Category: Food

Viking vibes at Sunstone Brewing

New brewery keeps it simple

By John Fladd

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The first thing Brian Link and his business partner Cam Carter want you to know is that their new Viking-themed brewpub is centered around medieval Scandinavian warriors, not the Minnesota football team.

“Yeah, we’re Patriots fans!” Link stated, emphatically.

Along with their friend and manager Jessica Cotto, Link and Carter opened Sunstone Brewing Co. in Londonderry just over two months ago, in the former Long Blue Cat location. This is their first time running their own place.

“Brian and I had worked at a brewery together for the last four or five years and hit it off really well,” Carter said. “And we started thinking up this idea of opening our own place and working for ourselves. All three of us are big Viking fans; we love all the Nordic things. We just wanted to create a space that was very original and fantastical and just build a community that people can come into and feel warm and inviting.” The name Sunstone is meant to reflect that quality. In the Middle Ages, Vikings and other Nordic people used faceted crystals called sun stones to locate the sun in an otherwise cloudy sky. These might have been used in navigation, and gave comfort to them in dark and cloudy times.

Following a “less is more” philosophy, owners and brewers Link and Carter made the decision not to overextend themselves at the beginning of their business and have concentrated on brewing and serving a small number of craft beers.

“This is our first business, our first brewery, so we just wanted to take it step by step — ‘keep it simple stupid,’” Link explained. “We took an approach where we have only eight draft lines, so we’re trying to create as much diversity as we can with only eight. So what we’ve done is we have four real set styles. There’s our Sunstone Golden Ale. It’s a lighter beer that really tastes like a beer. It’s got a little bit of graininess to it. It has a very light hop character, so that way it’s easy drinking.”

Some of Sunstone’s other beers have even more Viking-ish names.

“Our next [beer] we have is our God Slayer,” Link continued. “That one’s a New England-style IPA [India Pale Ale]. It’s got some nice mango and peach flavor coming off the hops, a little bit of citrus. It’s a good big eight and a half percent beer [8.5 percent Alcohol By Volume or ABV]. And then the next one is our Light Your Torches; that one’s an espresso porter. It’s got a little bit of coffee in it, so it’s got a lot of robust coffee flavor, some roasted characteristics to it. Basically, we saw how popular espresso martinis are these days…. And we’ve got our Keep It Low-Key [Get it?], which is a New England-style session IPA, so [an ABV of] 4.5 percent. It’s big on citrus. It’s meant to be for someone who wants an IPA, still wants that hazy and that hop flavor, but you’re not drinking an 8 percent, you’re drinking 4.5 percent. So you can actually have a few and enjoy them without being hammered.”

The team has taken the same approach to Sunstone’s food, building a small initial menu of dishes that can be prepared in a very small kitchen.

“When you look at our food menu, it’s kind of the same thing,” Carter said. “We try to keep it simple, but really good stuff for people when they’re hungry.” The menu focuses on pub-style appetizers, like nachos and hummus and pretzel bites and then sliders, wraps, and mac and cheese. “The Mac & Beer Cheese is a favorite,” he said.

Sunstone is planning a slate of events to appeal to their already growing customer base. For example, “for Valentine’s Day,” manager Jessica Crotto said, “We’re partnering with Van Otis Chocolates in Manchester to serve a flight of four beers paired with chocolates. We haven’t nailed in the name yet, but I think we want to call it a ‘Chocolate Flight Delight.’ And then we have a full stage … so we’re looking to do live music, comedy shows, I mean I’ve thrown out the idea for magicians, illusionists, everything you could think of. I mean I think it’d be really fun to do.”

Sunstone Brewing Co.

Where: 298 Rockingham Road, Londonderry, 216-1808
Hours: Wednesday from 4 to 9 p.m.,Thursday through Saturday, from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.
More: sunstonebrewing.com
Food and growlers of beer can be ordered for takeout. Veterans, active duty military, first responders and teachers get a 10 percent discount.

Featured Photo: Photo by John Fladd.

The Weekly Dish 25/01/30

A beer release party: On Sunday, Feb. 3, the Candia Road Brewing Co. (840 Candia Road, Manchester, 935-8123, candiaroadbrewingco.com) will hold a release party for a new beer it has developed in collaboration with the band BIGFÜT, “little bigfüt.” Candia Road describes the new beer as a “nice and classy Thai Basil x Lemongrass saison.” The bands Time Eater and BIGFÜT will play from 3 to 5 p.m.

