Category: Food

Get your Märzen and festbier

Local breweries hold Oktoberfest celebrations

By John Fladd

jfladd@hippopress.com

According to Carla Reardon, the Event Manager for the Anheuser-Busch Brewery in Merrimack, the Oktoberfest event taking place at the brewery this weekend is the recontinuation of a time-honored tradition.

“The last time that we held Oktoberfest here at the Brewery was in 2018,” Reardon said, “and we decided to bring it back. It’s a three-day event and we’re going to have a variety of live music performances, games, German beer, and vendors, and it’s going to take place at our newly developed event space down at the stables.” She explained that the Stables used to be actual stables to house visiting Clydesdale horses, “but we have repurposed the space.”

One of the highlights of the event will be the German beer. Most Americans think of Anheuser-Bush as a quintessentially American company, but it’s actually a worldwide corporation, including breweries in Germany, making German beer, like the three types being served at the Merrimack event.

“We’ll have our Spaten lager,” Reardon said, referring to a mild, Munich-style lager. “We will have our Spaten Oktoberfest [a darker Märzen style of beer], and also our Franziskaner [a German Hefeweizen, a copper-colored wheat beer].”

There will also be food vendors on site, as well as food trucks, live music, and local artists and craftspeople from all across New England, Reardon said.

More Oktoberfests

Several area breweries are holding Oktoberfest celebrations in the next few weeks. Know of any not mentioned here? Let us know at jfladd@hippopress.com.

• Candia Road Brewing Co. (840 Candia Road, Manchester, 935-8123, candiaroadbrewingco.com) will host Füt Fest on Saturday, Sept. 27, from 1 to 8 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 28, from 1 to 5 p.m., to celebrate the release of its seasonal Märzen beer. The weekend will feature a special menu and line up of bands on both days

• There will be an Oktoberfest Party at Concord Craft Brewing (117 Storrs St., Concord, 856-7625, concordcraftbrewing.com) Saturday, Sept. 27, from noon to 9 p.m. Celebrate Oktoberfest with German food specials, special glass steins, give-aways and house-brewed kolsch and festbier. Visit facebook.com/ConcordCraftBrewing.

• To Share Brewing (720 Union St., Manchester, 836-6947, tosharebrewing.com) will hold its seventh annual Oktoberfest on Saturday, Sept. 27, from 1 to 8 p.m. to celebrate the release of its Oktoberfest Altbier. The day will feature drink specials, beer bratwurst, oompah music, stein holding contests and more; lederhosen and dirndls are encouraged. Visit facebook.com/tosharebrewing.

• Oktoberfest 2025 will take place at the Spyglass Brewing Co. (306 Innovative Way, Nashua, 546-2965, spyglassbrewing.com) Saturday, Sept. 27, from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. There will be live music, food specials, yard games, Das Boots for drinking and buying, and more. Visit facebook.com/spyglassbrewing.

• Henniker Brewing Co. (129 Centervale Road, Henniker, 428-3579, hennikerbrewing.com) will hold its Oktoberfest Friday, Oct. 3, through Monday, Oct. 6, with Oktoberfest competitions, food vendors, the taping of the Oktoberfest Marzen Cask (Saturday at 1 p.m), live music each day and more, according to hennikerbrewing.com, where you can find the schedule of the weekend’s events

• 603 Brewery in Londonderry will hold a Fall Fest on Saturday, Oct. 4, noon to 8 p.m. featuring food trucks, live music and a DJ, local artisans, a stein holding contest, kitchen specials and more, according to 603brewery.com.

• Mountain Base Brewery (553 Mast Road, No. 111, Goffstown, 935-7132, mountainbasebrewery.com) will host the Fourth Annual Mount Uncanoonuc Brewfest on Saturday, Oct. 11, from 1 to 5 p.m. There will be brewery reps and food vendors in attendance, as well as live music and more. Visit facebook.com/mountainbasebrewery.

• Sunstone Brewing Co. (298 Rockingham Road, Londonderry, 216-1808, sunstonebrewing.com) will host Oktoberfest – A Renaissance Faire Celebration and Oktoberfest Beer Release on Saturday, Oct. 11, and Sunday, Oct. 12., from 1 to 9 p.m. Expect crafts, vendors, competitions and more.

Oktoberfest at the Biergarten

Where: The Biergarten at Anheuser-Busch in Merrimack
When: Friday, Sept. 26, from 6 to 10 p.m.; Saturday, Sept. 27, from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday, Sept. 28, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (The celebration is 21+ on Friday and Saturday from 4 to 10 p.m.)
More: The event will feature German beer, food trucks, live music and more — lederhosen welcome, according to a post on The Biergarten’s Facebook page, where you can find a link for tickets (also via budweisertours.com/mmktours).

