scene in Nashua.

The restaurant opened on June 26 in the former space of Pig Tale on Amherst Street. But according to Aislyn Plath of Stones Hospitality Group, it has been in the works since at least 2015. Her father, Scott, is the owner and founder of two successful restaurants in northern Massachusetts — Cobblestones of Lowell, which has been serving elevated tavern fare since 1994; and Moonstones, an eatery featuring global small plates that opened in Chelmsford in the late 2000s.

“Stones Social has a really intimate and casual neighborhood feel,” Plath said. “We wanted this to [have] almost more of a social club style that offers creative comfort food with a great bar program and really amazing cocktails. … We felt that this space would be perfect for that.”

Stones Social’s menu borrows some items that are popular mainstays at both Cobblestones and Moonstones, as well as new options. Chef Adam Hervieux, who has worked at both locations, has taken over the new eatery’s kitchen.

“We’re doing different menu levels, so at the top level we have bar snacks. That has things like housemade potato chips and housemade pickles,” Plath said. “We also have a mushroom jerky that’s insane, and we do a furikake popcorn, which [has] a seaweed and sesame spice.”

Other options include Buffalo tenders with blue cheese, ahi tuna tataki, pork belly with jalapeno ranch, and Chinese five-spice short ribs with house kimchi.

The menu also features a section of wood-fired skillet options, like the garlic jumbo shrimp; the shawarma beets with hummus, harissa and pepitas; and the dry-rubbed barbecue glazed wings. Sandwiches and burgers include a grilled cheese with the option to add barbecue short rib or kimchi, and a cheeseburger with house relish on a potato bun. For salads, the Spa Sampler Plate has greens, hummus, peppadews and crispy chickpeas, while the “Schrute Farms” beet salad features greens, goat cheese, pistachio, honey mustard and the option to add chicken.

If you want more of a traditional, larger-sized entree, Stones Social offers those too, on the “supper time” section of its menu. It features a seared ahi poke bowl, house macaroni and cheese, pork belly fried rice with egg and edamame, vegetable fried rice, and slow braised short rib with smashed olive oil potatoes and garlic green beans.

A majority of Stones Social’s cocktails, Plath said, are originals for the new space. There is the 603 Spritz, which has vodka, elderflower, a cucumber simple syrup and a little bit of absinthe; the Pink Drink, with hibiscus, mezcal and cranberry juice; and the Marge and Rita, or a passion fruit margarita with a five-spice salt rim. The Moonhattan, a house-infused rye whiskey with vermouth that is a staple at Moonstones, has also made it onto the menu.

“We’re trying to have as much fun with the cocktails as possible,” Plath said. “We’re really focusing on New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont too for our drafts.”

In lieu of sit-down table service, Plath said, Stones Social has more of a fast casual concept. Guests can order food and drinks at the bar and create a tab if they wish. Food runners are then assigned to deliver your order to the table. Takeout and online ordering are also available.

“One of the goals here … was to run with a really tight team and to cross-train our staff,” Plath said. “I like working in a small space like this, because you can see everyone and we’re all here to take care of each other and create a nice energy and atmosphere.”

Featured Photo: The #1 Burger with cheese and house relish on a brioche bun. Courtesy photo.

Stones Social
Where: 449 Amherst St., Nashua
Hours: Wednesday through Saturday, 4 to 11 p.m., and Sunday, noon to 8 p.m. (may be subject to change)
Contact: Visit stonessocial.com, find them on Facebook and Instagram, or call 943-7445

Fuel your appetite

Saucy options at new Milford food trailer

A new food trailer now open on the Milford Oval is offering its own ground burgers, hand-cut fries and hand-breaded chicken tenders, and more than a dozen original sauces — or, in line with its name, “fuel” — like blueberry barbecue, Hawaiian honey mustard, hoisin-plum, curry and chive and Sriracha maple.

Fuel is the latest project of John Goldberg, owner and operator of The Riverhouse Cafe. The trailer made its debut on June 12 outside the Riverhouse, which has added about 40 seats in a roped off area out front, along with an outside bar and live music every Friday and Saturday. Customers who order from the trailer are given a pager to alert them when their food is ready. The trailer features new options not previously available at the cafe, plus rotating specials, and according to Goldberg the response has been very positive so far. He recently brought in chef Jon Talbot, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in New York, to oversee Fuel’s menu.