• Chef’s Table dinners in February: The Chef’s Table Dinner Series of monthly dinner events at Flag Hill Winery (297 N. River Road, Lee, 659-2949, flaghill.com) continues with February’s dinners of mushroom Wellington, lamb chops, crispy pork belly, and mango-lime cheesecake. The dinners have community seating for six to 10 people per table. Dinner reservations are $75 per person, through eventbrite.com, which includes the four-course dinner, wine/spirit/cocktail pairings with each course, tax and hospitality.

• Cheers and happy birthday: Tickets are on sale now for Unwined Wine Bar’s (1 Nashua St., Milford, 213-6703, unwinednh.com) Birthday Dinner, to celebrate its first anniversary on Thursday, Feb. 13, beginning at 6:30 p.m. There will be a wine dinner featuring five courses, curated by Executive Chef Matthew Berry and Claudio Andreani of Santa Margherita wines. Tickets are $150 each, through Eventbrite.com.

• Farmer’s Dinner tickets: Tickets for 2025 dinners by The Farmers Dinner (farmersdinner.com) are on sale now. For the 13th year, Chef Keith Sarasin and his team will work with local farms and producers to bring the freshest farm-to-table fine dining to life. Tickets sell out quickly. Visit thefarmersdinner.com/events-1.

• Organic farming knowledge and networking: Registration is open for the New England Organic Farming Association’s (84 Silk Farm Road, Concord, 224-5022, NOFA.org) 23rd Annual Winter Conference, which will take place on Saturday, Feb. 8, at Southern New Hampshire University (2500 N. River Road, Manchester, 800-668-1249, snhu.edu).

Zen and the art of Grape-Nuts

By John Fladd

Grape-Nuts and Raisin Pie, from the 1932 General Foods Cookbook

¾ cup (100 g) Grape-Nuts cereal

¾ cup (128 g) golden raisins, chopped

¾ cup (160 g) brown sugar

2¼ cup (510 g) hot water

¼ cup (57 g) apple cider vinegar

3 Tablespoons butter

Dough for a two-crust pie (see below)

Combine the Grape-Nuts, raisins, brown sugar, water, vinegar and butter in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. As you do this, the mixture will seem far too soupy and thin to ever be a self-respecting pie filling.

The thing is, the raisins and Grape-Nuts, deep in their hearts, feel a little self-conscious. The raisins remember their grapey background and realize intellectually that they could take back all the liquid they gave up in their youth, but they feel hesitant to relax completely and suck up all this fluid. The Grape-Nuts are ever so dry and know that they too have the theoretical ability to suck up all this fluid but are bashful about it at first.

So here is what you as the Pie Facilitator will do: Take the soupy, syrupy mixture off the heat and set it somewhere to cool completely. This might take an hour or more. Because it will take a while to cool, the Grape-Nuts and the raisins will have time to relax in this syrupy hot tub and really hydrate deeply.

After the mixture has cooled for an hour or so, preheat the oven to 425°F and prepare the pie crust.

There is of course absolutely nothing wrong with using a store-bought pre-made crust. If, on the other hand, you feel up to making it, an all-butter crust will add to the flavor of the finished pie. Perfecting your own personal crust-making technique can be a long and spiritual endeavor that deserves its own discussion, but here’s one tip that has helped me greatly: freeze the butter, then grate it into the flour, to help bump up the crust’s flakiness.

At this point your pie filling might be cool. If so, pour it into the bottom pie crust, then weave the strips of dough into a lattice top. This is way easier than it looks. If you don’t know how to do it, look it up online. It’s one of those tricks that everyone wants to show off as soon as they’ve learned it, so there are a million how-to videos that will show you what to do.

Bake the pie at 425°F for 10 to 12 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350°F and bake it for another 35 minutes or so, then remove it from the oven and allow it to cool completely before serving it.

You’d think that without an egg or some other binder the filling would be too loose, hydration hot tub or no, but it sets up really well. The flavor is gently fruity; the shot of vinegar has rounded out the dried fruit sweetness and given it the very subtlest tang. The interesting thing here, though, is the apparent absence of the Grape-Nuts. It seems that upon giving itself up to relaxation and hydration, the cereal has become one with the pie. Has the Grape-Nuts spread its essence, or more specifically its protein filaments, throughout the filling, pulling it together texturally? It’s a good bet.

