Category: Food

Gotta pounce on the PoutineFest tickets

Tickets sell out fast to the annual celebration of potato, cheese and gravy

PoutineFest is Oct. 12 but tickets go on sale this weekend, and according to the event’s organizer and founder, Tim Beaulieu, they go quickly.

“We sell out lightning fast,” he said. “We’re going on sale on [July] 27th at 10 a.m. We’ll probably be sold out by 11 is my guess. We have people who come every year with their families, their friends. So all those folks want to come every single year. My biggest recommendation is if you want to try the most poutines in New England and you want to come on that day — on Columbus Day — be online at 10 o’clock and ready to buy.”

PoutineFest, which will be held at the Anheuser-Busch Brewery in Merrimack on Saturday, Oct. 12, is the country’s largest and oldest poutine festival. Poutine is a traditional French Canadian dish made of french fries topped with cheese curds and gravy, and it is deeply loved by people in New Hampshire of Québécois descent. Tim Beaulieu is one of them.

“I started PoutineFest back in [2016], honestly, because I was trying to connect to my heritage,” he said. “I looked around and I’m like, you know, there’s really no festival about the French Canadians. Poutine could be our pizza. So I approached the Franco-American Centre, became a volunteer, and started doing this event to benefit them.”

Guests at PoutineFest will be able to sample interpretations of poutine from different local restaurants who vie for the title of “Best Poutine” as voted on by Festival guests.

“Right now we have 13 vendors signed up to do sampling,” Beaulieu said. “We also have a whole bunch of different dessert trucks. We have French pastries, fried dough, pretzels, lemonade, coffee, a kids’ Halloween fun house, and a lot of different French-themed foods.”

New England Tap House Grille in Hooksett, is one of the vendors competing for the top prize. Tap House has participated in PoutineFest since the beginning.

“We’re competitors,” Nancy Comai of Tap House wrote in an email. “We want to win the ‘Best Poutine’ of the Festival title, and bring it back to Hooksett to share and keep the heritage alive!” She wrote that the Taphouse’s poutine stands out through its simplicity. “Our secret lies in the cheese curds,” she wrote, “— squeaky, fresh, and sourced locally. We’ve perfected the golden ratio of crispy fries, savory gravy, and those irresistible curds.” She did admit to one secret ingredient: “Our chefs add a splash of truffle oil, which makes all the difference.”

The Tap House’s fairly conservative approach might be a sound strategy to compete with some of the event’s less traditional interpretations of poutine.

Beaulieu said the Festival will publish the names of this year’s competitors around the time tickets go on sale. “We’re having somebody that wants to make poutine out of an ice cream cone or a taco shell,” he said. “We have duck confit, we have barbecue poutine. We have a pizza place coming that’s tinkering with maybe doing a poutine pizza. We get all kinds of different things. Any kind of beef is always huge on top.”

Beaulieau personally prefers a traditional french fry/cheese curd/gravy-style poutine, but he is picky about the gravy.

“It’s a meat-based gravy,” he said, “usually beef, that has a little bit of, like, almost like a zippy pepper to it. It’s hard to explain without you tasting it, but a good gravy really makes the difference.”

Ultimately, Beaulieu and Comai said PoutineFest is about celebrating New Hampshire’s French-Canadian-American culture.

“It benefits the culture,” Beaulieu said. “The Franco-American Centre in Manchester that does language classes [and] community outreach that is benefiting. So it’s going to a good cause.”

“It [PoutineFest] is about celebrating French language, culture and heritage,” Comai wrote. “The festival supports the Franco-American Centre of New Hampshire, a nonprofit that preserves our shared legacy.”

PoutineFest 2024
When: Saturday, Oct. 12
Where: Anheuser-Busch Brewery, 221 DW Highway, Merrimack, 595-1202, anheuser-busch.com/breweries/merrimack-nh
Tickets: The Festival’s 1,500 tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday, July 27, and are expected to sell out very quickly. General admission tickets are $54.99.
More: nhpoutinefest.com

The Weekly Dish 24/07/25

News from the local food scene

• Saturday eats: Chef Keith Sarasin’s pop-up Indian restaurant, Aatma, now has a brick-and-mortar location. Aatma: Curry House is at 75 Mont Vernon St. in Milford; see aatmacurryhouse.com. Place an order online Sunday through Wednesday, for pickup on Saturday between 1 and 4 p.m.

