In the kitchen with Celine Costa

Celine Costa of Newton is the owner and head chef of Up Street Food Truck (upstreetfoodtruck.wixsite.com/upstreet, upstreetfoodtruck@gmail.com, and on Facebook and Instagram), which she runs with her partner, Scott Magnusson. Up Street gets its name from its “upscale street food” concept, offering a rotating menu of options like fish tacos, sandwiches, hand-breaded chicken tenders, Thai curry fries or tater tots, fried pickles and more. Since launching the 32- by 10-foot trailer last year, Costa and Magnusson have parked at several spots all over New Hampshire, including Lithermans Limited Brewery in Concord and North Country Hard Cider in Rollinsford, and have participated in local events. Up Street is also available to book for corporate events, weddings and private parties and gatherings.

What is your must-have kitchen item?

Herbs are such a big part of our cooking, whether they’re in the dish or as a garnish. I like pairing herbs with different things that you wouldn’t think would necessarily go together.

What would you have for your last meal?

I would definitely do malai kofta from Gypsy Cafe in Lincoln. It’s a north Indian potato dish with vegetables, rolled into little balls in a tomato cream sauce, and they serve it with basmati rice. It’s so delicious.

What is your favorite local restaurant?

Cafe El Camino in Plaistow. They’re right down the street from us and they’ve been really good friends. … I would say their beef empanadas are probably one of the best things on the menu, but they have a new guava and cheese empanada that is also really good.

What celebrity would you like to see ordering from your food truck?

Conan O’Brien, because he is my favorite. … I had a dream one time that Scott invited him to my birthday party, so now I just have this whole scene in my head of him showing up. … Scott said Adam Sandler would be pretty cool, too.

What is your favorite thing on your menu?

We recently did a sandwich that we called One Hot Honey. It’s a hot honey fried chicken sandwich with a chile-infused hot honey and a spring mix. That’s probably my No. 1.

What is the biggest food trend in New Hampshire right now?

One thing that definitely comes to mind is charcuterie boards. I feel like everybody is doing their own version of their charcuterie board, or something to do with charcuterie. … There’s also an emphasis on buying local. I feel like I see that growing more and more, especially as we travel around.

What is your favorite thing to cook at home?

I would say my grandmother’s cranberry chicken recipe. It just brings back good childhood memories and it’s wicked easy to make.

Beama’s cranberry chicken
From the kitchen of Celine Costa of Up Street Food Truck

8 chicken breasts (totaling 4 pounds)
1 16-ounce can whole-berry cranberry sauce
1 8-ounce bottle Catalina dressing
1 package onion soup mix

Place chicken breasts in a greased baking dish. Preheat the oven to 355 degrees. Combine all other ingredients in a pot and simmer on low heat, stirring until ingredients have combined well. Pour cranberry mixture over chicken and bake for roughly one hour, or until the chicken reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees. (Suggestion: serve with rice pilaf, grape goat cheese garden salad and cranberry gin and tonic with a sprig of burnt rosemary).

Featured photo: Celine Costa. Courtesy photo.

Hometown comfort

Hare of the Dawg Bar & Grill opens in Derry

For longtime Derry couple Kevin and Lesley Decker, the restaurant business is a new venture, but their vision was simple: a local bar and grill with comfort foods, craft beers and cocktails, where the atmosphere is laid back and everybody knows each other’s names, à la Cheers.

Hare of the Dawg — or “the Dawg,” if you prefer, as Kevin Decker said some are already calling it — opened Jan. 9 in downtown Derry. The Deckers took over the space last year that had long been occupied by the C & K Restaurant and quickly began renovations, which include a 24-seat custom bar built from the ground up by local woodworker Matt Daily of Dailydoes.

The eatery’s name, Kevin Decker said, is a play on the “hair of the dog that bit you,” an old expression commonly heard in bars. The logo features a big black Newfoundland dressed in flannel garb, holding a beer-filled stein with a rabbit (or a “hare”) poking its head out of the top.

“Hair of the dog just means having another drink the day after to cure a hangover, so in other words, having some of the ‘hair of the dog that bit you’ the night before,” Decker said. “We just thought it was a cool name, and we loved the play on words, so we had a lot of fun designing the logo. … The flannel shirt … represents the theme that we wanted, kind of a blue-collar bar. We’re not trying to be a high-end restaurant. We’re trying to be a place where the locals can gather at the end of the work day and have an affordable drink and meal.”

The Deckers recruited Alan Severance, a Manchester native and veteran chef of more than 20 years, to design and oversee the menu. Severance’s culinary resume includes stints at several other local eateries, from The Foundry Restaurant and Moe Joe’s Family Restaurant in Manchester to the former DRAE and CR Sparks restaurants in Derry and Bedford, respectively.

