Close your eyes and imagine for a moment: a restaurant, dimly lit and cozy. Step up to the bar and appreciate the array of bottles—filled with elixirs as yet unknown to you. The bartender asks for, and fulfills, a request for a cocktail based on a feeling or flavor. You enjoy a meal crafted around local flavors, house-made ferments, and a chef’s creativity.

Open your eyes. You could be in any major metro center, but you’re in Manchester, New Hampshire, at The Birch on Elm, a jewel box of a restaurant owned and operated by Nick Provencher and Joel Soucy. Provencher helms the kitchen while Soucy oversees a bar program built on classic cocktails elevated with house-made tinctures, juices, and garnishes.

A selection of house-made syrups and infusions at The Birch on Elm. Photo by Dominic Perri

Provencher and Soucy are focused on sharing their vision for hospitality with their community—but why not settle in Boston, Portsmouth, or Portland? These cities are known for their restaurant scenes and continue to draw culinary talent. But for these two visionaries, Manchester beckoned. Provencher was introduced to the Queen City when he joined the team at Portsmouth-based executive chef Matt Provencher’s (no relation) new Manchester gastropub, The Foundry. Soucy worked at bars throughout Manchester for years before he joined The Foundry’s bar team. The two realized that they shared a similar perspective on hospitality and restaurants, and decided a joint venture would be the logical next step.

A brick-lined restaurant space on Elm Street became available, and the pair jumped on it quickly. Soucy recalls, “We talked about looking at spaces in Portsmouth, but saw an opportunity to do this someplace it wasn’t happening already. We could make an impact here instead of adding to an existing restaurant scene.” Provencher adds, “We also wanted to be somewhere that could serve locals and didn’t have a lot of seasonal traffic.” The Birch on Elm was born in September 2016.

Joel Soucy pours a Ramos Gin Fizz. Photo by Dominic Perri

The culinary vision at The Birch on Elm is a collaboration between the kitchen and the bar. Soucy describes a drink from their summer list: the Cardstock Paper Plane. He infused the aperitif Aperol with cantaloupe, which was in steady supply in the kitchen, and built the infusion into a house cocktail. Flavors, ideas, and techniques are shared across the food and drink menus. As a result, the bar program and the dinner menu work together as well as Soucy and Provencher do.

Soucy has been highlighting tiki drinks at the bar. While ersatz versions of Painkillers, Zombies, and Mai Tais may be familiar to most from visits to restaurants that feature pu-pu platters and sweet-and-sour meatballs, Soucy restores them to their original glory. “If we can buy it, we try to figure out how to make it,” he says. His team makes hard-to-find cocktail ingredients like orgeat (an almond syrup) and falernum (a lime zest and clove syrup) and shakes them into cocktails that pack a wallop without cloying sweetness. With the Chartreuse Swizzle, Soucy builds on that tiki tradition by shaking freshly squeezed juice with Yellow Chartreuse—bridging the gap between traditional tiki and modern mixology.

Bobby Vegetal, one of Birch on Elm’s signature cocktails. Photo by Dominic Perri

Provencher takes a similar traditional-meets-modern approach in the kitchen. “I like to play around a lot with textures,” he says. “I play mostly with basic flavor profiles and finding balance between them. There are some surprises that pop up that people don’t understand . . . but then you eat it and it makes sense.” Like many successful chefs, Provencher has chosen to describe each dish on his menu not with a fulsome description, but with a list of its ingredients.

The gin-based Aviation cocktail alongside a plate of Grilled Street Corn. Photo by Dominic Perri

Grilled Street Corn is described as “whipped miso butter, pickled onion, peanut,” Provencher explains.
“It’s got roasted peanuts for crunch, pickled onions for that sour note, sweet corn, and whipped miso butter—salty and fermented. Take one bite together and it balances out.” Other dishes show off their sourcing of local ingredients with a nod to the local suppliers they patronize. A green bean dish and the crab cakes both namecheck Dunk’s Mushrooms. Dunk is a mushroom grower who appeared at The Birch on Elm bearing boxes of ’shrooms shortly after the restaurant opened. Provencher has been a customer ever since, and Dunk’s mushrooms have become a feature on the menu.

Chef Nick Provencher. Photo by Dominic Perri

One item that shows off Provencher and Soucy’s playful side is the Brookford Farm Burger, which contains “pickled farm veggies, farm cheddar, hand-formed farm patty, hand-punched fries [aka hand-cut local potatoes], Wonder Bread & Heinz, America!” Soucy lights up as he describes it. “It’s a local beef patty, topped with local cheese, but then we top it with Heinz ketchup and serve it on Wonder Bread. It’s perfect!”

After a year in business, the team is still working long days and continuing to refine their seasonally changing menus. But that doesn’t mean they’ll let moss grow under their feet. When asked what’s next, Provencher and Soucy’s eyes light up at the restaurants they could build in the city they’ve chosen as their own. They aren’t talking on the record yet, but they have plans for one addition—or more—to the Birch on Elm family. Until then, there’s a comfortable seat, a cold drink, and a delicious dish waiting at your table on Elm Street.

A deconstructed Loaded Baked Potato. Photo by Dominic Perri

Nick Provencher and Joel Soucy–co-owners, The Birch on Elm
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Website

Top image: Grilled Octopus. Photo by Dominic Perri

The post Branching Out appeared first on Take Magazine.

