Category: Food

Music, food and community

We Are One Festival brings together African, Caribbean and Latino communities

Sarah Georges is one of many Manchester residents who has been eagerly looking forward to Saturday’s We Are One festival. She is the coordinator of this year’s festival and said that it shows a side of Manchester many New Hampshire residents don’t see most of the year.

“The We Are One is the oldest festival here in Manchester,” Georges said. “It is literally a time when the African, Caribbean and Latino — all of Manchester’s communities get to come together and enjoy a different culture, just enjoy different people who are on the stage showing their talents, whether it is someone who is born and raised right here in Manchester and have immigrant parents, or they are from far away themselves. And then, we have food and different organizations that come out every year to share their services, let the people know what they have here to help out, whether it is for housing, whether it’s for after-school programs, whether it’s for the parents themselves.”

One of the biggest draws for the We Are One festival is the food, Georges said.

“That’s my favorite part; I’m not going to lie,” she said, ”I always show up for the food.”

“I am Haitian and African, but I was born and raised right here in Manchester,” Georges said. She said Manchester has a wealth of small family restaurants that fly under the radar sometimes.

“What I love about Manchester,” Georges said, “is the fact that there are so many different types of food here. And when you see a white person come into an African restaurant and order something like fufu [a West African dish made from cassava], or collard greens, or they’re ordering pondu [a stew from the Congo], or if they’re ordering empanadas and rice con pollo, it is so great for them, it’s so great to watch them eat, because it’s like watching a child for the first time trying food. … It’s like that experience that comes to them like an old friend.”

The event also promises art, music, dancing and live performances, according to the event’s Facebook page. According to Sarah Georges, some of the performers at We Are One will include Colombian dance troupe Barranquilla Flavor, dance group Mill Advised,singer Xyomi, and performer Kay Richie.

We Are One Festival
This is a free, family-friendly outdoor event celebrating Manchester’s multicultural, African, Caribbean and Latino communities with live music, dance, art, food vendors and cultural performances.
Where: Veterans Park in downtown Manchester
When: Saturday, Aug. 15, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
More: Food vendors will include Don Quijote Restaurant (362 Union St., Manchester, 622-2246, donquijoteunion.com) and Soel Sistas Soul Food (30 Temple St., Suite 202, Nashua, 943-1469, soelsistas.com)

Featured photo: A previous year’s event. Courtesy photo.

Celebrating the French-speaking world

The new Franco Fest has big plans

One of the first hurdles the Franco-American Centre and organizers of next week’s inaugural Franco Fest will be addressing is the public’s idea of what it means to speak French.

“A lot of us think about France when we think of French,” said John Tousignant, the executive director of the Franco American Centre, “and of course people think about Quebec and more broadly Canada, but there are more than 90 countries of the world that are part of the international organization of La Francophonie — the French-speaking world. Many of these countries that either have French as an official language or a commonly spoken one have immigrants that are coming and becoming new residents of the state of New Hampshire.” Some of these areas are West and North Africa, Haiti, and Vietnam, he said. “French is spoken on five continents of the world. This gives us an opportunity to really focus on that cultural dynamic and the mosaic that French provides to our community.”

This is the idea behind Franco Fest 2026, a first of its kind celebration of the French-speaking world, which will be held Saturday, Aug. 22, in Concord. The event’s website describes the event as “a vibrant, family-friendly festival bringing together music, food, art, culture, and the rich traditions of French-speaking communities around the world.”

The coordinator for Franco Fest is Jessica Livingston, who also coordinates Concord’s annual Multicultural Festival. She said the long-term vision for Franco Fest includes a strong focus on the food of the French-speaking world.

“French is spoken all across the world, in many different cultures and countries,” Livingston said. “So we ultimately want to highlight the different foods from around the world that have French speaking as part of their country.”

A combination of circumstances has forced food to take a back seat to other aspects of francophone culture this year, Livingston said.