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 25/09/25

News from the local food scene

By John Fladd

jfladd@hippopress.com

• Closing: Mike’s Italian Kitchen (212 Main St., Nashua, 595-9334, mikesitaliannh.com) has announced that its last day of business will be Saturday, Oct. 4. In a message on the restaurant’s website, a statement read in part, “We have made the difficult choice to close our doors, while we focus on expanding our Buckley’s Market Cafe concept in downtown Portsmouth. Then, we will take the appropriate time to decide whether to reconceptualize or find an operator to fill our Main Street space in the future.” Mike’s Italian Kitchen is part of the Michael Timothy’s Dining Group, which has locations in Nashua, Merrimack, Portsmouth, Hollis and Woburn, Mass, according to mtdininggroup.com.

• Grazing: Wine on Main (9 N. Main St., Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com) will host a DIY Graze Box and Wine Pairing workshop Tuesday, Sept. 30, from 6 to 8 p.m. Learn techniques to build your very own “Grazing Box” using fresh ingredients while enjoying a wine tasting. The cost is $71.61 per person through eventbrite.com. There will be a second session of this workshop the following evening, Wednesday, Oct. 1.

• Building good layers: There will be a hands-on class to learn lasagna-making at Tuscan Market (Tuscan Village, 9 Via Toscana, Salem, 912-5467, tuscanbrands.com) Thursday, Sept. 25, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. This workshop will guide you through making a creamy spinach lasagna, layering noodles, a rich béchamel-like sauce, and a flavorful spinach and cheese filling. Tickets are $69.89 through eventbrite.com.

• Harvest happening: Pumpkin Blossom Farm (393 Pumpkin Hill Road, Warner, 456-2443, pumpkinblossomfarm.com) invites you to close out the lavender season with a Harvest Celebration on Saturday, Sept. 27, and Sunday, Sept. 28, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Enjoy a weekend of live music, a lavender craft beer and wine tasting, and more. There will be a Lavender Brews and Stews meal of specially curated foods. Reserve your place through the Farm’s website.

Cherry-Sesame Crisp

  • 2-pound bag frozen cherries
  • Zest and juice of one large lemon
  • 1½ Tablespoons brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon rosewater — if you decide you want more next time, go ahead, but proceed with caution
  • 1 Tablespoon cornstarch
  • 1 Tablespoon water
  • 1 cup (120 g) flour
  • 1 cup (99 g) sugar
  • ½ cup (68 g) coarsely chopped pistachios
  • ½ cup (1 stick) butter
  • 1/3 cup (44 g) sesame seeds
  • 1¼ teaspoons kosher or coarse sea salt
  • 1/3 cup (80 g.) tahini (sesame paste)

Preheat your oven to 375°F.

In a large bowl, combine the cherries, lemon juice and zest, brown sugar, and rose water. Set aside.

Speaking of “aside,” an aside on rosewater: It would be a jaded and heartless person who didn’t like the smell of roses, which makes it a really good background flavor in Indian and Middle Eastern dishes. Rosewater goes well with stone fruit like plums or peaches, and with Middle Eastern ingredients like sesame or pistachios. Here, we’ve paired it with cherries. Be careful though — if you don’t put enough of it in a recipe, you won’t be able to taste it. Add one drop too many, and you’ll be hit with the essence of grandmother soap. Thread the needle,

Back to business: in another bowl, combine the flour, sugar, pistachios, sesame seeds, salt, and butter. Work the mixture with your fingers or a pastry cutter until it breaks up into something that looks like granola. Add the tahini, and stir everything to combine until it looks like extra-clumpy granola.

In a small bowl or ramekin, mix the cornstarch and water into a smooth slurry. This is like a paste, but runnier. Add it to the cherry mixture, and stir everything to combine. As the cherries bake, the cornstarch will help thicken the juice, so that everything will pull together when the crumble is finished.

Pour the cherry mixture into an 8”x8” baking pan, then cover the surface with the sesame crumble topping. Lumps are not only OK but encouraged.

Put the pan on a baking sheet for when (not if) some of the cherry filling flings itself out of the pan to an uncaring world during the baking process. Bake on the center rack of your oven for about an hour, until the topping looks golden brown.

Let the crumble cool, then eat with ice cream.

This is one of those desserts with a different combination of flavors and textures in each bite. The jammy cherries are tart and sweet, with a hint of roses. The crumble topping is rich with butter and sesame, with a whisper of bitterness that off-sets the sweetness. Each bite has a different fruit-to-crumble ratio.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

In the kitchen with Danielle Calkins

Danielle Calkins, co-owner of Pat’s Apple Crisp and Cider Donuts (patsapplecrisp.com), grew up in her family’s business, selling apple crisp at fairs around New Hampshire.