“Kevin and I really wanted a comfort food menu,” Lesley Decker said. “Nothing is pre-made here, so you’re not going to get a frozen spring roll or a frozen mozzarella cheese stick.”

With an opening during the middle of winter, she said warm options like soups, chowders, melts and shepherd’s pie are all part of the menu’s initial lineup of items. But additional colder options, including lighter salads and sandwiches, will likely be part of the menu by the spring or summer.

Appetizers include “Rib off the Hawg” dry-rubbed and slow-roasted St. Louis-style ribs; house-made truffle fries with a shaved Parmesan cheese; and multiple flavors of fried spring rolls, from a Grecian option with spinach, artichoke and feta cheese to a “Rollin Reuben” with slow-cooked corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and a side of Thousand Island dressing for dipping.

There is also a build-your-own pizza option with nearly two dozen toppings to customize your pie with, as well as a few specialty flatbreads. The Arezzo flatbread, for instance, features a house mushroom prosecco cream sauce with sauteed spinach, mushroom, feta and mozzarella, while the “WaHuaGo” has a fig and balsamic glaze, caramelized pear, toasted crushed walnuts, and brie and honey goat cheeses. Burgers, sandwiches, sauteed plates and house entrees like meatloaf, fried haddock and beef tips round out the menu.

Hare of the Dawg’s bar features 12 tap lines of beer, and Kevin Decker said he’s aiming to have at least half of those always rotating out with local craft brew options.

“My hope is to bring in some smaller local brewers and do kind of like a craft brewers night, where we’d keep a tap open for them and people can come and sample their stuff,” he said.

A brunch menu of chef’s plates and a bloody mary bar is in the works to debut in the coming months. Lesley Decker added that a special food menu for dogs will be added once the weather is warm enough for them to open their outdoor patio.

“The doggie menu … will have a sweet potato burger that’s served on a Frisbee with our logo on it,” she said.

Hare of the Dawg Bar & Grill

Where: 3 E. Broadway, Derry
Hours: Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. (closed on Tuesdays)
More info: Find them on Facebook @hareofthedawg (the website, hareofthedawgnh.com, will be live soon and will have an online ordering option) or call 552-3883

Featured photo: Rib off the Hawg (dry-rubbed slow-roasted St. Louis-style ribs). Photo by Matt Ingersoll.

Flavors of the islands

Caribbean Breeze now open in Nashua

A new restaurant in Nashua is a one-stop culinary destination for authentic Caribbean eats, featuring Haitian, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Jamaican and Dominican items all under the same roof.

Jamaican jerk chicken. Photo courtesy of Caribbean Breeze.

Caribbean Breeze, now open in the former Norton’s Classic Cafe space on the corner of Main and West Hollis streets, is owned and operated by Gerald Oriol, a seasoned executive chef with more than three decades of experience. Originally from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Oriol said he came up with the idea for Caribbean Breeze’s concept after noticing a lack of area establishments that offered a variety of menu items from more than one island nation or territory.

“This is a true Caribbean restaurant,” Oriol said. “You can order food from different countries in the Caribbean [and] you have more than one choice if you wanted to try different flavors.”

The eatery’s dinner menu breaks down each item by its origin and gives you the option to choose plated entrees or side dishes from there. For the most part, Oriol said, their differences have to do with traditional cooking styles, spices and seasoning bases, rather than the foods themselves. Griot, for instance, is a Haitian dish featuring pork shoulder marinated in a citrus spice, braised and then fried before it’s served with pikliz, a spicy pickled vegetable slaw. Pernil, on Caribbean Breeze’s Puerto Rican menu, is also pork shoulder, but is slow-cooked and served with arroz con gandules, or a combination of rice and pigeon peas.

Pineapple upside down cake. Photo courtesy of Caribbean Breeze.

Other options include Haitian-style red snapper; Jamaican oxtail, curry or jerk chicken; mofongo, a Puerto Rican dish featuring fried mashed plantains; pollo guisado, or Dominican stewed chicken; scratch-made pineapple upside-down cake as a dessert; and ropa vieja, the national dish of Cuba featuring shredded slow-cooked beef served with black beans and rice.

Because the space had an established loyal following for its breakfast when it was known as Norton’s, Oriol said, he decided to continue it. That menu includes many familiar items the former cafe was known for, from pancakes, French toast and Belgian waffles to egg sandwiches, omelets and more. A lunch menu, served six days a week from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., similarly features many of the same burgers, sandwiches, wraps and salads.

Oriol hopes to add more Caribbean entrees to the menu as time goes on, while the bar in the back of the restaurant will also soon be serving various beers imported from each island. Eventually, he said, he’d like to begin branding Caribbean Breeze as a franchise with additional locations.

Caribbean Breeze

Where: 233 Main St., Nashua
Hours: Daily, 7 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and 4:30 to 9 p.m. (2:30 to 9 p.m. for DoorDash or GrubHub)
Call 883-4340 or find them on DoorDash or GrubHub to place an order.

