Tag: 250717

In the kitchen with Elissa Drift

Owner of Local Street Eats (112 W. Pearl St., Nashua, 402-4435, local-streeteats.com), an international, street-food-inspired fusion restaurant in downtown Nashua. In its first year of operation, Local Street Eats built a reputation for playful dishes, creative cocktails, and exciting live events. “Around the age of 15 I started my first restaurant job as a hostess at my local watering hole in Chelmsford, Mass.,” Drift said. “I was there all the way into my college years. Then I ended up getting a job at Saffron Bistro in Nashua, New Hampshire. And that was chef-owned and -operated. It was a great little spot. I kind of got my feet wet in the downtown Nashua area and that is where I’ve been ever since. So after I left Saffron in 2013, I went over to Stella Blu and I had kind of finished my tenure as a manager last year. I was with them for just shy of 11 years. And then it was time to go off on my own. And back in December of 2024, we opened Local Street Eats right here in Nashua.”

What would you have for your last meal?

It would honestly be something like home cooking — something warm and hearty. My husband makes a really good tikka masala and that is actually one of my really favorite things. We make it with couscous and it’s really, really good. It’s nostalgic, it’s warm, it’s cuddly, it has all the feelings in it and I think more about that than the actual food item itself.

Other than your own restaurant, where do you like to eat out at?

I love Cucina Toscana (427 Amherst St., Nashua, 821-7356, cucinatoscananashua.com). … I feel like the food there is made with just a little bit extra caring. I feel like the ingredients are always super duper fresh and it’s a warm welcoming environment and has that kind of small-town feel.

Who is a celebrity you’d like to see eating at your restaurant?

Oh my god, Stanley Tucci! I don’t have anything else to say; I just love him.

What’s your favorite thing on your menu?

We rotate our menu each season, but something that started as a special and is now moving forward onto our summer menu is the Beef Suya. It’s really, really tasty. The marinade on the beef is perfect. The beef has just enough fat content where when we grill it, it caramelizes and just has that nice, like, natural flavor to it

What’s a restaurant trend that you see in New Hampshire?

I would definitely say a growing trend is inclusivity but more specifically collaborations. That’s really kind of the heart of what we’re doing right now. It could be collaborations between different restaurants; it could be collaborations between a restaurant and another business, it could be a collaboration between the city and multiple businesses downtown.

Your restaurant is becoming well-known for hosting fun events. What have been some of your favorites?

We’ve done everything from tequila tastings to floral pop-ups where you make your own bouquets. We’ve hosted cookie decorating, collaborating with a local cookie-er. We’ve done a boozy book swap; that was great. We’ll do more of those. We did a Drag-Your-Galentine-to-Brunch event, centering around Valentine’s and celebrating your girl friends or guy friend relationships and not just always about the love in your life.

How do you get these ideas?

I love to throw a good party. I love to see people having a good time. I love a good reason to get dressed up. Our Mad Hatter Tea Party for Mother’s Day was all about that. For us, it’s not just about the dining experience — it’s about everything else. It’s about bringing the community together to have a good time and do something different.

What is your favorite thing to cook at home?

I would say anything that my family’s actually going to eat.

What is a good way to set a tone for a party? What are easy props to use?

Good food, good drink — honestly, that’s it. We don’t need any fancy craziness as long as, you know, the minutia’s, you know, where it needs to be. We have good food, good drink and great company.

Featured Image: Elissa Drift, owner of Local Street Eats. Courtesy photo.

Sweet benefit

AARP offers free ice cream nights

There is a surprising benefit to getting older that you don’t hear much about: free ice cream.

Ashley Davis with the New Hampshire office of the American Association of Retired People (AARP) is one of the organizers of AARPNH’s Free Ice Cream Nights. AARP members, and people interested in becoming members, can register with Davis’ office and get free ice cream, she said.

“We always have a social mission tied to our events, so we’ll bring educational materials and subject experts to the ice cream. So not only are you getting a free ice cream from a local place; you’re also able to talk and get information about issues like fraud or Social Security,” Davis said.

“You register online — just put in your name and information and you’re on the list. You can go to the ice cream place at the date and time. Most of them are on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, and most of them are around 5 to 7 at night. You show up, you’ll see our setup — we usually have a red tent or table and lots of volunteers in red there to help you. We’ll get you checked in, and you get a ticket for a free ice cream.”

Davis said Ice Cream Nights usually have a good turnout.

“They vary a lot,” she said. “ but I would say we usually have between 75 and 250 [people show up], depending on the spot, over a two-hour period. We work really close with the ice cream places to give them a heads up and make sure that they have enough staff and support. We’ll usually have between 10 and 20 volunteers there, helping to make sure that the lines are good.”

Next up is at Richardson’s Farm in Boscawen on Wednesday, July 23, from 5 to 7 p.m. when the topic will be Social Security, according to the website. In August, the focus is on caregivers with events slated for Tuesday, Aug. 12, at 5 p.m. at Hayward’s Ice Cream in Merrimack; Tuesday, Aug. 19, at 5 p.m. at Memories Ice Cream in Kingston, and Wednesday, Aug. 27, at Arnie’s Place in Concord at 5 p.m.