• New sparkling wines: LaBelle Winery (345 Route 101, Amherst, 672-9898; 14 Route 111 in Derry; labellewinery.com) has announced the release of its new Méthode Champenoise wines, marking the first time the winery has crafted sparkling wines using this traditional French method. LaBelle’s Méthode Champenoise collection includes three wines showcasing a blend of grape varietals: a rosé made from baco noir grapes, a demi-sec made with seyval blanc grapes, and a brut made with chardonnay grapes. The wines are for sale at the Derry and Amherst locations for $65 per bottle, according to a press release.

• Sit and eat: Taquaria y Pastelitos to Go (917 Valley St, Manchester, 232-3348, taqueriaypastelitos.com) has opened its dining room for in-house seating. Take-out only since the 2020 Covid lockdown, the restaurant is currently only offering counter service, but there are plans to add table service in the near future.

• A whiskey-lover’s dream raffle: Tickets are on sale now for New Hampshire Liquor & Wine Outlet’s 2024 Buddy-Up! Raffle to benefit Best Buddies New Hampshire (bestbuddies.org/newhampshire). The winner will receive 15 bottles of premium bourbon, including three bottles of the legendary Pappy Van Winkle; tickets for two or three premium bourbon events, including airfare and hotel accommodations; and spending money. Tickets cost $100 each and will be available until Sept. 27. Visit liquorandwineoutlets.com.

• Hot sauce on the coast: The New England Hot Sauce Fest (newenglandhotsaucefest.com) will take place at Smuttynose Brewery (105 Towle Farm Road, Hampton, 601-8200, smuttynose.com) on Saturday, July 27, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. More than 30 hot sauce companies will offer samples and here will be hot pepper and a hot wing contest, food trucks and live music all day. General admission tickets cost $13 online, $15 at the door. VIP tickets cost $17 online and allow early access to the Festival.

Piña Colada

A shockingly large percentage of 20-year-olds are convinced that they make an extremely good piña colada. They aren’t precisely wrong; a 20-year-old’s piña colada tastes really good — to a 20-year old. Fill a blender with ice, pour it about a third of the way up with pineapple juice, half a can or so of pre-sweetened cream of coconut — the one with the parrot on it — and an unconscionable amount of rum.

Grind, whiz, slurp, and you’ve got something that will be a big hit with other 20-year-olds. It’s perfect for a dorm room, or a secret party in your buddy’s parent’s garage.

Many of us go through our adult life still convinced that we make a really good piña colada, until one day, after years of not having one, we confidently blend up a batch and are confronted with the fact that like many decisions we made in our youth this one has not aged well.

Most blender piña coladas are too sweet, too slushy, and taste a little like chemicals. So what if we gave the blender a break and made one much less sweet, and not so redolent of polysorbate 60?

A Grown-Up Piña Colada

  • 2 ounces dark rum – I like Gosling’s or Pusser’s
  • 3 ounces pineapple juice
  • 3 ounces coconut milk
  • ½ ounce honey syrup (see below)

Honey and pineapple have a natural affinity for each other. The muskiness of the honey tempers the fruitiness of pineapple juice. Unfortunately, if you drizzle honey onto the ice cubes in a cocktail shaker, it will seize up and won’t mix with other ingredients very well. Most bartenders get around this by using honey syrup. It’s like simple syrup, but made with honey, instead of sugar. The water is like a cocktail for the honey, loosening it up and making it more likely to mingle with its new friends.

Combine an equal amount of honey and water in a small saucepan, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Stir the mixture to make sure the honey is completely diluted in the water, then take it off the heat to cool. Honey is antimicrobial, so this syrup should last indefinitely in your refrigerator.

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice (make sure that it is large enough to hold eight and a half ounces of cocktail). Add all the ingredients, and shake thoroughly. This is one of those times when it’s OK to shake until you hear the ice breaking inside the shaker.

Pour the chilled drink into a Collins glass or a mason jar, then top it off with more ice, and stir it. Theoretically, you could use a mason jar to shake it, then just remove the lid and add a straw. I’m old enough that it seems like it might be fun to hand out unmixed piña colada at a party and have everyone shake theirs at the same time, possibly while listening to KC and the Sunshine Band’s unlamented classic “(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty.” At the very least it would humiliate and drive away any children present, giving the grownups a little breathing room.

