Category: Food

Col’s Kitchen opens in downtown Concord

By Matt Ingersoll

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Bow native Jordan Reynolds found out in June that Willow’s Plant-Based Eatery in Concord was closing permanently. Less than two months and countless hours of construction later, a new vegan restaurant has reopened in Willow’s place, with Reynolds and former Willow’s staff member Rob Ray at the helm.

“Willow [Mauck], who’s a friend of mine, called me up … to say that she decided to permanently close,” said Reynolds, who’s been vegan since the age of 17. “I’ve wanted to start a vegan company for a long time. I had planned on starting a food truck, but then all the gigs we had planned were getting canceled, so that ended up not happening. … So when Willow called, I just thought that maybe it was my time to get the torch passed.”

Col’s Kitchen, named after Reynolds’ nine-year-old pit bull, opened its doors on Aug. 12.

Despite the eatery’s quick turnaround, its concept — what Reynolds refers to as an “eclectic, all-American” approach to vegan foods — has been years in the making. Col’s Kitchen features a well-rounded menu of plant-based options, from appetizers and salads to entree-sized meals, desserts and brunch items on Sundays.

After signing a lease for the space in late July, Reynolds said, he spent 10 or more hours a day for nearly three weeks renovating the restaurant’s kitchen and dining space, all with the help of family members, friends and community members who volunteered their time. They put down a new hardwood floor with pine from a local sawmill, painted the walls and chairs that were donated to them, and even built their own tables out of wooden boards and gas pipes.

Col’s Kitchen’s opening day coincided with Restaurant Week, a program of Intown Concord’s Market Month. The eatery was so well-received on Day 1 that its staff ran out of food three times over the course of the day and had to repeatedly replenish its stock, according to Reynolds.

“We got killed, but you could call it a pleasant surprise,” he said. “I wasn’t sure how many people would come out during a pandemic, but they were more supportive than we imagined. … Vegans were certainly hungry after not having a place here for a few months.”

Reynolds said it was important not only to give vegan customers options they would not otherwise have, but also to make the menu accessible to everyone. Seitan (pronounced “SAY-tan”), for example, is a high-gluten wheat flour used as a protein in Col’s Kitchen’s stroganoff and Philly cheesesteaks in lieu of meat.

Other options include Buffalo cauliflower wings with ranch, Brussels sprouts with sweet garlic sauce, seared tofu pad Thai with rice noodles and veggies, various smoothies and milkshakes, and coffee from White Mountain Gourmet Coffee.

Some dessert items Col’s Kitchen has featured out of the gate have been macarons, pies and root beer floats. You can also get a “pie shake,” made with either apple or strawberry rhubarb pie.

“We put a piece of pie in a blender, crust and all, and then add a couple scoops of ice cream and a little dash of milk in and just blend it up,” Reynolds said. “It’s like pie à la mode, but in a glass.”

Currently the eatery is open for lunch and dinner from Wednesday to Saturday, with brunch available on Sunday mornings. That menu features pancakes, Belgian waffles, tofu scrambles and “Scram Sammy” sandwiches with options like chili cheese and Buffalo seitan.

Reynolds said the plan is for Col’s Kitchen to be open seven days a week.

“We want to start bottling up our own sauces for sale. We make the Buffalo sauce, the ranch that goes with [the wings] and we make the Thai peanut sauce,” he said. “We’re also looking into making our own ice cream in the next couple of months.”

Buffalo Seitan Scram Sammy. Photo courtesy of Col’s Kitchen.

Col’s Kitchen
Where: 55 S. Main St., Concord
Hours: Wednesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. for brunch (hours may be subject to change)
Contact: Find them on Facebook and Instagram @colsplantbased, email [email protected] or call 227-6778

New recipe book offers aphrodisiac foods

From finding comfort to strengthening our relationships, we use food to express and celebrate love in all kinds of ways — that’s the idea behind a new book being released this week, as it explores food’s roles in self-love and interpersonal relationships with personal anecdotes, spiritual techniques and more than 50 original recipes and illustrations.

A Kitchen Witch’s Guide to Recipes for Love & Romance, available Aug. 25, is the latest project from Dawn Hunt of the Cucina Aurora Kitchen Witchery, a Salem-based purveyor of gourmet foods like infused olive oils and risotto mixes. On Friday, Sept. 11, Hunt will host a virtual lecture and cooking demonstration featuring a recipe from the book. Then on Saturday, Sept. 12, she will be at the Bookery in Manchester for an outdoor book signing.

Hunt said the book’s genesis came from a “recipes for romance” cooking workshop she has taught in the past, which covered various foods with aphrodisiac properties.

“The class was all about foods that align with some sort of energetic qualities for self-love, or bringing new love into a romantic relationship or healing a family relationship,” she said. “I realized there was really nothing out there that had all these things together.”

She collected ideas for recipes over the course of the last five years. A chance encounter with a publishing scout for Simon & Schuster who visited her booth at a New York City show last year landed her a book deal.

Structurally, A Kitchen Witch’s Guide to Recipes for Love & Romance is divided into three sections. Each introduces a specific food — avocados, tomatoes, chocolate, cinnamon, strawberries and oysters are among them — by detailing its nutritional and aphrodisiac properties, followed by one or several recipes.

“The first section of the book is all about loving yourself, both when it comes to eating healthy and taking care of yourself, and also treating yourself to comfort foods and brownies and all that,” she said. “The second section is about learning to connect with others and draw love into our lives … and then the third section deals with keeping your relationships fresh and exciting. … Everything is all kind of weaved together with my own experiences and what I’ve learned.”