Featured photo: Haitian red snapper. Photo courtesy of Caribbean Breeze.

The Weekly Dish 22/01/20

News from the local food scene

• Wine Week called off: New Hampshire Wine Week and the Easterseals Winter Wine Spectacular, scheduled to happen next week, have been canceled due to the continuous rise in Covid-19 cases, the state Liquor Commission announced in a Jan. 12 statement. All ticket sales to the week’s events will be refunded and the NHLC said it is “working with all of our partners to minimize the impact of this decision.” The statement says that given the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the future of the pandemic, New Hampshire Wine Week will not be rescheduled in 2022. “We look forward to seeing everyone in January 2023,” the statement reads. Visit nhwineweek.com to read the Liquor Commission’s full announcement.

• Fody’s winter festival to return: Get your tickets now before they’re gone to the second annual winter festival at Fody’s Tavern in Derry (187½ Rockingham Road) — the two-day event is scheduled to take place on Friday, Jan. 28, and Saturday, Jan. 29, beginning at 5 p.m. each day. Co-owner Maria Foden told the Hippo a variety of outdoor festivities are planned, from live local music each evening and an LED light show to vendor booths and pourings from several area breweries, like Great North Aleworks, Long Blue Cat Brewing Co., Rockingham Brewing Co. and others. Multiple ice bars and hot food stations are also expected, including a fire pit with make-your-own s’mores. Tickets are $15 per person (event is 21+ only) — search “Fody’s Tavern Winter Festival” on Eventbrite for more details.

• Brews and bites: Concord Craft Brewing Co. (117 Storrs St., Concord) is now serving food out of its newly expanded tasting room. Concord Craft Kitchen, which opened on Jan. 12, features a light menu of shareable items like honey garlic chicken tapas on naan bread, house-made hummus with pita chips, and spent grain beer pretzels served with a sweet mustard and a house Kapitol Kölsch cheese sauce. Also included are seasoned burgers, salads and smaller items for kids like pizzas and grilled cheeses. According to co-owner Dennis Molnar, the goal is to add stone oven flatbread pizzas to the menu by the brewery’s fifth anniversary celebration on Saturday, Jan. 22. Concord Craft Kitchen’s current hours are Wednesday through Friday, from 4 to 8:30 p.m., and Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., Molnar said — the brewery will remain open on Tuesday and Sunday for beer only. Follow them on Facebook @concordcraftbrewing.

• Uncle Joey’s opens in Merrimack: A new restaurant specializing in New York-style pizzas, pastas, fried chicken options, roast beef sandwiches and family-sized to-go dinners is now open in Merrimack. Uncle Joey’s held its grand opening Jan. 10, according to its website and social media pages — the eatery is at 733 Daniel Webster Hwy., the former spot of Spartan Pizza, which closed last fall. Uncle Joey’s is open Sunday through Thursday, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Friday and Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. According to its website, an online ordering platform is coming soon. Visit unclejoeysnh.com, find them on Facebook and Instagram or call 424-5693 to place an order.

On The Job – Barry D’Andrea

Barry D’Andrea

Shoe store owner

Barry D’Andrea is the owner and operator of The Shoe Box, a family shoe store in Amherst.

Explain your job.

I pretty much do everything from buying products, hiring employees, selling, scheduling, marketing and advertising, maintaining the store website and email list and physical upkeep and maintenance of the building and property.

How long have you had this job? 

I’ve been in the retail footwear business since 1974, so going on 48 years. I’ve owned and operated the Shoe Box in the Amherst location for the last 26 years.

What led you to this career field and your current job? 

I met my wife of 45 years in high school, and her father was in the shoe business. This led me to get involved.

What kind of education or training did you need?

I attended UMass-Amherst for a year back in 1974. I took a long break after becoming involved in the family business. Mostly, my education was learning on the job and from my father-in-law, who was a great mentor and teacher. I then decided, later in life, to get a degree in business entrepreneurship.

What is your typical at-work attire? 

Khaki pants and a dress shirt, or, on occasion, dress jeans.

How has your job changed over the course of the pandemic?

I was able to adapt and survive during the Covid shutdown. … I provided home delivery and … contact-free service by using my drive-thru window. I promoted [the store] on social media for being the only drive-thru shoe store around. … The pandemic continues to affect our business because of supply chain issues and employee shortages. This results in my having to buy much further in advance of when I need product. I’m buying product now to ship next fall. The shipping issue is also causing a much higher freight cost, which I haven’t passed on to my customers.

What do you wish you’d known at the beginning of your career?

Retail has changed tremendously from what it was when I first began almost 50 years ago. I wish I knew how fast these changes would have occurred, especially just within the last 10 years. I believe some retailing strategy of old is quite relevant, but I wish that I had embraced some of the newer techniques and innovations sooner.