We’ve already established that honey and pineapple juice complement each other. Coconut and pineapple are both from the same neighborhood; they go way back. With actual coconut milk, the finished drink is silky and rich, rather than overly sweet. It goes without saying that rum is everyone’s friend.

Twenty-year-old you would not be impressed. Which is sort of the point.

Featured Photo: Photo by John Fladd.

In the kitchen with Addie Leader-Zavos

Addie Leader-Zavos, Pastry Chef and co-owner of Eden’s Table Farm and Farm Store (240 Stark Highway North, Dunbarton, 774-1811, facebook.com/EdensTableFarm)

“I grew up in the middle of Washington, D.C. I loved to cook from a really young age. I got this book called Preserving the Seasons for my birthday when I was 9. It was fantastic, and the author was making things like apricots in lavender syrup, or brandied pears, and talking about walking out to the patio and picking fresh herbs. I was like, ‘That’s the life for me!’”

After exploring several different careers, Leader-Zavos went to culinary school at the Cordon Bleu in Boston and worked in fine dining restaurants that focused on seasonal menus. After being sidetracked by a back injury, she moved into pastry and opened a custom pastry and catering business specializing in dessert buffets and bespoke wedding cakes. After the Covid-19 lockdown, she and her husband, co-owner Michael Williams, bought Eden’s Table Farm in Dunbarton to focus on local and seasonal produce, locally produced farm products, and fresh baked goods.

What is your must-have kitchen item?

A digital scale. I love to bake, particularly now … there is no better way to ensure high-quality results than to be precise and consistent with measurements.

What would you have for your last meal?

Definitely my grandmother’s slow-cooked brisket with onions. My grandmother made brisket for every holiday and my mom makes it for holidays and every time she comes to visit. It’s just that instantly comforting meal that’s made even better by all the memories attached to it.

What is your favorite local eatery?

The Nepalese restaurant KS Kitchen in Manchester. The food is super-flavorful, well-crafted and perfectly seasoned, just absolutely delicious. Plus, I cannot turn down any form of dumpling and their momo is out of this world.

Name a celebrity you would like to see shopping at your farm store or eating something you’ve prepared.

Pastry chef and author Claudia Fleming. I really admire her style of baking and pastry-making; it’s very seasonal, uses lots of fresh local ingredients, and incorporates salty/savory notes.

What is your favorite thing you make or sell at the moment?

Our chocolate chunk cookie because it has such a great homey taste and texture, big chunks of dark chocolate and a nice kick of sea salt. We’re using regionally grown, freshly ground flours, chocolate from New Hampshire bean-to-bar chocolate maker Loon Chocolate, and an apple brandy from Flag Hill Distillery for top notes. It’s a classic that’s distinguished by the local ingredients we’re using and I hope we’ll be making it for years to come.

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

I’m really impressed with how New Hampshirites are coming together to improve opportunities for small farms and home-based food businesses right now. Last year HB 119 was passed, making it easier for small farms to have certain types of meat processed locally. Just a few days ago HB 1565 was passed, which makes it possible to sell pickles made in a home kitchen. Now the legislature is considering HB 1685, which would open up even more opportunities for small farms and food entrepreneurs. This trend of creating more opportunities for people who want to participate in the local food economy really benefits everyone who loves good food, so I hope we’ll see more of it.

What is your favorite thing to cook for yourself?

When I cook for the enjoyment of cooking, I take a dish and make it over and over again until I get it exactly the way I want it. But when I cook to feed myself I tend to keep it very simple — a fresh-picked cucumber sliced up and served with some homemade dip, a big bowl of roasted zucchini with a little soy sauce, or maybe a cheese omelet with fresh herbs and hot sauce. We have access to so many fresh, flavorful ingredients on the farm and through our farm store that I really don’t have to do much to create something very satisfying and enjoyable.

Featured Photo: Addie Leader-Zavos. Courtesy photo.

Friday’s outdoor lunch plans

Food Truck Friday brings eats to Arms Park in Manchester

Every Friday throughout the summer, there will be food trucks in Arms Park (10 Arms St., Manchester) between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. They set up at the far western end of the parking lot adjacent to Cotton Restaurant and the University of New Hampshire’s Manchester campus, overlooking the Merrimack River. (Arms Park is the riverside park with the brightly painted stairs leading down to the river.)