“My dad and my mother started this business back in 1984,” she said. We’ve been in business over 40 years. The cider doughnuts have been part of the operation for about 18 years out of those 40. My father passed away in 2010, and my brother and I took over the business. We decided to expand into a food truck mobile business, in addition to working the Hopkinton and Deerfield fairs. There aren’t a lot of cider doughnut enterprises out there that are mobile and can go on the road like we do. We do a lot of employee-recognition events for companies, and customer appreciation events. We do a lot of weddings in the fall. There are pictures of me as a toddler at the Deerfield Fair outside of our original building. At 5 years old I was asking people for tips at the window and it’s really like it’s created a work ethic for me. It definitely carried me through and just being a successful career person for much of my adult life.”

What is the most important piece of equipment you take on the road with you?

Absolutely, our doughnut machine. There’s no way we could make doughnuts on site without it.

What would you have for your last meal?

Honestly, probably my Aunt Cheryl’s macaroni and cheese with tomatoes. Everything is from scratch. It’s the ultimate comfort food. As a child, at the Fair, if it was a cold night and you had that, it was just the best! And, of course, I’d follow it up with an apple crisp.

What restaurants do you like to eat at?

The restaurant scene in Manchester is so good! Firefly Bistro and Bar is my husband’s and my favorite date night spot. I usually get the seared scallops. They usually have a special one but then they have the regular menu one. It’s the regular menu one that I love, with the roasted garlic sauce and the wilted spinach.

Between your apple crisp and the cider doughnuts, which is your favorite?

Honestly, the apple crisp. The doughnuts are more popular, but the apple crisp has the Hershey’s French Vanilla Ice Cream, and when it melts a little bit into the crisp, there’s nothing like it.

What kind of apples do you use in your apple crisp?

McIntosh. We get all our apples from Meadow Ledge Orchard [in Loudon]. … I just think that everything aligns perfectly for Deerfield Fair Weekend. The apples are at their peak, just before October hits. And they have that extra little bit of tart, but still sweet. If it’s about 50 degrees out, everything is perfect, apple crisp-wise.

Skin-on or skin-off?

Skin-off.

Thank you.

You’re welcome.

Have you seen any new food trends in fair food?

Fair food is very traditional stuff. Honestly, it has surprised me that there hasn’t been more innovative cooking going on at the fairs because there is such a space for that with food trucks. There are many, many fried doughs, french fries, ice cream, blooming onions — a lot of those foods have seen their heyday and it surprises me that there isn’t more creative culinary coming out of the food trucks at the fairs.

What is your favorite thing to cook at home?

I make a really good chimichurri. I use a lot of fresh herbs. So parsley, cilantro, fresno peppers, red wine vinegar, olive oil, lots of lime juice, salt, pepper, garlic. And then I usually put it over grilled chicken with limes and avocado on the side with some cilantro lime rice. You just let that sit for like five or six hours, and it’s perfect. That resting is key; it makes it blossom.

Pat’s
Pat’s Apple Crisp and Cider Donuts will be at the Deerfield Fair Sept. 25 through Sept. 28. Visit patsapplecrisp.com.

Featured Image: Danielle Calkins. Courtesy photo.

French fry alley

New Manch spot brings diner food and walk-up fries

Cat Alley, just off Elm Street in downtown Manchester, is one of the city’s most fascinating landmarks. Its north wall is covered with multi-colored cat-themed murals created by dozens of area artists. Now the south wall has an attraction of its own: a walk-up french fry window.

The StatesMan City Diner is the newest addition to Manchester’s downtown restaurant scene. Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it serves traditional diner dishes, as well as seafood and cocktails. And, of course, french fries.

Diner owner Dionysus Lemos clarified that while the StatesMan is open all the time, the french fry window does close briefly each day.

“Our typical days will run from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.,” he said. “The hours are limited, but not by much.”

According to Lemos, the StatesMan honors diner tradition with a full breakfast menu but has expanded the menu to include a wide variety of other types of food.

“We call the concept ‘Citizens For Good Taste,’” he said. “We have shareable [dishes], we have items on ice, which includes our mimosa bar. We have a pastry section. We have a smoothie section, a barista section, and our cocktails. Additionally, on the brunch side of things, we have organic burgers, steaks, tacos and signature sandwiches. We have a section called the Greek Corner, and we’ll have some Greek items — spanakopita, pastitsio, dolmades — some nice offerings.”

Lemos said that he and his head chef, Alex Medina, put a lot of attention to an area that many diners typically overlook: salads and seafood.

“We have salads,” he said, “very unique, upscale salads. We have Cobb salads, we have seafood salads, with a little touch of scallops and shrimp. Everything’s fresh, everything comes out of Maine. Nothing’s frozen. We have lobster on the menu. We have a special combination of lobster — one and a quarter pounds and one and three quarter pounds with a sirloin steak. We have straight lobster. We’ve got a combination of lobster and steamers and corn on the cob, in addition to the whole and cross-sectioned [lobsters].”