What do you wish other people knew about your job? 

How difficult and demanding being a business owner is. There were many sacrifices and challenges throughout the years, building this business and to get where the Shoe Box is today.

What was the first job you ever had?

Where I grew up in western Massachusetts, there was an amusement park called Riverside Park. Six Flags is now located there. As a child, I loved amusement parks, and I applied for a job there back in the early 1970s. I thought it was great earning almost $1 an hour. My first job was working at a concession stand at that park.

What’s the best piece of work-related advice you’ve ever received? 

That customer satisfaction comes first, and the need to realize that they are why your business exists. Our company mission is to be honest with customers, provide great product at a good price and to treat customers with respect. If you do this, your customers will be loyal. I have parents that I waited on when they were a child who are now shopping at my store with their own children.

Five favorites

Favorite book: Fictional history, especially the Jeff Shaara Civil War series
Favorite movie: Planes, Trains & Automobiles
Favorite music: Gospel
Favorite food: My wife is a great cook, so just about anything she cooks, especially scallops.
Favorite thing about NH: There’s nothing like the landscape of New Hampshire, the four seasons, mountains, hiking and camping

Featured photo: Barry D’Andrea. Courtesy photo.

Kiddie Pool 22/01/20

Family fun for the weekend

At the movies

Catch some family-friendly screenings at area Chunky’s Cinema Pubs (707 Huse Road, Manchester; 151 Coliseum Ave., Nashua; 150 Bridge St., Pelham, chunkys.com) this weekend. On Friday, Jan. 21, the “Little Lunch Date” screening is of Happy Feet (G, 2006). The show starts at 11:30 a.m. and admission is free but reserve seating with purchase of a $5 food voucher.

On Friday, Jan. 21, it’s a “Lights Up, Sound Down” sensory-friendly screening of recent release Sing 2 at 3:45 p.m. Tickets cost $6.49.

And if you’re always on the lookout for kid-friendly screenings, you may want to save the date for a screening of Smallfoot (PG, 2018) on Saturday, Jan. 29, at 10 a.m. at Red River Theatres (11 S. Main St. in Concord; 224-4600, redrivertheatres.org). The event is part of the city’s Winterfest and tickets cost $5.

On the stage

Catch the final performance of the Palace Youth Theatre’s January presentation of Matilda Jr. on Thursday, Jan. 20, at 7 p.m. at the Palace Theatre (80 Hanover St. in Manchester; palacetheatre.org, 668-5588). All of the roles are performed by student actors in grades 2 through 12, according to the website. Call the theater for tickets.

In a book

Jack Dalton, the kid conservationist and 11-year-old author, will read the book Kawan the Orangutan: Lost in the Forest at the Bookery Manchester (844 Elm St. in downtown Manchester; bookerymht.com) on Saturday, Jan. 22, at 11:30 a.m. for storytime and crafts.

In nature

Looking for something to get little ones outside during the week? The New Hampshire Audubon is holding nature outings at the Brockway Nature Preserve in Hopkinton for 3- to 5-year-olds and their parents on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month from 10 to 10:45 a.m. This next session, on Tuesday, Jan. 25, is titled “Who Made that Track?” Admission costs $10 per family and space is limited; go to nhaudubon.org to register.

At the museum

Or get some science indoors on Tuesday at the SEE Science Center (200 Bedford St. in Manchester; 669-0400, see-sciencecenter.org) for Storytime Science Tuesdays at 10:30 a.m. for ages 2 to 5 and their caregivers. Pre-registration is required and space is limited to 10 family units. The program will cover STEM topics through storytelling, movement, experiments and more, according to the website. The program costs $3 in addition to admission, which is $10 for ages 3 to adult and free for kids under 3 years old.

On the court

Catch some UNH basketball live and in person (masked up, according to school rules). The men’s team plays UMass Lowell on Saturday, Jan. 22, at 4 p.m. On Wednesday, Jan. 26, the men’s team will play Maine at 7 p.m. (a game rescheduled from Jan. 12). Also Wednesday, catch the women’s team in their game against Maine at 4 p.m. All games will be played at Ludholm Gym on the UNH campus in Durham. See unhwildcats.com for directions, policies and to buy tickets, which cost $10 general admission, $8 for kids and seniors.

In the kitchen — save the date

Looking to get kids some hands-on kitchen experience but not, you know, in your kitchen? The Culinary Playground (16 Manning St. in downtown Derry; 339-1664, culinary-playground.com) has several upcoming classes for kid-parent teams. While many of the January and February classes have sold out, there are still openings for March and April classes on cinnamon rolls ($58 for a parent-child team, ages 6+), I Love Paris baking class, which includes French macarons ($60 for a parent-child team, ages 8+), and a homemade pasta for cheese ravioli class ($50 for a parent-child team, ages 6+). Call or go online to register.

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