“Because this is our first year and also August being the busiest month ever for food trucks, we’ve had a little bit of a challenge,” she said. “So, just like the Multicultural Festival, having vendors from different countries around the world [will be an important focus]. We haven’t been able to do quite that this year, but we found a food vendor — a food truck [Peaks]— which has cuisine from all around the world. They do food, like street food from all around the world, which is a really good start.”

There will be three featured musical acts at Franco Fest — West African singer Senie Hunt, Zydeco Band Catfish Howl, and Quebecois singer Josée Vachon. (For more on Senie Hunt, see Michael Witthaus’s story on page 22 of the Aug. 6 issue of the Hippo, available in the digital library at hippopress.com.)

John Tousignant said that many of the festival’s activities will be directed at families. “We have a lot of activities for children planned,” he said. “Children will be able to decorate and bring home some takeaways. Among other things, we will be having people teaching some traditional crafts such as playing the spoons, which is a traditional part of French Canadian culture. We’ll also have a gigueur, which is one of these dancing dolls that people can learn how to use in conjunction with the traditional music. A jig is a type of a dance, and the dolls are called gigueur because they can do a little dance.”

“We’ll also have tables with people from different parts of the French world,” Tousignant said, “such as special guests from Quebec, from the Société des Filles du Roi, which honors a chapter in French-Canadian history. It means ‘The Daughters of the King.’ When New France was founded in North America in the 1600s, it was populated entirely by men, so they needed women to start families. The king gathered girls and women who didn’t have a lot going for them in France, and put them on a boat to send over to start North American French heritage. We’re going to have members of the Société in period costume talking with people and interacting.”

Franco Fest 2026
When: Saturday, Aug. 22, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: Kimball Jenkins Estate, 266 N.Main St, Concord.
More: Thanks to a grant from the City of Concord, this event will be free to the public. For more information, visit the Franco Fest 2026 website at facnh.com/franco-fest; the Franco American Centre at facnh.com, and this year’s food vendor at peaksfoodtruck.com.

Featured photo: Josée Vachon. Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 26/08/13

• New tacos in Concord: Boston-based Mexican chain Anna’s Taqueria (annas.com) has opened its first location in New Hampshire, at 50 Fort Eddy Road in Concord. According to a July 30 press release, its food and atmosphere are “inspired by San Francisco’s Mission District … bringing the homestyle flavor of Mexican street food to the people while celebrating community.” Anna’s is open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

• A new coffee option in Manchester: Lahālas Coffee (57 Bay St., Manchester, lahalascoffee.com) is described on its website as “a New England–based mobile coffee cart serving lattes that love you back. Every syrup is homemade with real ingredients.”

• Stuffing ravioli: Tuscan Market (Tuscan Village, 9 Via Toscana, Salem, 912-5467, tuscanbrands.com) will hold a ravioli-making workshop Saturday, Aug. 15, from 6 to 8 p.m. Enjoy an evening of crafting your own fresh egg pasta dough, guided by an instructor through proper techniques for shaping your dough into a variety of pasta styles. Guests will also enjoy a tasting of Tuscan brand ravioli, paired with a live sauce demonstration. Tickets are $65 through the tuscanbrands website.

• Tequila, food, and tequila: Stashbox (866 Elm St., Manchester, 606-8109, stashboxnh.com) will host a G4 tequila pairing dinner on Tuesday, Aug. 18, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. This will be a one-of-a-kind five-course dinner with premium G4 Tequilas and exclusive food creations. G4 Ambassador Anthony Faletra will be on hand for an evening of knowledge, noshing and of course tequila. Tickets are $125 through the Stashbox website.

• Beer, books, and bingo: Sunstone Brewing Co. (298 Rockingham Road, Londonderry, 216-1808, sunstonebrewing.com) will host an evening of Bookish Bingo on Wednesday, Aug. 19, from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Prizes will include special edition books, bookish merch, gift baskets, and more. Tickets are $25 through the Sunstone website.