Food Truck Friday is the brainchild of Stark Brewing Co.’s Peter Telge. Stark Brewing, based in Manchester, recently completed a mobile kitchen in a food truck. Telge said he was inspired by what happened at the Tideline Restaurant in Durham, which allowed a pair of food trucks to use its parking lot on weekends.

“They started with two trucks just on the weekends,” Telge said, “and now it’s up to six trucks, Monday through Friday. It’s become a destination.”

Telge saw the same potential near his restaurant, in Arms Park. It is not as well-known as many of Manchester’s other parks, but customers frequently asked him, “Has this always been here? Why don’t people know about it?” Telge partnered with City of Manchester Parks and Recreation department to bring the project together.

“Because we’re working with the City,” Telge said, “we’ve been able to save money on fees and permits.” It also made it easier to expedite the paperwork.

Tim Cunningham is in charge of social media for Food Truck Friday. Like everyone involved in the project, he is confident that it will become extremely successful, once enough people know about it.

“Pretty much we’re just blasting out [social media posts] every week,” he said. “Every week we’re trying to post about it, get people out there, because Fridays, especially in the summertime down there, are beautiful down by Arms Park. There’s so many people in the millyard that will think Friday would be a great day for them to maybe not bring a lunch that day and go down to the park and support some local food vendors”

John Worthen is one of those vendors. He is the owner and operator of Purple Snack Shack (text: 818-9796, facebook.com/purplesnackshack), a mobile snack shack that is indeed painted purple. He sells mostly pre-packaged food and drinks.

“I have pre-packaged everything,” Worthen said. “… novelty ice cream bars, soda, Gatorade, candy bars, potato chips, things like that.” He’s waiting for more customers to learn about Food Truck Friday. The main problem he sees is the lack of foot traffic.

“There’s not a lot of people walking here right now,” Worthen observed. “There’s a few that come by, you know, but it just doesn’t have the viewing. [The hot dog stand] up on Commercial Street — they set up up there, and they’ve got a whole ton of people. If it was busy here, it’d be great, but we’re not too busy yet.”

Joe Savitch is the owner of the Creative Kones food truck. This summer he is working with his daughter Isla. “I’m the Kid,” she said.

“Of Joe,” she clarified.

Creative Kones specializes in food in cones, but not just ice cream.

“We center around all kinds of things in cones,” Savitch said, “from snow cones to waffle cones where we put fun things like chicken and waffles. We have taco cones, which we did this year at the taco tour, and we also do a handheld Japanese-style crepe cone. We leverage creativity as much as we leverage the cones to have some fun with our food.”

“Hopefully all the businesses here, with the hotel and the mill buildings and stuff, word will get out that there’s something new for lunch.”

Food Truck Friday
Arms Park, Manchester
See the Stark Brewing Co. Facebook page for updates on Fridays about who is attending that week’s events.

The Weekly Dish 24/07/18

News from the local food scene

• Cocktail recipes: James Beard Award-winning drink writer J.M. Hirsch will return to Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) Thursday, July 18, at 6:30 p.m. with his new book of drink recipes, Freezer Door Cocktails: 75 Cocktails That Are Ready When You Are. He will discuss readymade cocktails for whenever you want them: batch drinks made directly in the liquor bottle and stored on your freezer door. Copies of his book will be available for purchase and signing. The Bookstore will accept online orders and signing requests on its website.

• Beer and music: The Biergarten at Anheuser-Busch (221 DW Highway, Merrimack, 595-1202, budweisertours.com/mmk) will host a Brews & Blues event Saturday, July 20, from noon to 7 p.m. Bring a blanket or lawn chair and enjoy a day of summer sun, live blues music, and tasty brews. Tickets are $25 for adults, $15 for those under 21, free for kids under 12. Food will be available for purchase from Bentley’s Famous BBQ.

• Lavender season: There are still a few days left to pick lavender at Pumpkin Blossom Farm (393 Pumpkin Hill Road, Warner, 456-2443, pumpkinblossomfarm.com). The lavender fields are open for picking until Sunday, July 21, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., rain or shine. Lavender grows in direct sunshine, so comfortable shoes, sunscreen and a hat or umbrella are recommended.

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