Hunt said about two-thirds of the recipes consist of new material, while the rest were recipes she had made before. You can learn to make everything from cinnamon crumb pound cake, avocado chocolate mousse, and strawberry, spinach and feta salad, to stuffed zucchini pinwheels, pomegranate mimosas with muddled raspberries, and pork loin roast with cherries and red wine. The recipes appear the sections Hunt felt they fit best.

“A lot of it had to do with what resonated with me,” she said, “so for example, I have a seafood risotto recipe that I put in the ‘rekindling’ section, because of how it’s made and the visualization and attention recommended for that recipe.”

The book was written with the same principles Hunt said she founded her company on — the idea of “spiritual nutrition,” or sharing positive energy with one another through food.

“The recipes are meant to be easy and accessible to everyone, and that was really important to me,” she said.

Featured Photo: A Kitchen Witch’s Guide to Recipes for Love & Romance

Meet the Kitchen Witch
Dawn Hunt of Cucina Aurora in Salem presents A Kitchen Witch’s Guide to Recipes for Love & Romance (available Aug. 25)
• Fri., Sept. 11, 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.: Online lecture and cooking demonstration (tickets available through the Bookery in Manchester; bookerymht.com)
• Sat., Sept. 12, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.: In-person outdoor signing (admission is free, but masks are required)
Visit cucinaaurora.com

Madear’s relocates to downtown Pembroke, introduces bakery

Nearly a year after Madear’s hosted its final night of service on Hanover Street in Manchester, the Cajun comfort restaurant will reopen in its new home in Pembroke, featuring new menus, almost twice the dining capacity and, for the first time, a bakery.

Madear’s Southern Eatery & Bakery, as it’s now known, will have the distinction of being one of the few full-service sit-down restaurants in town when it opens in the coming weeks.

Chef-owners Robb Curry and Kyle Davis originally opened Madear’s, a 35-seat restaurant and bar, in the former space of a nail salon in July 2017. Curry, who grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, credits his paternal grandmother Martha “Madear” Sullivan, the restaurant’s namesake, with inspiring him to learn to cook when he was young.

As their following grew, so did their culinary inspiration. Davis said the pair’s desire to expand their Southern comfort offerings in the form of a bakery, coupled with the end of their lease on Hanover Street, was among the factors that contributed to their closure last October. At first they explored other options within the Queen City, but when those didn’t pan out they started broadening their search. In January they found the space that most recently occupied the Rock On Diner on Main Street in downtown Pembroke.

“We had breakfast here and we were like, ‘Oh, this is a really good place,’ and then about two weeks later we saw a For Lease sign, so we thought maybe it was a little serendipity,” Davis said. “This space allowed us to tick all the boxes. It gave us the size, the downtown access … and it put us right in between Concord and Manchester.”

At 56 seats, the new location is extremely spacious compared to its Manchester predecessor, with its dining room broken into four distinct arrangements. There’s an intimate lounge area and a bar with a copper countertop, plus multiple banquettes to the right of the entrance and family dining tables in the center of the restaurant that were made from reclaimed wood. The kitchen is also much larger, allowing Davis and Curry to introduce new menu items.

One of the most notable additions to the menu is a new bakery case that will be regularly stocked with scratch-made cakes, pies, cookies, tarts, croissants and other sweets.

“What we found on Hanover Street was that a lot of people who really loved the baked goods would ask, ‘Can I order a pie to take home?’” Davis said. “So now we’re going to have a daily selection of things that are done like a traditional sort of bakeshop.”
But a bakery doesn’t mean Madear’s will be open in the morning. Instead, Davis said, they will likely open the doors at 4 p.m. each day, while ordering ahead is also available with a 24-hour notice.

“We’re not going to be doing breakfast sandwiches or anything like that,” he said. “We’re really trying to focus on more of the dessert-type bakery products that people can pick up on their way home, like a few slices of cake or some cookies or something … and then for people eating in the restaurant, the dessert menu will be a combination of what’s available in the bakery, plus our staples, like the bread pudding.”

If you were a regular at Madear’s on Hanover Street, you probably noticed that the menu changed four times a year, each season — that won’t be the case in Pembroke, Davis said.

“We learned some lessons … and we decided that we’d have a menu of staples and then do specials that are seasonal,” he said. “We’ve also changed some of the terminology on the menu. So instead of calling them ‘tapas,’ which confused some people, we have [the options listed as] small plates and large plates.”

You can expect many of the same favorites, like gumbo, jambalaya, fried crab meat, fried chicken and baked macaroni and cheese items — along with some new items never before seen on any Madear’s menu, like oxtail stew simmered in a chicken stock demi-glace, and bone-in pork chop smothered in Southern gravy and served over rice.

There’s a section of the menu devoted to grits, with the option of adding one of four sauces, as well as your own protein, from shrimp, gator or catfish, to andouille sausage, pulled pork or chicken tender. The eatery’s Southern craft cocktails are also returning, including staples like hurricanes and sazeracs in addition to seasonal specials.

Once Madear’s has settled into its adopted community, Davis said, many of its popular events — like the comedy nights, the pajama drag brunches and the monthly themed dinners — will all be due to return. Cooking classes and live musical performances are planned too.

“We really want to just get into the rhythm of running the restaurant for a little bit, but we definitely have events lined up,” he said.

Photo courtesy of Madear’s.

Madear’s Southern Eatery & Bakery
An opening date is expected in the coming weeks. Visit their website or follow them on social media for updates.
Where: 141 Main St., Pembroke
Anticipated hours: TBA
More info: Visit madears603.com or follow them on Facebook or Instagram @madears603