Category: Food

Bonne The Baker wants to give you better options

Bonne Richards has had some memorably bad gluten-free baked goods.

“I saw a gluten-free pizza yesterday that made me cry,” she said. “It was so clearly awful. I was at a meeting on the other side of the state and someone sent out for pizza and the gluten-free thing looked like it was made of Play-Doh. It was probably better to eat the box it came in.”

After baking professionally for many years, Richards has made the move to open her own gluten-free bakery.

“I’ve been in the business for a long time,” Richards said. “I was Michael Buckley’s original pastry chef at Michael Timothy’s back in the ’90s. And I’ve been working for different people and running farm bakeries, then went out on my own a couple of years ago just doing some wholesale accounts in the area. After listening to customers tell me, ‘Please, please open your own place,’ I decided to jump in and do it finally. It will be a gluten-free, dairy-free, plant-based bakery and retail market in Nashua.”

Richards’ goal for Bonne the Baker is to be a resource for customers who follow a specialized diet and, like her, have been disappointed with the choices available to them.

“It will probably break down to something like 70 percent sweet baked goods,” she said, ”and the other portion will be savory. You know — muffins, some Danishes, pastries. I’ll have some bread. Of course things like whoopie pies and cupcakes, all kinds of stuff. I’m going to do a lot of plant-based items. I have a big vegan and vegetarian following so I’m going to have a grab-and-go section that will have fresh salads, grain salads, greens, a lot of protein balls, vegan cheeses and things like vegan salamis that are hard to get.”

Richards remembers when gluten-free baked goods like that disappointing pizza were the norm. “Back in the day, at the beginning of gluten-free, the flours weren’t right,” she said. “Nobody really had a good formula for making eggs that weren’t eggs, you know what I mean? [Ingredients like that] have come such a long way and the procedures have taken a while to catch up with them. I can’t tell you how much I’ve thrown out perfecting my recipes. I’ve finally gotten to the point where I hear my favorite compliment pretty often: ‘ I cannot tell that this is gluten-free and there’s no eggs in this or dairy.’ So I’m pretty proud of that.”

Richards said the new space is promising.

“It looks so good!” she said. “I’m like, ‘Oh my god, it’s looking even better than I thought it was going to look like. It’s a fabulous space. It is so beautiful. I lucked out finding it. The City of Nashua has been so good, I can’t even tell you. And the comment out of the deputy health inspector was, ‘We want you in business’.

Richards’ original plan was to open for business on May 1, “but with paperwork, there are always issues,” she said. “I finally got my food licence. Now, we start baking and stocking the shelves and putting up my sign. The new plan is to have a soft opening on Saturday [May 9], and then the grand opening is going to be that Wednesday, May 13, which is my mother’s birthday, and she’s not here anymore, so even though it’s a Wednesday I’m going to call it Mother’s Day all weekend.”

Bonne The Baker
Where: 2 Cellu Drive, Nashua, 669-4200, bonniethebaker.com
When: soft opening Saturday, May 9, and grand opening Wednesday, May 13.
Hours: open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Sundays 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Featured photo: Bonne Richards, owner of Bonne the Baker. Courtesy Bonne Richards.

Concord’s First Fridays kick off another season

Beginning Friday, May 1, Main Street in Concord will host a celebration on the first Friday of every month until November.

“Except July,” Berit Brown said. “We’re skipping July, because the first Friday falls right on the Fourth of July, and that would be a little too intense.”

Brown is the events and marketing manager for InTown Concord, the nonprofit organization that sponsors First Friday events as well as other celebrations, like Concord’s Winter Festival, Market Days, Halloween Howl and a holiday celebration in December called Midnight Merriment. First Fridays feature live entertainment and special activities, and downtown businesses stay open until 8 p.m. Art galleries open late with special viewings, wine and cheese, and so on. And, of course, there are food trucks.

Brown said food trucks are a natural fit for First Fridays.

“It’s a good way for somebody to kind of try out their food truck idea,” she said. “They can test out menu items and see what people respond to the best and do it on a much lower budget than opening a brick and mortar restaurant. For a lot of the food trucks that we work with, [First Fridays] are their first forays into selling their food. A lot of their stories are pretty similar. They tell us that family members and friends have always said that they’re good cooks and then they end up opening a food truck. For a lot of them First Fridays in Concord are their first ever food truck experience.”

The food trucks offer the public a variety of types of food to choose from on any given First Friday, Brown said.