“It’s a simple American menu … but it’s not your ordinary food truck. You’re not getting frozen chicken tenders or anything,” Goldberg said. “We grind our own burgers, we hand-cut our own fries, we dry-rub our own chicken wings and we make our own hot dog buns.”

Fuel features a few salads, all of which have the option of adding smoked chicken, pulled pork or smoked brisket as a protein. The most popular salad, Goldberg said, has been the Rocket Road, which features arugula, pickled onions, figs, almonds and goat cheese. There is also the Chubby King Caesar salad, with romaine, pancetta and jalapeno croutons, and the Trailer Greens, which include lettuce, carrot, tomato, onion and crispy chickpeas. Among the salad dressings to choose from are buttermilk ranch, honey balsamic, creamy poppy seed, and — Goldberg’s favorite — blueberry-riesling vinaigrette.

Items like the Fuel burger, the Hummel dog or the hand-cut fries can be ordered with a beer cheddar cheese. The Fuel burger is a double-stack patty that comes on a brioche roll with lettuce, tomato and house pickles, while the dog features toppings like the beer cheese as well as Maine onion jam and celery salt, house sweet relish or chili.

“The beer cheese is ridiculous,” Goldberg said. “You try it and you can’t stop.”

The trailer serves a falafel on its own homemade pita, topped with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, lemon and tzatziki sauce. You can also substitute smoked chicken for the falafel.

Other options, like the crispy chicken tenders and the smoked chicken wings, are really where you can get creative with all the different “fuel” sauces.

“We can toss them in one and then we give you the other one on the side,” Goldberg said. “I can’t even begin to name them all. We have blueberry barbecue, peach barbecue, Latin barbecue, curry and chives. … All kinds of different stuff.”

Just out in front of the Riverhouse Cafe’s doors is a full-service outside bar where craft cocktails are available. Live local music acts are booked to perform on Fridays and Saturdays all throughout the summer, Goldberg said.

The Riverhouse Cafe moved to its current location at 167 Union Square last year. Goldberg said the plan is for Fuel to provide the food options for those who visit Station 101, a new craft beer and wine bar opening in a renovated 1950s gas station next door. The old Riverhouse Cafe, meanwhile, will likely be turned into a doughnut shoppe.

Mangia Sano, Goldberg’s other restaurant just down the road on Nashua Street, has recently begun offering New York style pizza. It’s currently available for takeout and curbside pickup only.

“Right now, that’s all we do [at Mangia Sano],” Goldberg said, “but we’re going to reopen it under a [reinvented] new brand.”

Featured Photo: Bacon and beer cheddar fries. Photo by Matt Ingersoll.

Fuel
When: Wednesdays and Thursdays, 5 to 8 p.m., and Fridays and Saturdays, 5 to 10 p.m. (hours are subject to change and may extend later this summer)
Where: 167 Union Square, Milford
Contact: Visit damngoodgrub.com/fuel, follow them on Facebook and Instagram @fuelnh or call The Riverhouse Cafe at 249-5556

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (PG-13)

Film Reviews by Amy Diaz

Take the musical numbers from the Trolls animated movies and divide them by a Spinal Tap’s “Stonehenge” sensibility and add an earnest Will Ferrell plus Dan Stevens’ dodgy Russian accent (but impressive willingness to go all in) and what you have equals Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, a new comedy on Netflix.

I feel like Ferrell, who stars here and has a writing credit, probably really likes the annual Eurovision Song Contest and wants to find some way of introducing its glorious pop-song ABBA-ness to an American audience. And that actually sounds like a great idea. The competition — which I have never watched but has always sounded to me like the best possible mash-up of American Idol and the Olympics — has been available in America only recently. I hope when it comes back (this year’s contest was canceled), Americans can view it with ease; it feels like exactly the kind of all-ages-friendly bowl of cheese dip that we’re all going to need in our lives. I watched a highlights reel from the 2019 finale and I am sold on this whole deal, don’t change one sparkly bit of it. (It looks like full versions of some years’ final shows are also available on eurovision.tv and now that I know that I suspect my productivity will nosedive.)