• Better blending: Wine on Main (9 N. Main St., Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com) will host a blending seminar with acclaimed Argentinian wine producer Catena Zapata Wednesday, Aug. 19, from 6 to 8 p.m. Through tasting five wines, guests will learn how different altitudes, soils and microclimates affect a wine’s characteristics. Then they will be able to create their own Malbec blend and compare it to Catena Alta Malbec. Tickets are $70 through the Wine on Main website. Space is limited.

• “A good cigar is a smoke” —Rudyard Kipling: The Bedford Village Inn (2 Olde Bedford Way, Bedford, 472-2001) will host its Annual Cigar Dinner on Wednesday, Aug. 19, and Thursday, Aug. 20, from 6 to 9 p.m. Enjoy a summer evening filled with exceptional cigars, expertly paired wines and spirits, live music and a thoughtfully curated three-course dinner, according to bedfordvillageinn.com/experiences. Tickets are $198 through the Inn’s website.

• Also at the BVI: Tickets are on sale now for the Able Ebenezer Beer Dinner at the Bedford Village Inn on Thursday, Sept. 10, at 6 p.m. Beers from the Merrimack-based brewery will be paired with a four-course meal. See bedfordvillageinn.com/experiences for tickets and to see the menu.

• Save the date: Mahrajan, the annual celebration of Middle Eastern food at Our Lady of the Cedars Church, 140 Mitchell St. in Manchester, will return next weekend — Friday, Aug. 21 (5 to 10 p.m.); Saturday, Aug. 22 (noon to 10 p.m.) and Sunday, Aug. 23 (noon to 5 p.m.), according to bestfestnh.com, the celebration’s website. “Join us for all your favorites including lamb kabobs, kibbee, falafel, stuffed grapeleaves, tabbouleh, shawarma and traditional Lebanese pastries,” the website said. The event will also feature DJ Kibar playing Arabic music, kids’ games, a full bar, Hokah rentals and more, the website said.

Blueberry cookies with lemon and lavender glaze

  • 1 cup (198 g) sugar
  • 1/3 cup (2/3 cube) butter
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • ½ cup (114 g) milk
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • ¼ teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 3½ cups (420 g) all-purpose flour
  • 2 cups (285 g) frozen wild blueberries – Leave these in the freezer until you add them to the cookie dough; you want them to stay as hard and frozen as possible.
  • 1 cup (114 g) powdered sugar
  • juice and zest of 1 lemon
  • 1 teaspoon dried lavender buds

Mix the dry ingredients — the baking powder, baking soda, salt, and flour — together, and set them aside.

Cream the butter and sugar together with an electric mixer until they have come together and are lighter in color and slightly fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla.

Reduce the speed of your mixer to its lowest setting, then mix the milk in. (Just pouring it in with the mixer going all-out will get splashy.) Spoon most of the dry mixture in; reserve a couple of tablespoons of it. Take the blueberries from the freezer and toss them in the flour mixture until they are coated. In theory, this should help keep them from exploding when you add them to the cookie dough.

If you have strong arms and are super-patient, stir the frozen, floury blueberries into the dough gently with a wooden spoon or a silicone spatula. If, like me, you have the gentle subtlety of an overheated porcupine, use the mixer to bring everything together. Unfortunately, this will cause many of the berries to explode and will turn your cookie dough purple.

Shriek, “You’re turning violet, Violet!” (if you know, you know) and put the bowl of purple cookie dough in the refrigerator.

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Leave the dough to chill and the oven to heat up. (Which seems like a bit of an extravagance. At this point in our technological development, shouldn’t we be able to suck the heat out of the dough and pump it into the oven somehow, instead of making the refrigerator and the oven work at cross purposes?)

Start making the glaze. Whisk the lemon juice, lemon zest, powdered sugar and lavender buds together, then set them aside. Go write a handwritten postcard to a friend you haven’t talked to in too long.