“It’s definitely a nice vibe while you’re waiting for your food. You’re able to listen to live music on City Plaza. We’ve actually expanded the number of food trucks,” she said. “Last year we were doing two per event, and this time our goal is to have three to four per First Friday. We’ve definitely opened it up a little bit more and we’ve also tried to find a balance between sweet and savory foods. So you can get a cupcake or a brownie, and you can also get a hot dog or a hamburger.”

“We have a new vendor this year who’s coming in November and they are a gluten-free food truck,” she said. “We have Teenie Wienies, who serve sausage sandwiches. I love their food. They’re fantastic. They have the largest sausage sandwiches you’ve ever seen. This year they’re actually coming to the October First Friday, so they’ll be serving Oktoberfest-inspired sandwiches. I think some of the first events that they ever did were at our First Fridays and they kind of were able to troubleshoot and see how much sausage they needed to bring to different events. And now they’re permanently stationed at one of the breweries around town.” See page 22 for a look at the music planned for First Fridays.

First Friday
The first First Friday of 2026 will take place along Main Street in Concord on Friday, May 1, from 4 to 8 p.m. The theme will be “Petals and Pedals.” The food trucks will be Carly’s Kitchen (a mobile bakery), New Hampshah’s Mini Donuts, and Stacy’s Grill, which will serve hamburgers, hot dogs and other grilled favorites. Visit firstfridayconcord.com/may.

Featured photo: Photo courtesy of Teenie Wienies food truck.

The Vegan Chef Challenge returns to Manchester

During the month of May a number of Manchester restaurants will compete in the 2026 Vegan Chef Challenge. Each restaurant will feature one or more vegan dishes on its menu. These might be existing dishes or new experimental dishes developed for the competition. Customers will vote on which dishes stand out the most. Similar competitions take place in cities across the country.

Joan O’Brien is the president of the New Hampshire Animal Rights League, the group organizing Manchester’s Vegan Chef Challenge. She said last year’s Challenge, the first in Manchester, was an eye-opener for the city’s restaurant community.

“Last year was the inaugural challenge,” she said. “It was very successful. It was fun. It brought in a new customer base for the participating restaurants.” Even now, a year later, several of last year’s participating restaurants still have last year’s vegan dishes on their menus, she said. “That was the goal, to bring more vegan options to Manchester and show people that the food can be delicious, and the fact that they kept some of these dishes on their menus is proof of that, that there’s actually a demand for it. It’s been really, really good feedback.”

“[The Vegan Chef Challenge] is an event that was created by a national organization called Vegan Outreach,” O’Brien said, “and their goal is to raise awareness around vegan lifestyle. They host these challenges in cities across the country, including Manchester. The overall winner, the best overall in Manchester was Stashbox. They had a miso-glazed avocado dish, and their cashew cream gnocchi was outstanding. I’ve been looking through some of the things that diners said last year, and people said things like, ‘Delicious!’ and ‘We wouldn’t know it was vegan. I’m not someone who eats vegan. This is the best gnocchi I’ve ever had.’ — comments like that.”

The 2025 Vegan Chef Challenge in Manchester was a bit of a revelation for the city’s restaurant community, O’Brien said — first, that there is a demand for plant-based dishes, even in a traditionally food-conservative state like New Hampshire.

“I can’t confirm it yet,” O’Brien said, but I know that Manchester is attracting more young people, more young professionals, and those people are usually looking for healthier food, and more inventive, creative food.” The success of last year’s challenge is an indication of a change in Manchester’s food culture, O’Brien said, showing that Manchester can participate on a level with much bigger, more cosmopolitan cities in other parts of the country.

Another lesson O’Brien has taken from the success of last year’s Challenge is that a non-confrontational exposure to vegan cuisine is a gentle and persuasive way to change people’s conception of vegan food.

“I think that the whole [vegan] movement is realizing, is learning that most of us were not born vegan,” she said. “So you have to be welcoming and not judge people. And sometimes what happens is when people realize that they can still get delicious, satisfying food that happens to be meat-free, then they’re open to considering the other benefits of a vegan lifestyle. People have a lot of things in their lives that they’re trying to get done, and to think that, ‘Ugh! Now I have to change my whole diet!’ is daunting.”

“May will be a big month for going out to eat, for Mother’s Day and graduations,” O’Brien said. “So we do hope that those people who are going out will visit the participating restaurants, try some of these vegan offerings and see that we have some new players, some very talented chefs.”

2026 Vegan Chef Challenge
Manchester’s Vegan Chef Challenge will take place throughout May. For a list of participating restaurants, visit veganchefchallenge.org/manchester.

Featured photo: Jeremy Hart, co-owner of Stashbox, last year’s overall winner of the Vegan Chef Challenge, with his trophy, the coveted Golden Spatula.