Regardless, the Grape-Nuts, formerly the gravel of the cereal world, has, against all odds, achieved a Buddhist ideal, releasing its identity to become with the Universe. Or in this case a pie filling., then strain the syrup. This will last for a week or two in your refrigerator.

Featured Image: Grape-Nuts and Raisin Pie. Photo by John Fladd.

Chicken and waffles on South Willow

The Halal Spot loads up on flavor

By John Fladd

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The Halal Spot in Manchester serves chicken and burgers, but with a twist. As its name suggests, the Halal Spot’s food is all halal; it meets stringent dietary guidelines.

The term “halal” refers to a set of dietary guidelines followed by Muslims, similar in many ways to Jewish kosher rules.

“Halal is the only meat that a Muslim person can eat,” owner Sip Woodod said. “The rules are that the animal must be raised in peace — not antagonized, not abused — in a safe environment and then put to sleep in a peaceful manner. This is a cultural tradition we’ve kept [as a family]. So we’re like, ‘If we’re eating it ourselves, it doesn’t matter where we are. This is the food we want to serve to the community’. And that’s been working for us.”

The menu focuses on a moderate number of items — a range of burgers and chicken sandwiches, with a few twists — chicken and waffles, for instance, and “Nashville Hot” chicken sandwiches. One menu item is the Loaded Fries, a potato-based take on nachos. French fries are topped with extra crispy chicken tenders, nacho cheese and shredded cheese, topped with a house sauce and a sprinkling of spices.

“I don’t think new customers understand how loaded these really are,” Woodod said. “One bowl is enough to fill up a couple of people. It’s just something that grew up in our family’s restaurant kitchen over 11 years, just experimenting.”

Sip, his brother Kareem, and their sister Hannah grew up in restaurants. The Woodods started out in New York City — Queens, specifically — but moved to New Hampshire in 2012, where their father, Rajim, opened USA Chicken and Biscuit in downtown Manchester. As the years passed the family eventually opened three chicken restaurants. The Halal Spot is an opportunity for the second generation of Woodods to establish a food legacy of their own and to demystify halal food for their customers.

“Our goal is to keep a simple menu and create a beautiful brand that gives back to the community,” Woodod said. “We want to create a brand that we can potentially franchise and open in different neighborhoods and give that cultural feel of halal food.”

The concept of The Halal Spot and its name are based on the idea of comfort food and the street carts his family ate from in Queens, Woodod said.

“In New York when you think about halal food most people think of chicken or beef with rice and a white sauce on top. When we would want to eat that food, we wouldn’t say, ‘Let’s go eat halal food.’ We would say, ‘let’s go to The Spot.’ When we came here [to New Hampshire], we just stuck with it. That’s where we got our menu and what inspired the name.”

That same love of Halal food carts has guided the Halal Spot’s menu development.

“We loved rice bowls you would get at the carts,” Woodod said, “and we’re going to continue to make it that way. When we add something to the menu or even when we’re tweaking something, we sit as a family. Everyone eats it, and we decide. … Everything that we’ve added so far has been a majority rule vote, from how the rice was made, to which add-ons were put on, to what sauce we use.”

“Our goal is to grow with the community,” he said. ”Because the more the community grows, the more our business grows. That’s something that our entire family believes in and it’s something that we continue to stand on.”

The Halal Spot

1875 S. Willow St., Manchester, 606-8796
Hours: Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and until 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

Style and substance at Fire & Ice

Chili Cook-Off offers demonstrations of creativity

By John Fladd

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For the past nine years the Amherst Lions Club has raised money for its community-based projects with a Fire and Ice Chili Cook-Off. Joan Ferguson is one of its coordinators.

“This is our ninth annual chili event,” she said, “and the idea has been to provide a community event in the middle of winter when everybody is asking when spring will come. There’s the chili, which is the fire, and the ice is making your own ice cream sundae.”

Ferguson said the cook-off has become something of an Amherst institution.

“We think we have it down in terms of planning, at this point,” she said, “but, you know, there’s always something we can do better. For example, during Covid we did something radically different. We videotaped competitors going before judges and making their presentation. And then we filled the recipes online. And that year we were able to get really prestigious judges because the restaurants weren’t open.”

The 2025 Fire & Ice event will take place Friday, Feb. 7, in the Souhegan High School Cafeteria. Competitors submit crockpots of their chili to be judged. Judges will circulate around the room, to each table, and judge the submissions on taste, smell, heat, creativity and presentation. Attendees will pay to sample and eat the different chilis.