Lavender is one of those strong-flavored ingredients that will overpower this whole enterprise if you find yourself chewing on a piece of it. By leaving it to soak in the acidic lemon juice, you’re extracting some of the flavor.

When the cookie dough is cold and the oven is hot, scoop golf-ball-sized balls of dough onto a baking sheet covered with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Bake the cookies for 11 to 13 minutes, until they have browned slightly. Let them cool on the baking sheet.

Strain the glaze and pour it over the cooled cookies.

The cookies themselves are not very sweet, but the glaze is. Together, with the zing of lemon juice and the floral lavender in the background, these are very nice, maybe with a glass of lemonade.

Featured photo: Blueberries cookies. Photo by John Fladd.

Meet The Grey Dog

Craft cocktails are their specialty

Michael Demicco is the owner of The Grey Dog in Manchester, a new addition to downtown’s growing craft cocktail scene. His mission is to present customers with the purest, most attention-grabbing flavors possible in his drinks, he said. Sometimes that involves stripping recipes down to basics.

“I’ve also learned through trial and error over the years,” he said, “how important it is to simplify drinks. I don’t mean dumbing them down, or even making them easier to make, but you shouldn’t over-complicate cocktails, just like you shouldn’t in life. Some of the best cocktails we’ve ever put out are the not basic but just simpler ones where we strip out the unnecessary steps.”

Other times Demicco’s recipes will involve an impressive number of familiar and unfamiliar ingredients to build the flavor he is looking for.

“My personal favorite of our drinks is based on a cocktail I had once in Colorado with my girlfriend at the time,” he said. “We could never figure out exactly how they did it. So we spent most of Covid trying to figure it out.” After months of experimentation, Demicco said, he was finally able to reverse-engineer a cocktail with the flavor profile he was looking for. “It’s called The Jade,” he said, partially because it is a jade-colored drink. It has cachaça (a Brazilian sugar-cane-base spirit like a musky rum), tequila, lychee, agave, lime, matcha and absinthe. “That sounds like a lot — and it’s true that it’s one of the more complicated drinks we make. However, when all blended together, it doesn’t taste like anything you’ve ever had. It doesn’t register as a margarita, despite there being tequila in there. It’s definitely not a caipirinha, even though there’s cachaça in there. The matcha doesn’t taste like green tea because we just use literally a pinch of it, just to get that color. The absinthe is more like two or three drops, kind of like a vanilla extract. It’s turned out to be the busiest cocktail on our menu. It doesn’t taste like anything you’ve ever had before.”

Demicco said one of The Grey Dog’s goals is to provide something any customer will be able to enjoy, regardless of their personal tastes.

“We have everything from Bud Light to some bottles up on the top shelf of the bar that run you $50, $60 a pour and everything in between. I try to keep prices as fair as possible, but the top shelf is called ‘top shelf’ for a reason.”

The food menu at The Grey Dog is fairly streamlined, Demicco said, with a small number of dishes that have been developed for the maximum amount of flavor.

“It’s a tapas-style [menu],” he said, “not actual tapas. I call it ‘tapas light.’ I try to subvert some expectations. Our crispy Thai chili pork belly tacos are made with house-made flour tortillas are absolutely phenomenal. They’re served with a kale/kimchi slaw, fermented vegetables, and a cilantro avocado lime crema. We sell out almost every other day. People just, if we have them in house, they don’t stop ordering them. That is what we served at Taco Tour. We’re going to make them for Taco Tour again next year. We sold out really quickly this year, but we’re going to triple the amount we do next year.”

“My purpose and goal and philosophy behind the things we make,” Demicco said, “is to help people create memories and stories that they will remember. I remember, throughout almost my entire life, memories and cocktails and places I’ve been. I think of some of the things I’ve eaten or drunk during my life, and there’s always a story about where I was and what I was doing at the time. It’s more of an emotional thing for me, I think, when it comes to creating — whether it’s in cooking or cocktails.”