So, getting Americans interested in the Eurovision Song Contest? Worthy goal. But are enough people really sufficiently aware of the Eurovision Song Contest that, for example, the many Eurovision-related cameos (which I could identify as cameos because of the way the movie shot and introduced them, not because I knew who anybody was) resonate or that specific jokes about Eurovision register?

Without that layer, what you have is Will Ferrell as Lars Erickssong, a very middle-aged man living in a small town in Iceland who has spent most of his life trying to get a song in the Eurovision competition. He is so focused on this that he has never even pursued a romance with obviously-hot-for-him Sigrit (Rachel McAdams), his friend since childhood and his partner in the band Fire Saga. Sigrit is happy to follow Lars in his dreams, though she writes her own songs and does wish they’d maybe also find time to have a baby.

Due to a series of horrible (but lucky for Lars and Sigrit) events, Fire Saga finds itself as Iceland’s Eurovision competitor. Russia’s competitor Alexander Lemtov (Dan Stevens) and his friend Mita (Melissanthi Mahut), Greece’s competitor, have a better shot at winning the competition than Fire Saga and yet the duo seems to enjoy messing with the team dynamic of Fire Saga, which, with its special effects and iffy wardrobe choices, seems to be doing just fine sabotaging itself.

At two hours and three minutes, Fire Saga is at least 35 minutes too long. At times the movie feels more like a collection of extra material for a Saturday Night Live Eurovision sketch than a tightly plotted narrative. It is at its best when the too-old Lars is trying to sell a Viking power ballad or the enjoyably dippy Sigrit is talking to elves — or when it’s just showing us Eurovision. More Eurovision, would have been my studio note. A song-mash-up featuring real-life Eurovision people is charming and irresistible and joyfully silly in the best sense.

In yet another example of grading on a serious curve, this movie is acceptable entertainment because (if you have Netflix) you don’t have to pay any extra money to watch it and because you can feel when it’s slowing down and time your snack runs and phone-checking accordingly. B-

Rated PG-13 for crude sexual material including full nude sculpture, some comic violent images and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by David Dobkin with a screenplay by Will Ferrell and Andrew Steele, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is somehow two hours and three minutes long and is available on Netflix.

My Spy (PG-13)

Film Reviews by Amy Diaz

Dave Bautista is another tough guy befriending a kid (see also: The Rock, John Cena, Arnold Schwarzenegger) in My Spy, a movie once bound for theaters but now on Amazon Prime.

JJ (Bautista) is a tough guy CIA agent who is finding the light touch required for successful spy-ery more difficult than the straightforward butt-kicking of being an Army Ranger. You’re actually not supposed to kill everybody and walk away from the explosions without looking back, explains his boss (Ken Jeong), and thus JJ and his fan-girl tech person Bobbi (Kristen Schaal) are given the low-priority assignment of keeping an eye on Kate (Parisa Fitz-Henley), the widow of a former arms dealer. Her brother-in-law, Marquez (Greg Bryk), is still active in the selling-nukes-to-bad-guys game so JJ and Bobbi watch Kate and her daughter Sophie (Chloe Coleman), who are attempting to adjust after a recent move to Chicago.

While Kate seems more like a harried nurse and single mom than a woman who has any knowledge of her late husband’s business, Sophie, who is 9, has some solid stealthiness skills. She sneaks up on JJ and Bobbi and records enough of a conversation between the two of them that she can blow their cover. Instead of telling her mom, though, she decides to blackmail JJ into doing things for her, such as taking her to an ice skating rink and teaching her spy stuff. When her mom first sees Sophie with JJ, Kate gives JJ a swift knee to the sensitive spy equipment but Sophie explains that JJ is their new upstairs neighbor and helped her with some bullies. Seeing the possibilities in JJ beyond just his abilities to rent ice skates and teach her to defeat a lie detector, Sophie arranges for JJ and Kate to bump into each other a few times until Kate asks JJ out.

This movie is rated PG-13 and my guess is that this is largely due to the early sequence of JJ killing a couple dozen henchmen, including one whose head goes flying. Common Sense Media pegs it at ages 10 and up and while I might not go that young I think “lightweight family action comedy” is what this movie is for families where the youngest viewers are middle school and up.

