Category: Food

The Miller’s Tavern opens

A new restaurant brings lessons from one Elm Street corner to another

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

For 15 years, The Farm Restaurant was a solid presence on Elm Street in downtown Manchester. Then after the holidays, it was gone.

Ryan Cox is part of the family that owned The Farm and several other restaurants in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

“What happened,” he said, “was the lease [for the Manchester Farm] had ended. We were there 15 years. We had a great run there. We love The Farm. We still have one location in Dover, New Hampshire, and one in Essex, Massachusetts, as well, and they’re still staying open. It was just one of these things where we couldn’t see eye to eye with the landlord, and with the age of the building, we just decided it was time to kind of look somewhere else.”

“Somewhere else” turned out to be on the corner of Elm and Lowell streets, in the location most recently occupied by Keys Piano Bar.

“We found this great location two blocks over,” Cox said. “And we were able to bring in a different one of our concepts, which is what we have in Methuen, Massachusetts. It gave us a chance to revitalize what kind of what we’re doing as a business.”

The new restaurant, which opened in early January, is The Miller’s Tavern. It specializes in upscale American pub food.

Cox said the Tavern is not the same place as The Farm, but they share some of the same DNA. “We’ve learned a lot in our 16 years of operating our company,” Cox said. “And so we’ve really been able to dial in our menu and really been able to dial in what we’re going for, which is an American tavern. It’s a place where we would like people to be able to come three days a week. Perhaps you come in for a burger and a beer and watch a game. Perhaps you come in another time for dinner. and perhaps you come in with your family if you want as well. The idea is to cater to all price ranges and all types of people.”

The concept of the menu at The Miller’s Tavern is to take pub classics and elevate them to their highest potential. Cox used mozzarella bites as an example.

“Instead of what people would buy as mozzarella sticks, frozen, we make them all in house,” he said. “We take real chunks of mozzarella, so when you stretch it, you take a bite, it stretches for days. We have our famous fajitas that we’ve taken from The Farm, which we would put up against any Mexican restaurant out there. Our steak tips, we make them in house. That’s a home run. We have a pizza oven. We have a panko chicken that we think is outstanding. Our fish and chips are seriously good — our seafood’s fresh, you know, which is something that we’ve kind of learned from being down on the coastal areas.”

Cox said there are also high-end items on the menu.

“On Thursday, Friday and Saturday, we have a choose-your-own-cut-size of rib-eye steak. You can choose a 16-, 18-, 20-, 24-, 28-, 30-ounce cut, if you’d like. We cut it for you right here, topped with gorgonzola cheese, caramelized onions, and onion rings on top of that, so it’s a really cool meal.”

The Miller’s Tavern
1087 Elm St., Manchester, 854-8442, themillerstavern.com
Open Monday through Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday, 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.

The Weekly Dish 26/01/22

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

• Whiskey 101: Arts Alley (20 S. Main St., Concord, 406-5666, artsalleyconcordnh.com) and Tamworth Distilling (15 Cleveland Hill Road, Tamworth, 323-7196, tamworthdistilling.com) will join forces to teach the basics of whiskey. Whiskey 101: Sip, Savor & Learnwill introduce participants to three distinct styles of whiskey — bourbon, rye, and scotch — while teaching how each is made, how to properly smell and taste, and what flavor notes to look for. This class will take place at Arts Alley on Friday, Jan. 23, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Tickets are $65.87 through eventbrite.com.

• Pie and wine: On Friday, Jan. 23, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Tuscan Market (Tuscan Village, 9 Via Toscana, Salem, 912-5467, tuscanbrands.com) will host a class teaching participants tobake two seasonal pies from scratch with wine pairings. Tickets are $75.03 through eventbrite.com.

• Romantic Valentine’s Day dinners: Many area wineries will hostromantic dinners for two on the weekend of Feb. 14:

• Averill House Vineyard (21 Averill Road, Brookline, 244-3165, averillhousevineyard.com) This is a five-course, chocolate-themed dinner with a wine pairing for each course. $79 per person.

• Birch Wood Vineyards (199 Rockingham Road, Derry, 965-4359, birchwoodvineyards.com) This is a four-course meal, with wine pairings available. The cost starts at $85 per person but will vary depending on menu and wine options.

• Flag Hill Winery (297 N. River Road, Lee, 659-2949, flaghill.com) This is a three-course dinner with wine pairings. Entree options include blackened terres major (a tender cut of beef), plantain-crusted halibut, and eggplant rollatini. The price is $65 per person.

• LaBelle Winery Amherst (345 Route 101, Amherst, 672-9898, labellewinery.com) This is a four-course dinner, each course paired with a LaBelle wine. The meal is accompanied by a string quartet. The price is $99 per person.

• LaBelle Winery Derry (14 Route 111, Derry, 672-9898, labellewinery.com/labelle-winery-derry) This is also a four-course dinner, each course paired with a LaBelle wine. This meal is accompanied by a jazz quartet. The cost is $99 per person.