The Grey Dog
657 Elm St., Manchester, 540 -7970, thegreydognh.com
Open Wednesday through Sunday, 4 p.m. to midnight.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Blooms and tunes, with food

Sunfox Farm holds its annual Sunflower Bloom Festival

So, that thing about sunflowers turning to face the sun? It turns out that isn’t actually true.

Well, a little true, said Greg Pollock, owner of Sunfox Farm in Concord.

“It’s sort of a misconception,” he said. “When [sunflowers] are growing — when they’re young, and even when they’re setting their buds — the buds and the leaves will follow the sun throughout the day. But once they bloom, they face east, so they greet the morning sun.” Which is actually very poetic.

Visitors will have a chance to immerse themselves in sunflowers at the farm’s Sunflower Bloom Festival, Aug. 8 through Aug. 16.

“We have live music every day from local musicians,” Pollock said. ”We’ve got food trucks and artisan vendors, paths through the sunflowers, cut-your-own sunflowers and 500,000 blooms, right in the heart of Concord. The state capitol building is actually right in the back of the sunflowers. We rotate the field around every year, and this year is my favorite year, because no matter where you are in the festival grounds the sunflowers are all going to be looking right at you. We have paths through the field and viewing decks to get you up above the flowers. There’s lots of beauty out there.”

The Sunflower Bloom Festival has grown each year, Pollock said.

“We started in Canterbury and then we moved our main production ground to Concord, and we’ve been here for four years now. We’ve been hosting this festival for eight years, and it’s a pretty good time. We try to make it better and better every year, so we add different aspects to it. It’s a nice, family-friendly event. We have a Kid’s Zone set up. This year we’re going to be holding some painting classes that people can do. Squam Lake Science Center is bringing some animals down and we’ve got a farm that’s going to be bringing some baby animals as a petting zoo.”

Because Sunfox Farm grows sunflower seeds for their oil, Pollock said, all half-million of the farm’s sunflowers are the same variety.

“We produce cold pressed and unrefined high-oleic sunflower oil, which is a nice heart-healthy cooking oil. It’s high in monounsaturated fat, like an olive oil. And so that’s why we grow [these particular sunflowers] — they’re all one oilseed variety. We grow everything with organic practices, although we’re still working through our organic certification process.”

Pollock said he and his wife Amber press the oil themselves.

“We squeeze the oil out of the seeds and then we let it settle for two or three weeks and then we filter and bottle off the top. It goes through a screw press — essentially it’s a cylinder with a large screw in there, and it’s forcing the seeds through a small orifice in the tail end, and that’s what creates pressure to then press out the oil. It doesn’t go through any of the refining processes that your typical oils go through. [Many other oils] go through all sorts of different chemical processes to strip the oil of everything. We don’t do that, so it’s a nice clean product. and it hangs on to a nice sunflower seed taste as well. We actually just won a Good Food Award, which is a national blind taste test. And so we just went down to New York City a few weeks ago for that award ceremony. So we’re super excited about that. We have samples and we’ll have the oil available for purchase at the Festival.”

The festival will have some after-hours events as well, Pollock said. There will be a seven-course, sunflower-themed dinner, which is sold out for this year. “But on Friday the 14th, we have a Sips and Sunnies event. The New England Bluegrass Trio is joining us this year, and we partner with a local mobile bar. We serve cocktails, beer and wine, and it goes through the sunset. Your tickets come with a drink ticket, a cut-your-own -flower ticket, as well as a custom-engraved wine glass to take home.”

2026 Sunflower Bloom Festival
When: Aug. 8 through Aug. 16, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day.
Where: Sunfox Farm, Gully Hill Road, Concord, 244-9888, sunfoxfarm.org
More: Admission is $13 per adult; children 10 and under are free. The Sips and Sunnies concert is $35 and is a 21+ event. Visit sunfoxfarm.org/sunflowerfestival.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

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