AARP Ice Cream Nights
AARP New Hampshire will sponsor Ice Cream Nights throughout the summer. Visit local.aarp.org to register for upcoming events.

Historic meals

Derry library hosts unique dinner club

According to Erin Robinson, there was a time when shrimp poached in cream and tomato sauce was considered very cosmopolitan.

“It was called Cosmo Club Shrimp,” she said, “and there was in California at the time this social group called the Cosmo Club. When you find that sort of thing when a food’s named after a place, you want to start digging in further to find out more about it.”

Robinson is the Reference and Genealogy Librarian at the Derry Public Library and the organizer of the Library’s Historic Table Dinner Club. Once a month curious readers meet to share food made from recipes in a particular cookbook, either a history of a particular time and place or a vintage book shared online.

Robinson has been helping organize these historical experiences at the library for the past year and a half, she said.

“It … actually sprung out of our Genealogy Club,” she said, “and thinking about different ways to experience history but in maybe a non-conventional way. I always think of food when I’m thinking of that and tasting history. The first topic we ever did, I asked people to bring a recipe from their own family history. So we got a lot of traditional recipes that had been handed down. And that was interesting, because of course stories of home and family came out of those. After that tidbit of information it’s like a passageway to further inquiry. So we had a lot of discussions about the place and then we had to go back and look at which one it was specifically.”

The time and place of July’s topic is California in the early 1900s, Robinson said.

“This upcoming one is a vintage cookbook from 1914 and it’s called Midnight Feast. It was written by Mae E. Southworth, and she was a librarian from California. What we’re going to do is we’ll have the cooking. The food is interesting. It’s always a little hit or miss with the flavors, because some things don’t carry so well into the present day and some are just the same. So people choose a recipe from the cookbook and bring it along and they bring [a list of] the ingredients with any substitutions. They write it down so people can assess if they want to try it and/or should if they have allergies. Then what we do is we talk a little bit about the different options as we eat. We’re going to do some trivia based around that time period.”

According to Robinson, the each month’s food topic is a way for participants to connect with history — either their own or something truly unfamiliar. She gave two recent explorations as examples: “We did Jubilee, by Toni Tipton Martin, which looked at African-American history and had wonderful recipes. We also [read] Grandma’s World War II Kitchen. So that was interesting because a lot of people remembered from their parents’ tables some of the recipes.” Some of the club cooks remembered their parents talking about food rationing and victory gardens, Robinson said.

Robinson hopes to bring some focus even closer to home in future meetings.

“There’s a New Hampshire cookbook,” she said, “that was published in the early 1900s, maybe 1904, called A Bachelor’s Cupboard and it was all about teaching a bachelor how to make the best food and it was written by A. Lyman Phillips. I was doing research and her name was Amy who wrote it, Amy Lyman Phillips. She was a hoot. She was an aviator at one time. She drove with this lady who was Blanche Stewart Scott, who was technically the first woman to drive across country solo in a car. She went with her to report back on it. So she’s just a really fascinating person from New Hampshire who happened to write this cookbook under this pen name.”

Historic Table Dinner Club
When: Tuesday, July 22, at 6 p.m. discussing Midnight Feasts (1914) by Mae E. Southworth
Where: Derry Public Library (64 E. Broadway, Derry).
Sign up: Register through the Derry Public Library’s events calendar at derrypl.org/adult-events.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Pup Crawl might be the ulti-mutt fundraiser

Your dog is welcome at this weekend of breweries

Olivia Echteler is the Director of Community Engagement for the Humane Society of Greater Nashua and the organizer of this year’s Pup Crawl fundraiser.

“This is our fifth year hosting this event,” Echteler said. “We have nine participating breweries this year. And it’s a weekend-long kickoff event that will be held on Friday at Kettlehead Brewing in Nashua. And our finale event, it will be at the Beer Garden in Anheuser-Busch in Merrimack on Sunday, and in between, folks who register for this event can visit any of the participating breweries at their leisure. These breweries are dog-friendly so we get a lot of folks who come and bring their dogs with them. It’s really just about our community supporting our local breweries, local businesses, and just getting together with fellow dog lovers.”

Unlike some other pub crawl fundraisers, Echteler said, this will not be a competition. “If someone registers to participate, there’s no particular strategy or anything.”

Which isn’t to say that some participants don’t have a personal agenda, she said. When they register, “they will get a pup crawl T-shirt. Every year, we have a T-shirt that is specially designed for this event, and this year’s T-shirt features last year’s raffle winner on it. We held a raffle where you could enter and if you won you had your own dog featured on the Pup Crawl T-shirt for this year.” This year’s T-shirt dog is named Coda. “She’s a young chocolate Lab,” Echteler said. “She is the face of our 2025 pup crawl. We’re going to be holding that same raffle again at our finale event on Sunday. So next year’s shirt will feature another community dog.”