Amherst Chief of Police Anthony Ciamoli will be one of this year’s judges. He said he loves chili but really looks forward to judging entrants’ creativity and patience.

“Being a layman, I was really excited [last year] to see some of the work that people put into their presentation and different kinds of chili,” he said. “Some were sweet, some were hot, and some of the people truly prepared their little stations. They had turned their areas into small vignettes. One was a dinosaur scene. It was really cool. They take a lot of pride in it. That’s a reason to make sure that we take each [submission] seriously.”

Dan DeCourcey, owner of the Up in Your Grill Food Truck (493-3191, upinyourgrill.com), is another chili judge. He thinks first impressions are important.

“You’re always going to start off with how it looks,” he said, “so the presentation, right? Then you’re looking at the product itself. In a contest like this one, the presentation is important. When you walk up [to a station] there could be a little story written on the side or, you know, they have garnishes out or, you know, different things and you’re kind of getting the first impression. If there’s a really interesting story, like … I don’t know, it’s great-grandma’s secret recipe from, you know, Mississippi that is now a family guarded secret and sought after by everyone. It just adds to the fun.”

Joan Ferguson said the chili submissions themselves have been extremely creative in past years. “We’ve had venison entries,” she said. “We’ve had beef, we’ve had chicken, and of course we’ve had vegetarian. We have very hot chili recipes and we have pleasant chili recipes. One [chili] will take the top of your head off and will be one that everybody finds savory. Don’t ask me what people prefer because the pots usually go home empty.”

Chief Ciamoli agreed. “Everyone has had different bases,” he remembered. “There was one table that I remember last year that actually had a vegetarian chili. Then there was your standard ground beef and some that had brisket. So it’s really neat to be able to try all the different styles. Some have some fruit in it to soften things. There’s work that goes into it.”

Ciamoli has a double involvement in this year’s cookoff. In addition to judging, the Amherst Police Department will be submitting a chili (which he will not be allowed to judge). He said his officers feel surprisingly motivated. “I was shocked because when I brought it up with them I said, ‘I think we should do something brisket-based,’ and then all of a sudden one of our officers I never hear from is like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold the phones! I want in, man!’”

Amherst Lions Club 2025 Fire and Ice Chili Cookoff

When: Friday, Feb.7, from 5 to 7 p.m.
Where: Souhegan High School Cafeteria, 412 Boston Post Road, Amherst.
Tickets: To purchase tickets, contact any Amherst Lion or purchase online. Tickets are $12 for adults, $6 for students ages 7-12, free for children ages 6 and under, $40 for a family of four or more.
There is no fee to enter a chili. Competitors must register by Feb. 4.
Visit the Amherst Lions Club website at e-clubhouse.org/sites/amherstnh.

The Weekly Dish 25/01/23

• Just opened: Evviva Trattoria Bedford, a Massachusetts-based chain restaurant featuring locally sourced, modern Italian cuisine served in a family-style atmosphere with a full bar serving beer, wine and specialty cocktails, has opened a site in Bedford at 5 Colby Court (471-3205, evvivatrattoria.com). It opens at 11:30 a.m. seven days a week and closes at 8 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday and at 9 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, according to the website. Evviva also has a location in Rochester, N.H.

• Wine expo: The 19th Annual Winter Wine Spectacular will take place at the Doubletree Expo Center (700 Elm St., Manchester, 625-1000) on Thursday, Jan. 23, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. This event is the culmination of New Hampshire Winter Wine Week and will feature more than 1,700 wines, 25 restaurants and winemakers and distributors. Tickets are still available for $75 at eventbrite.com.

• Highly anticipated chicken fingers: After many weeks of anticipation, fried chicken fingers restaurant Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers will open for business on Tuesday, Jan. 28, in the former Cactus Jack’s location (782 S. Willow St., Manchester, 263-3787, raisingcanes.com). This is the chain’s first location in New Hampshire.

• Possibly the best pairing: Wine on Main (9 N. Main St., Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com) will host a cupcake and wine pairing event, Thursday, Jan. 30, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Participants will taste four mini-cupcakes from Savvy Sweets and Treats (Bow, 387-0241, savvysweetsandtreats.com) paired with four specially chosen wines. Tickets are $35 and available through eventbrite.com. Because this event has proven to be popular in the past, a second date has been added, Wednesday, Jan. 29, also from 6:30 to 8 p.m.

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