Cornmeal crepes with strawberries and mascarpone

Crepes

  • 1¼ cup (285 g) whole milk
  • 2 eggs
  • 3 Tablespoons butter, browned
  • ½ cup + 2 Tablespoons (80 g) flour
  • ½ + 2 Tablespoons (100 g) cornmeal
  • 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

Mascarpone filling

  • 2 cups (1 16-oz container) mascarpone cheese
  • 4 Tablespoons sugar
  • Large pinch of fresh-grated nutmeg
  • Strawberry preserves, homemade or jarred
  • Finely minced basil for garnish

In your blender, mix the milk and eggs together. Add the browned butter and mix again. Add the dry ingredients — the flour, cornmeal and salt — and blend yet again. Add the vanilla and blend one last time. (Making crepe batter in a blender makes things go extremely smoothly — if you put the ingredients in in the right order. If you were to put the dry ingredients in first, with the wet ingredients on top, there is a good chance that the batter wouldn’t mix properly, and a gelatinized blob of flour would sit at the bottom of your blender jar, mocking you.)

Put your blender jar in the refrigerator and chill the batter for at least half an hour.

If you have a small, non-stick skillet, this is its big moment. Place it over medium heat, and melt a lump of butter in it.

Take your crepe batter from the refrigerator and give it another spin in the blender to make certain that everything is well mixed. Because the cornmeal is heavy and is prone to sinking to the bottom of the batter, you might want to reblend the batter after every two crepes.

Pour about a quarter of a cup into the hot melted butter, and swirl the pan around to spread the batter over the entire bottom of the pan. Return the pan to heat, and cook your crepe until the top surface isn’t shiny anymore and the edges start to brown just a tiny bit. Then lift a corner of the crepe with a spatula, and flip it over with your fingers. Cook the B-side of the crepe for another minute or so, then transfer it to a plate.

If you are using a non-stick pan, you will not have to rebutter it. If you are using a different species of frying pan, you will probably want to regrease it between crepes. Cook crepes until you have used up all your batter.

Separately, mash the mascarpone, sugar and nutmeg together, and stir until they combine into a very stiff mixture.

Now you have a choice. If you want sweet dessert crepes, fill them with strawberry preserves and top with the mascarpone topping. If you want a less sweet, slightly savory crepe, fill it with the mascarpone and top it with strawberry preserves. Either way, garnish with minced basil.

Serve with ice-cold milk or sparkling wine.

Featured photo: Cornmeal crepes. Photo by John Fladd.

Try the wine and meet the makers

New Hampshire wine week offers tasting and learning opportunities

The annual New Hampshire Wine Week features tastings including at New Hampshire Wine and Liquor Outlets, special wine dinners and culminates in the New England Winter Wine Spectacular, an expo featuring dozens of wine makers, importers, exporters and dealers.

This year’s Wine Week also features a new event.

“It’s called Sommelier Select,” said Justin Gunter, the Liquor Commission’s Wine Marketing Specialist. It will be a blind tasting event held on Wednesday, Jan. 21, in Concord, he said, and guests will taste a number of wines, guided by three professional sommeliers. “Our three somms will be leading a panel on that evening with 120 guests. And they will blind taste all nine wines, in three flights.”

Representatives of some of the makers of the wines tasted will be on hand, Gunter said. “They’re going to be there for a kind of a meet and greet at the end, to answer the questions that come up during the tastings.”

The goal of New Hampshire’s Wine Week overall, and of the Sommelier Select event in particular, Gunter said, is to help customers develop a personal relationship with the wines they buy.

“It’s a challenging time in the beverage industry,” he said. “We want to make sure that we have a strong footprint in the state of New Hampshire for wine and what it can bring and the social aspect of it. So we want to make it as interactive as possible.”

The following evening, Thursday, Jan. 22, the 20th Annual New England Winter Wine Spectacular will be held at the Doubletree Expo Center in Manchester.

“[I]t’s looking absolutely fantastic for this coming year,” Gunter said. “We have 154 tables for sampling [in the main exhibition space], plus we have another 24 tables in our Bellman Cellar Select Room, which is the higher-end, more exclusive lines.” One special aspect of the Wine Spectacular, he said, is the opportunity to meet wine makers and vineyard owners who produce the wines being sampled. “As of right now, we have around 40 wine personalities that are scheduled to be here, and that’s going to be owners, winemakers, just representatives of the wineries that are very near and dear with these offerings that we have.”

“One thing that we introduced this year is we’re introducing pavilions within the Expo,” Gunter said. “We’re trying to create a little bit of a wine tasting within the wine tasting, so that brokers can feature wines with a restaurant of their choice. They’re selecting the restaurant to participate in their pavilion, so they can pair the wines with the actual food served at the restaurants that feature them.”

New Hampshire Wine Week
The Sommelier Select event will take place Wednesday, Jan. 21, from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at the Grappone Conference Center (70 Constitution Ave., Concord, grapponeconferencecenter.com). Tickets are $65 each; see nhwineweek.com.

