Category: Food

Try a sample of treats at the Springtime Sweet Stroll

“In a nutshell,” Emma Stetson, the owner of Wine on Main in Concord, said, “there are five stores, all in a row on North Main Street, and during regular business hours on Saturday, each of us will have a local baker with a different treat that they’ve chosen. We’re calling it a Sweet Springtime Stroll.”

Stetson regularly partners with small baking businesses for wine tasting events, she said, and felt inspired to take that idea a little further.

“I have longstanding connections with a couple of bakers,” she said. “One woman named Katie Pope [of Confections by Kate NH] I’ve worked with for many years on cookies. Another woman, Ashley [Savoy] from Savvy Sweets and Treats, we work together on cupcakes and macaroons. There are so many talented local bakers who want to collaborate with us, it’s been hard to find space for everybody, because I already have existing connections and people that I work with for our regular in-store events. So I thought that if we were able to do a bigger event with multiple bakers and multiple stores involved, it would be a great way to showcase people I wouldn’t otherwise have kind of the space in the regular schedule to work with. I wanted everybody to be able to have a platform, so I figured this was a way for all of the people who were coming asking to work with us to have a day where everyone could feature their products.”

The concept of Sweet Springtime Stroll is fairly straightforward, Stetson said.

“Everybody buys a ticket ahead of time. It’s $25 per person. They check in here at Wine on Main and get a passport and a wristband. In their own time, throughout the day, and in any order they want, they can visit each store and each baker and show their wristband and passport and redeem a different sweet treat in each store. It’s all included in the ticket price. If they don’t eat all the various sweet treats — which will include macarons, cookies, cupcakes, and peanut butter cups — they’ll be able to take them home with them, with no additional purchase required. The $25 gets them a treat in each store. And additionally each store that’s hosting a baker will have special coupons and promotions that day for people who are participating.” Stetson will offer a discount on wine purchases, for instance.

Carol’s Confections (carolsconfections.com) will be the guest-bakery-in-residence at Wine on Main on Saturday.

“She’s going to have some really decadent cookies for people to collect,” Stetson said. “I love her chocolate cookies with a bold red wine, like a cabernet sauvignon.”

Ashley Savoy of Savvy Sweets and Treats will serve cookies and French macarons.

“I’ll be actually stationed with two businesses,” Savoy said. “And so I’ll have sourdough chocolate chip cookies and macarons. I haven’t decided which macaron to make yet. This is great exposure for all of the businesses that are going to be involved. Sometimes it can be hard as a cottage baker to get the word out to people about what you do, without a brick and mortar location. This is a way to connect with the community, and give people a little taste of what’s local and what’s around.”

Sweet Springtime Stroll
When: Saturday, May 23, between 1 and 4 p.m.
Tickets are $25 and can be purchased in person at Wine on Main (9 N. Main St., Concord, 897-5828) or through the Wine on Main website at wineonmainnh.com/event/sweet-springtime-stroll. All proceeds will go to the bakers.

Featured photo: Ashley Savoy from Savvy Sweets and Treats. Courtesy photo.

• A new Aroma Joe’s: There is a new location of the coffee joint Aroma Joe’s at 700 Mast Road, Manchester, between Manchester and Goffstown. It is open from 5:15 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday through Tuesday. Contact Aroma Joe’s #222 at 628-5099 or aromajoes.com.

• Cigars and bourbon: The 7-20-4 Lounge ( in Twins Smoke Shop, 80 Perkins Road, Londonderry, 421-0242, facebook.com/7204Lounge) will host a “perfect pairing” Friday, May 22, at 6 p.m. Pair a $20 Rocky Patel Sixty Toro — a hand-rolled Nicaraguan cigar — with your choice of a single pour or Old-Fashioned made with Eagle Rare 10-year-old bourbon. Reservations are not required.

• The roof is open: Rooftop Social (20 S. Main St., Concord, 406-5666, artsalleyconcordnh.com/portfolio/rooftop-social), the third-floor bar at Arts Alley, will open for the season Friday, May 22. The bar’s website describes it as “Elevated but unpretentious — the perfect setting for crafted cocktails, shareable small plates and unforgettable moments under the city sky.”