Totems, palm thatching, and, yes, mini umbrellas. It might not be apparent at first glance, but tiki bars are as American as the drive-in movie theater. Or perhaps more aptly, as American as the fortune cookie. Venture into any one of these establishments and you’ll likely find a similar spread of viciously strong (mostly rum-based) drinks surrounded by faux-Polynesian kitsch. Neither the decor nor the colorful concoctions truly belong to any particular location. In true American fashion, the tiki bar represents a blurry hodgepodge of not-quite South Pacific iconography and cuisine.

The phenomenon began with one man’s desire for something different. Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt traveled around the South Pacific and wanted to take some of it back with him. In 1934 Los Angeles, under the legally-assumed name Donn Beach, Gantt opened Don the Beachcomber: the world’s first tiki bar. In 1937, Vic Bergeron opened Trader Vic’s in Oakland. Both poured rum cocktails (although the history of the Mai Tai and the Zombie, two tiki staples, is disputed) and served “Polynesian” fare (which was really a riff on Cantonese) against a backdrop of tropical exotica.

photo courtesy of Rhum in Portland, Maine

Tiki bars went mainstream in the wake of World War II, but changing tastes threw them into obscurity from the 1960s until around the 1990s, when the escapist fad experienced a revival. The thirst isn’t quite what it used to be, however. According to Boston-based tiki expert Brother Cleve, “A great many places have gone out of business in the last decade, including many that were around for decades. Owners realize the real estate is worth much more than the restaurant, and many locations are just torn down.”

Fortunately, tiki continues right here in New England. Whether it be the corners of a Chinese food restaurant’s drink menu, a weekly “tiki night,” or a full-on tiki bar, you can find echoes of this bizarre trend all around the region. Enjoy!

Tiki Bars in Massachusetts

Kowloon Restaurant
948 Broadway
Saugus, Massachusetts

You can’t miss this gargantuan restaurant while driving on Route 1 in Saugus. With over 1,200 seats, and Cantonese, Szechuan, Thai, and Japanese cuisines alongside Mai Tai and Scorpion Bowls, Kowloon boasts an experience of sheer breadth.

Hu Ke Lau
705 Memorial Drive
Chicopee, Massachusetts

Featuring Szechuan, Cantonese, and American cuisines; a drink menu with a limit of two-per-customer for its potent Zombies; and a 500-capacity showroom for live performances, the Hu Ke Lau must truly must be seen to be believed. If you’re looking for a quieter tiki offering in the Pioneer Valley, Tiki Tuesday drinks at The Green Room include Trader Vic’s original 1944 Mai Tai, Singapore Sling, and Pain Eraser.

The Green Room
28 Center Street
Northampton, Massachusetts

Tiki Bars in Vermont

Vermont’s tiki bar resurgence is nearly as potent as that of Massachusetts. From newer outdoor establishments to themed nights at pre-existing restaurants, the options listed here and more were recently reported in detail over at Seven Days.

Juniper at Hotel Vermont
41 Cherry Street
Burlington, Vermont

Captain Tom’s Tiki Bar
160 Bank Street
Burlington, Vermont

Mike’s Tiki Bar
44 Belden Hill Road
East Burke, Vermont

Tiki Bars in Maine

The tiki option in Maine is short but sweet. Opened in February 2016, Rhum’s “distinctly Portland, Maine flavor of Tiki” includes spicy mango wings and Krabby Patties, with drinks like the Bermuda Triangle and Cancelled Honeymoon on top of standards.

Rhum
98 Cross Street North
Portland, Maine

Tiki Bars in New Hampshire

Paradise Beach Club’s dedicated outdoor tiki bar features a bicycle-mounted blender for patrons’ use called a Fender Blender. If doing cardio to blend your own drinks seems counter-intuitive for your tastes, The Birch on Elm offers tapas-style fare and five “Tiki Time” staples: Zombie, Painkiller, Mai Tai, Singapore Sling, and Suffering Bastard.

Phukitz Tiki Bar at Paradise Beach Club
Weirs Beach, New Hampshire

The Birch on Elm
931 Elm St
Manchester, New Hampshire

Tiki Bars in Connecticut

Connecticut could do better, tiki-wise—or worse, depending on your opinions regarding pseudo-Polynesian essentialism. Elm City serves “seasonally inspired” comfort food, 1920s-inspired cocktails, and a handful of drinks with tiki bitters, e.g., Miracle Man (shaken), Pineapple Express (stirred), and a Curaçao-inflected punch called the Irish Hello. Old Greenwich provides American fare and four “Double Size Tiki Style” drinks: fruity rum numbers like Tod’s Treasure and Binney Park Swizzle.

Elm City Social
266 College Street
New Haven, Connecticut

The Old Greenwich Social Club
148 Sound Beach Avenue
Old Greenwich, Connecticut

Tiki Bars in Rhode Island

Ho Kong follows the Chinese restaurant assimilation of tiki drinks, which began back when tiki caught on in earnest. Ogie’s serves American food, but you can find Mai Tai, Zombie, and other tiki cocktails Saturday and Sunday nights seasonally at a dedicated tiki bar, and can order them from the restaurant’s regular bar on any occasion.

Ho Kong
366 Cumberland Hill Road
Woonsocket, Rhode Island

Ogie’s Trailer Park
1155 Westminster Street
Providence, Rhode Island

All images courtesy of RhumPortland.com

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