“We’ll have a registration table [at the opening event on Friday],” Echteler said. “So anyone who has registered will come to that event so they can pick up their T-shirts and pick up what we call our Pawsport — that is a trifold brochure that has all of the listed participating breweries with their hours and their addresses. It will include any information about any events going on at the breweries that same weekend. Some breweries will have a food truck there or live music. Folks will have that info with them and when they go to visit any of these breweries during that weekend they can get their Pawsport stamped or initialed and that earns them a raffle entry during the finale event on Sunday.”

“It’s always just a lot of fun,” Echteler said. “There’s always a really great crowd, and of course, it’s always fun to see the many, many dogs that show up at these breweries and get along with each other too. Last year at our finale we incorporated live music. It was a lot of fun to have the bands performing there. I think the biggest kick is just seeing everyone in the matching T-shirts. You can spot out all your fellow Pup Crawl participants.”

Humane Society of Greater Nashua Pup Crawl
When and where: From 4 p.m. Friday, July 18, beginning at Kettlehead on Main Nashua (97 Main St., Nashua, 204-5718, kettleheadbrewing.com/kettleheadmain), to Sunday, July 20, at the Biergarten at Anheuser-Busch in Merrimack (221 DW Highway, Merrimack, 595-1202), where the final event runs from 3 to 6 p.m. More: Ticket price is $25. 21+. Leashed dogs welcome. Visit hsfn.org/pup-crawl.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 25/07/17

News from the local food scene

• A picnic with experts in fresh food: Join the New Hampshire Farm Bureau for its annual summer picnic on Saturday, July 19, from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Osborne Farm on Upper City Road in Loudon. Bring your own food, or purchase it from the Gravy Train Food Truck. All attendees will be entered in a raffle for excellent prizes, and there will be farm-themed games and lawn games to play. General admission is $5; children 10 and under attend for free. Register at nhfarmbureau.org/2025-nhfb-summer-picnic.

• Meat bingo: Amputee charity Less Leg More Heart has been gaining a reputation for fun and creative fundraising. Join them for a Meat Bingo Madnessevent Saturday, July 19, from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Rod and Gun Club (358 S. Main St., Laconia, 524-9824). Twenty-four games of Bingo will cost $30, for a chance to win meat prizes. There will be raffles and food and drink on site. Simply show up; no pre-registration required. Visit lesslegmoreheart.com/events.

• Save the date for spicy: Get your tickets for the New England Hot Sauce Fest, presented by the Spicy Shark and returning to Smuttynose Brewing Co. (105 Towle Farm Road, Hampton) on Saturday, July 26, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The event features local hot sauce companies selling and offering samples of their spicy products, as well as bounce houses, food trucks and more. General admission tickets are $15 in advance; VIP tickets are $20 in advance and give you a 10 a.m. admission time. Proceeds will benefit the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation and the Seacoast Science Center, according to newenglandhotsaucefest.com.

• Really good fudge: In a June 24 press release Van Otis Chocolates (341 Elm St, Manchester, 627-1611, vanotis.com) announced that its Whipped Honey + Peanut Butter Swiss Fudge has been named the 2025 Confection of the Year by Retail Confectioners International (RCI), a national trade association representing independent candy makers across the U.S. and Canada. The fudge is described as handcrafted with smooth peanut butter, locally sourced whipped cinnamon honey, and delicate feuilletine for a subtle crunch, the release said. See vanotis.com/whipped-honey-peanut-butter-specialty-swiss-fudge.

Kiddie Pool 25/07/17

Family fun for whenever

Fairies and fairy tales

• Nashua will hold its annual Fairytale Festival in Greeley Park (100 Concord St. in Nashua) on Saturday, July 19, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Dress-up is encouraged for this day of arts & crafts, games, face paint and more, according to nashua.gov. Catch princess performers from 11 a.m. to noon, followed by princess meet-and-greet and giveaways, the website said.

• The 9th annual Fairy and Hobbit House Festival will take place at Bedrock Gardens (19 High Road, Lee; bedrockgardens.org) Friday, July 18, through Sunday, July 20, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. Compete in the Fairy House and Hobbit House showcase (see the website in advance) or just come in costume to enjoy the day, which includes craft activities, story time and more. Tickets cost $49.87 per carload.

More summer fun

• The Stratham 4-H Summerfest returns on Saturday, July 19, at the Stratham Hill Park Fairgrounds (270 Portsmouth Ave., Stratham) from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The event will feature animal shows, agriculture exhibits, competitions and more. See extension.unh.edu/event/2025/07/2025-stratham-4-h-summerfest.

Movie night

• Manchester’s Summer Movies in the Park returns Wednesday, July 23, with a screening of this year’s A Minecraft Movie (PG) in Veterans Memorial Park, 723 Elm St. in Manchester. The movies will start at dusk; bring blankets or chairs, according to an item in the July 9 Medo Minute newsletter from Manchester’s Economic Development Office. Future films are Wicked: Part One (PG, 2024) on Wednesday, Aug. 27, and Jumanji (PG, 1995) on Saturday, Sept. 20.

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