• Dungeons and Drafts: To Share Brewing (720 Union St., Manchester, 836-6947, tosharebrewing.com) will host Dungeons and Drafts on Sunday, May 24, from 1 to 4 p.m. Bring your own Level 5 character or choose from one of theirs. Whether you’re brand new to D&D or a seasoned player, everyone is welcome at the table. Arrive by 1 p.m. sharp to secure your spot. Seating is limited based on the number of DMs available.

• Cocktail clarification workshop: CodeX B.A.R. (29 Main St., Nashua) will host Clarified Clover Club: The Art of Clarification on May 24 at 4 p.m. Discover the magic of milk washing, the classic technique for transforming cloudy cocktails into crystal-clear, silky-smooth drinks. Learn the full milk-washing process while enjoying a beautifully balanced Clarified Clover Club cocktail, made with gin, raspberry and citrus. The cost is $24.99.

• Knife skills: Tuscan Market (Tuscan Village, 9 Via Toscana, Salem, 912-5467, tuscanbrands.com) will host a class for home cooks in knife skills Tuesday, May 26, from 3 to 5 p.m. Learn proper knife safety, grip and positioning to improve your skills at home. Guests will participate in the preparation of a tasting, while the Chef demonstrates techniques at the end of the class. The cost is $49.31 per person, through tuscanbrands.com/cooking-classes.

• Making gnocchi: Tuscan Market will also host a cooking class Wednesday, May 27, from 6 to 8 p.m. to teach home cooks to make fresh ricotta gnocchi and pair it with a vibrant Sicilian caponata. The cost is $64.74 per person, through tuscanbrands.com/cooking-classes.

Northeast Coffee Festival spans the coffee spectrum

Karen Bassett is the owner of Wayfarer Coffee Roasters in Laconia. She is also the director of this weekend’s Northeast Coffee Festival in Concord.

“This is actually Year 5 [of the Festival],” she said, “but it is the third year in Concord. The Northeast Coffee Festival is a hybrid-type event which brings both coffee professionals and coffee consumers together. It’s a two-day festival in Concord. There are two parts of the festival. One of them is the outdoor Community Market, and that is free and open to the public. It includes over 30 vendors, so coffee, tea, some pottery, some community vendors. We also have a massive main stage right on Main Street for a live music series; there will be live music and DJs all weekend. We have food trucks. We have a beer garden. We have an outdoor demo stage for coffee demonstrations, which is really cool. So that’s all outside and free and open to the public.”

The other half of the Festival, Bassett said, is designed around the interests of coffee professionals and avid amateurs.

“On both Friday and Saturday,” she said, “the other part of the festival is our educational programming. We have brought in 55 speakers from all over, really all over, lots of New England coffee and tea professionals, and have curated an educational series of workshops, panels, small group discussions, demonstrations, hands-on learning across seven different workshop tracks. We have workshop tracks about roasting, cupping (which is coffee tasting), sensory, espresso and tea. We have a panel track and then we have a ‘Beyond the Cup,’ small kind of casual conversations on a specific topic. It’s all pretty incredible.”

Bassett said the Coffee Festival’s organizers have made it a priority to be inclusive.

“There’s some high-level education,” she said, “but there is something for everyone, no matter where you’re at in your coffee journey or tea journey. Each workshop is indicated if it’s for beginners, intermediate, or advanced coffee drinkers. So you can curate a choose-your-own-adventure-style workshop.” It’s set up for professionals who are producing coffee, she said, but also for enthusiasts who are drinking it, and some people just like the concept of coffee.

“That’s what makes this festival really unique and special. Many industries have their own trade show, you can go and you can be in a convention center with thousands of vendors, And while that certainly has a place, this festival’s mission is to bring coffee and community together. And so we’re really trying to form real connections and provide opportunities to network between coffee producers, coffee importers, coffee roasters, and tea as well, of course. And baristas and people who just love coffee. So it’s kind of spanning that whole supply chain all the way like from the seed to cup.”