And as that, it’s fine. Bautista has the “gruff guy with a good heart” thing ready to go. He maybe isn’t quite as winning as Dwayne Johnson but he’s probably as good, in his own way, as John Cena. His interactions with Coleman’s Sophie feel right for each character — the movie lets Sophie seem enough like a human child that you can just sort of go with the plot, no matter how silly it gets.

I’m not sure how I would have responded to this movie in a theater; the faults of something like this seem to stand out when a movie is on a big screen and has required you to show up at a place on time and pay for popcorn. But as an at-home offering, the low barrier to viewing matches the “light chuckle” level of comedy just fine. B-

Rated PG-13 for action/violence and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Peter Segal with a screenplay by Erich Hoeber and Jon Hoeber, My Spy is an hour and 39 minutes long and distributed by Amazon Studios. It is available on Amazon Prime.

New Nepalese option

Gurung’s Kitchen opens inside Bunny’s Superette

You won’t see it right away when you step inside Bunny’s Superette in Manchester’s North End, but walk all the way across the store and you’ll find a new Nepalese takeout restaurant.

Gurung’s Kitchen, which opened for business on June 27, features a menu of authentic Nepalese dishes like steamed or fried momos, thukpa (noodle soup) and shapale (fried meat pies), all cooked to order. Owner Sarmila Gurung opened the eatery with the help of Pramod Nyaupane, her friend and former landlord, who owns Bunny’s Superette and Bunny’s Convenience on Elm Street. Both Gurung and Nyaupane are natives of Kathmandu.

“I used to cook for [Nyaupane] and he loves my cooking,” said Gurung, who remembers always helping her mother out in the kitchen growing up. “When I told him I was thinking I wanted to open a restaurant, he said, ‘If you’re really interested, I can help you.’ So that’s how we ended up opening the restaurant here.”

Because her restaurant’s space was formerly a butcher shop, Gurung said, it went under all kinds of renovations, including the introduction of new stoves, fryers, a freezer and a warmer.

Gurung’s Kitchen accepts takeout orders via phone or walk-in, as well as delivery through either DoorDash or GrubHub. Among the most popular items, Gurung said, have been the momos, which are dumplings filled with chicken, pork or vegetables. She said she has also offered bison meat, but said it’s been difficult to get regularly due to the pandemic. One order of momos yields eight dumplings, which are either steamed or fried, with the option to have them served in a homemade tomato sauce or chili sauce. You can also customize your order with a momo platter.

Other big sellers have been the chicken, pork or vegetarian chow mein, or the fried noodles with turmeric, cumin, coriander and other spices; the chicken, pork or vegetarian fried rice; and the thukpa, or noodle soup. When it’s available, Gurung will also make each of these dishes with bison meat as a protein option.

Some harder-to-find dishes available at the restaurant are shapale and pakoda. A common street food in Nepal, according to Gurung, shapale (pronounced sha-PAH-lee) features half-moon-shaped meat pies stuffed with either chicken or pork and deep fried. You get two pieces per order with a side of homemade sauce.

Pakoda, which Gurung described as being similar to hash browns, is also a Nepalese street food or snack featuring a mixture of potatoes, onions, flour and spices that’s deep fried.

“We have different kinds of customers right now,” Gurung said. “Our customers who come from Nepal … usually come here for the shapale and the pakoda, because they know it and they can’t easily find it here [in the United States].”

Gurung’s Kitchen offers a small selection of non-traditional items like french fries, chicken wings and chicken nuggets. There is also black tea, masala tea and mango lassi, a smoothie-like drink featuring a blend of fresh mango, yogurt and ice.

Since between 700 and 800 people usually come inside Bunny’s Superette every day, according to Gurung, she hopes her restaurant will continue to see new customers.

“We try to offer really fast service,” she said. “People come here first and order their food, then they go [shop for] their groceries and when they come back here their food is ready.”

Gurung’s Kitchen
Where: 75 Webster St., Manchester (inside Bunny’s Superette)
Hours: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week
More info: Call 316-1540 or search “Gurung’s Kitchen” on Facebook

Stay in the loop!

Get FREE weekly briefs on local food, music,

arts, and more across southern New Hampshire!