The StatesMan’s menu is centered around a philosophy of high quality and modest prices, Lemos said.

“I’ve been in the restaurant business throughout the years, and for me it’s all about community, quality and affordability. And those three components have never failed me in my approach to doing business. We’re going to focus on the quality of the food, and we’re making sure that everything hinges on affordability. Everything is predicated on having an open door concept here where everybody can find something that they like and a portion that they find reasonable. Our menu is based on Junior StatesMan and StatesMan — every item, so [a customer] can have a touch of anything at a smaller portion, and a reasonable price.”

He used pasta as an example.

“We have a section called Pastabilities,” he said. “We have two offerings of linguine, spaghetti, ravioli, tortellini. So if you order ravioli, you can have a lobster ravioli or a cheese ravioli, with two offerings per category.”

“We’re keeping things affordable,” Lemos said. “We’re trying to create and maintain the integrity of an affordable environment. After all, we have ‘Diner’ in our name.”

StatesMan City Diner
Where: 836 Elm St., Manchester, 932-2751
Hours: Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The walk-up french fry window in Cat Alley is open from 11 a.m. each day, until 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and until 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday.

Featured photo: The french fry window. Photo by John Fladd.

Stories and scotch

Get the flavor of the Highland Games

One of the highlights of this year’s Highland Games will be an attempt to set a new world record for the most bagpipers playing in one venue, which is exciting and splashy, but according to Joshua Auger, one of the Scottish festival’s organizers, some of the really exciting events will involve tasting a range of beers, ales and whiskeys throughout the weekend in venues in and around the Loon Mountain Resort in Lincoln.

The Games, he said, give area breweries an opportunity to express their Scottish side and earn bragging rights.

“We work with eight New Hampshire breweries,” he said. “And we partner with them and ask them to develop a scotch ale that they would like to represent the New Hampshire Highlands. Then we invite patrons of the games to come in and sample all eight of the scotch ales. These are typically smoky, darker ales, brown ales. We invite these people in and they vote for which one that they think is the best. At the end of the weekend, that is our official Scotch Ale for that year.”

Another event will pair Scottish beer and ales with food.

“We host a Brews and Bites event in partnership with the Woodstock Inn Brewery,” Auger said. “It’s for people that are less inclined to go to a concert, who want to just sit down and have a nice evening. We serve four different beers from the Woodstock Station paired with four of their foods. And each one is designed to complement the beer that it’s associated with.” Each course, he said, will be a traditional Scottish dish or inspired by Scottish ingredients.

Auger said there will be whiskey-centered activities for a range of scotch enthusiasts, even the most serious.

“At the mountain itself,” he said, “we actually have scotch tastings where we bring in experts from Laphroaig [a well-respected Scottish distiller]. They will come in and teach our attendees [about] different scotches as part of a seminar. So you’ll go into a classroom and learn how to smell it, how to add a few drops of water to your scotch to open up the flavors, how to correctly drink it, what foods it pairs well with, the differences in the casks that they age it in. They’ll go through all of that. So you can actually take master classes at our games with whiskey experts who are willing to sit down and talk to you about how to drink scotch appropriately, how to drink it correctly, and how to appreciate it. It’s an educational thing. It’s a rare opportunity for a lot of people that would like to learn about something like this. There aren’t a lot of places you can go to actually take a class to appreciate this. For wine you can go to vineyards. We’ve got a few here in the state. But scotch, no.”

Other whiskey events will be less serious. “We’ve also got Spirits on the Mountain,” Auger said. “We hire a professional Scottish storyteller to come over and tell stories, ghost stories on the mountain by a bonfire. And then we pair each story with a scotch from the region of that story. And I just think that’s one of the coolest little things that people don’t know about. It’s just a really neat thing that we do.”

Other spirit-themed events will include a Whisky & Spirits Tasting tent, where Games attendees can sample and compare a variety of scotch whiskies, and mixology classes, where they can learn to build cocktails around scotch.

Ultimately, Auger said, each event at the Highland Games is presented in the hope that attendees will discover a little bit of Scotland in themselves.

“The Highland Games,” he said, “while they’re Scottish, they’re not exclusively Scottish. We’re a New Hampshire event. We’ve been here for 50 years. We don’t care what ethnicity you are or where you come from. It doesn’t matter. As an example, we’ve got some Native Americans who come to the games. We’ve got a chief from Maine, the Mi’kmaq chief; supposedly [a Scot named] Henry Sinclair married into their tribe in [the 1300s].”

50th Annual NH Highland Games & Festival
When: Friday, Sept. 19, through Sunday, Sept. 21,
Where: Loon Mountain Resort, 60 Loon Mountain Road, Lincoln, 745-8111, loonmtn.com
More: nhscot.org

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

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