The 20th Annual New England Winter Wine Spectacular will take place Thursday, Jan. 22, at the Doubletree Expo Center (700 Elm St., Manchester). General admission tickets are $75 each and have a 6 p.m. entry time; see nhwineweek.com.

La Sanse is a taste of Puerto Rico

Nashua event celebrates the San Sebastian Festival

If we were in Puerto Rico right now, the holiday festivities would not be over yet.

“The San Sebastian Festival is a street festival that started in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the 1950s as a celebration at the end of the holidays,” Brandon Caron said. Caron is the chief operating officer of Spectacle Live, the management company of the Nashua Center for the Arts. La Sanse, as it is more commonly known, “is a big street festival with lots of arts and music and food,” Caron said. “We’ve had the opportunity with some various people in the community to try to bring that inspiration back to the community in Nashua.”

To that end the Nashua Center will host a La Sanse celebration Saturday, Jan. 17, featuring Puerto Rican food, music and dance.

“We’re some of the first people in the Northeast to do this,” Caron said. We’re [holding] it the weekend that Puerto Rico celebrates. And one of the big components of that is trying to be as authentic as we could with the music and the food. You know, that is such a key part of the culture. And so we are working with Tony Elias and Rice and Beans 603, which is a Nashua-based restaurant catering business. They’re going to [make] authentic Puerto Rican plates for people. And then we’re also going to work with Empanellie’s and a few of the other restaurants in town to feature various street bites. So that way we can have a full, well-rounded, authentic Puerto Rican food offering.”

In addition to Puerto Rican food, La Sanse will feature music, dancing and visual arts.

“There’s going to be a few different forms of entertainment,” Caron said. “We’re going to have El Grupo Chevere, a Massachusetts-based salsa band. They’ll be coming to do authentic Puerto Rican music, as well as some DJs from Latino Vibe 94.9. And we have some authentic dance troupes as well to do some cultural dance displays. We’re still working with some various partners within the community to try to highlight various forms of art as well, within the theater. We’re just really excited to be a part of this event. Just to be able to really celebrate this culture and really feel the energy and vibrancy of the Puerto Rican culture is really special. And I also think, in a quieter time in the winter, having a big event like this that can draw people from a wider radius; that will help not only our business, but hopefully, you know, be able to spur some economic development within the community at other restaurants and establishments nearby as well.”

La Sanse Nashua
When: Saturday, Jan. 17, at 4 p.m.
Where: Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua, 800-657-8774, nashuacenterforthearts.com)
Tickets: $25 through the Nashua Center’s website; kids under 12 free with purchase of an adult ticket.

The Weekly Dish 26/01/15

• An even blinder taste test: LaBelle Winery Derry (14 Route 111, Derry, 672-9898, labellewinery.com/labelle-winery-derry) will host a blindfolded wine tasting event, Wine In the Dark, Thursday, Jan. 15, from 6 to 7 p.m. Tickets are $40.

• Wine and dinner at BVI: There will be a five-course Ferrari-Carano Wine Dinner at theBedford Village Inn (2 Olde Bedford Way, Bedford, 472-2001, bedfordvillageinn.com) Wednesday, Jan. 21, from 6 to 9 p.m. Rebecka Deike, the Senior Winemaker of red wines at Farrari-Carano, will be on hand to lead discussion about the pairing choices. Tickets are $135 per person and must be purchased in advance.

• More wine pairings: NH Liquor & Wine Outlet Store #69 (25 Coliseum Ave., Nashua, 882-4670, liquorandwineoutlets.com) will host an exclusive one-night-only edition of Perfect Pairings, described as an elevated, chef-led experience this month featuring Chef Ed Aloise and Chef & Winemaker Maria Sinskey. Tickets are $20 through eventbrite.com. All attendees will receive a $20 off coupon with the purchase of three or more featured Robert Sinskey wines, along with a recipe card and complimentary wine glass.

• Food from many nations: Georgia’s Northside (394 N. State St., Concord, 715-9189, georgiasnorthside.com) will hold an International Night Chef’s Collaboration on Friday, Jan. 16. This event is focused on making culturally diverse and affordable healthy meals to go. Collaborators include 603Meal Prep and Sue’s Kim Bap, Analog Pizza, Teenie Wienies and the Teenie Weenie Canteenie crews. There will be Korean, Italian, Brazilian, Irish, Mexican, West African and Greek dishes, and more. Meals are packaged individually and are priced from $10 to $12.

• Laissez les bons temps rouler: The Franco American Centre will hold a volunteer appreciation and Mardi Gras celebration on Sunday, Jan. 25, at Diz’s Cafe, 860 Elm St. in Manchester, from 2 to 5 p.m. Enjoy games and prizes, a buffet including Creole-inspired dishes, cash bar and more, according to facnh.com, where you can purchase tickets.

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