Some of the most popular sessions each year, Bassett said, are advanced latte workshops. “That’s always super well attended,” she said. “That’s the fun — you see on social media, people pouring these beautiful designs in their lattes. That just kind of brings people from all across. the industry. That’s a lot of fun, especially for baristas and consumers and people who visit local coffee shops. We also have sessions on how to brew better coffee at home. I think that one’s a great one for someone kind of entering this and maybe like, ‘oh, I don’t know what ones are for me.’ That one’s a great one for people to come to. The list could go on and on. If you’re a cafe owner, there’s a lot of ones about how to just run a better business, how to kind of lead from your heart, how to build a good culture, how to build a training program.”

The Northeast Coffee Festival
When: Friday, May 15, and Saturday, May 16
Where: Main Street in Concord
More: Many of the event’s activities are free and open to the public. Tickets to attend sessions and workshops are $99 each, through the Festival’s website. Visit northeastcoffeefestival.com/passes.

Featured photo: Coffee Festival. Courtesy photo.

Tickets sell out fast for this big food event

“I call it the Poutine Super Bowl,” Tim Beaulieu said, “especially in New Hampshire. This is where it all started.” Beaulieu is the founder and organizer of New Hampshire’s PoutineFest, an annual celebration of everything poutine. Poutine, a French Canadian dish made from french fries, gravy and cheese curds, is a staple of New Hampshire’s Franco-American community. “It was my grandfather who inspired me to get involved in [Franco-American] culture, and after seeing what they did with poutine in Montreal I realized, ‘Oh, my god, we have to do that here.”

“So we took some of those pieces from Montreal up in Quebec,” Beaulieu said, “and made them a little bit more New England-y. Essentially, [PoutineFest] is a big poutine sampling event that is family-friendly. We have entertainment. But mostly we have local restaurants, pretty much all from New Hampshire, to see how their poutine compares to each other. We have a couple that come up from Mass and a couple that come over from Maine, but the New Hampshire event is primarily New Hampshire-based. We do have sister events in other states now … in Vermont, Maine, and this year for the first time the city of Boston. So we’re calling this event the Granite State PoutineFest now, and it’s kind of the flagship of all of them.”

For many years, Beaulieu said, PoutineFest was held at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Merrimack, but since the brewery’s closing last year the festival has changed its location and its schedule.

“So Aug. 29 is when it’s going to be this year,” he said. “We used to do it in October for probably four or five years after Covid, but when Anheuser-Busch closed we did a bit of a scramble to find a good, suitable location. And most of them had late summer offerings, so we moved it to August. We’re going to be at 603 Brewery. The thing I like about them is that they’re so close to the town of Londonderry and they have experience doing events and they’ve kind of seen what we’ve done in the past. There will be slightly different beer offerings, which is great, because that works for me. But it will still be family-friendly, which I like. And it’s something that we both share as values.”

Beaulieu sees PoutineFest as an opportunity for independent restaurants to showcase their interpretations of poutine as they compete, whether they present traditional takes on it or more interpretive ones.

“We have a people’s choice award,” he said, “and we also have an overall champion from our chef judges. So we get a little bit of both. We create custom kitchens for all the restaurants outside. The hardest part [of coming here] is most of these poutine vendors are small businesses that don’t have the infrastructure to leave their restaurants. We give them as much product and infrastructure as we possibly can, so they can’t say no, unless they have a scheduling conflict. We also pay them to come; they’re getting paid to do this. It’s not a ton of money, but we’re making sure we cover as many of their expenses as possible.”

The tricky part of attending PoutineFest is getting tickets.

“They are gone in hours,” Beaulieu said. “Everyone remembers our first year back from Covid when we sold out in one hour. It was nuts. But since that time it’s usually a few hours. Our poutiniacs, they set their alarm for 10 o ‘clock on the day of ticket sales. If you’re there at 10, you’ll get tickets. If you wait till the afternoon, there’s no guarantee.”

Granite State PoutineFest
When: Saturday, Aug. 29
Where: 603 Brewery, 42 Main St., Londonderry, 404-6123, 603brewery.com
Tickets: Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday, May 16, at poutinefest.com/newhampshire and will sell out quickly. General admission tickets are $54.99.

Featured photo: PoutineFest. Courtesy photo.