Hanover’s food options already include Thai, Japanese, Nepali, Indian, Chinese and Spanish Tapas. Now add Jamaican cusine to the international flavors.
Leya’s Island Grill, a casual Jamaican restaurant and carry-out, is opening March 1 at 6 Allen St. in the downstairs space previously occupied by the Thai restaurant Kata Thai.
The new Jamaican eatery is the creation of Jamaican-born Gayann Letman, whose family immigrated to New Hampshire, where she attended Newport High School. Her father, Errol Letman, is the chef behind Claremont’s Sunshine Jamaican Style Cook Shop.
Gayann Letman says Leya’s Island Grill will offer a “fusion” of Jamaican and Thai recipes along with traditional Jamaican specialties such as jerk chicken, beef patties, fried plantains, rice and “island salads” that she describes as “very fruity.”
Also something which arguably is novel to Hanover, if not the Twin States: free pineapple juice.
“It’s going to be really high energy and I think fit in well in the area,” Letman said.
She aims to attract Dartmouth College students — there will be karaoke — and others interested in flavorful islands cuisine. She also will be keeping “all the curries” from Kata Thai’s menu.
Letman worked in her father’s Claremont restaurant as well as the tapas restaurant Candela in Hanover and said she planned early to go into the restaurant business.
“I’ve always had a passion for cooking and wanted to own my own restaurant,” she explains. “I decided at 16 that this is what I wanted to do and I just worked on it.”
GroSolar, the large-scale solar power engineering and construction firm founded 20 years ago in Vermont by Dori and Jeff Wolfe and owned since 2016 by EDF Renewable Energy, will be moving its offices from Billings Farm Road in White River Junction across the river to Commerce Avenue near the Lebanon Municipal Airport.
The move, expected to occur early this summer and taking over 7,000 square feet in surplus space that had been occupied by Tecnica, is being made to accommodate the solar company’s growth and expansion, said Maribeth Sawchuk, director of marketing and communications at the company.
GroSolar’s White River Junction office recently added four new employees, and the new larger offices in West Lebanon will “expand our ability to deliver renewable energy projects around the country,” she said. The 65-employee company, which has offices in Rutland and Columbia, Md., also recently opened office in the Minneapolis area.
Sawchuk said the some of the White River Junction employees will transfer to the Rutland offices, but the majority are expected to move across the river near the airport. She said final details on the move are still being worked out but the company expects to make it “at the beginning of the summer when it’s nice moving weather and the snow melts.”
Two partners are moving from Chicago to Bethel and have purchased the former downtown train station known as Bethel Depot and will reopen the bar in the building.
Jesse Poltsky and Owen Daniel-McCarter purchased Bethel Depot from longtime owners Bill and Mimi Kevan, who had owned the building since 2005 and ran the bar there until it closed in November.
But Poltsky said that after a visit to Bethel where his brother and wife live, he and Daniel-McCarter decided to make a life-change after discovering the 1850 train station was for sale.
“We looked around and saw the potential and things kind of fell into place,” Poltsky said.
The partners are changing the name to Babes Bar and expect to be open sometime in April, according to Poltsky. They also want to partner with food trucks to sell food from the parking lot and offer live music. The “long-range plan” is to turn the upstairs room to an event space, he said.
Poltsky works in the wine department at Trader Joe’s in Chicago and said he will be transferring to the boutique food market’s sole Vermont store in South Burlington. Daniel-McCarter, an attorney and graduate of the University of Vermont, has been an executive director of a nonprofit in Chicago.
Poltsky acknowledged the move from urban Chicago to small-town, rural Vermont represents a radical lifestyle change, but he said he and Daniel-McCarter are up for it.
T-Bird Mini Marts owner Cheshire Oil Co.’s deal to sell a majority of its assets to a Massachusetts firm appears to be off.
Keene, N.H.-based Cheshire Oil, which owns two T-Bird Mini Marts in Claremont and one in Newport, has informed vendors in a letter that it was “unable to finalize the transaction” to sell the company’s gas station and convenience store assets to HEG Inc., a subsidiary of Energy North Group of Lawrence, Mass. The company did not say why the sale of assets was unable to close.
Cheshire had notified vendors earlier this month of the pending sale.
Cheshire Oil’s 10-store T-Bird Mini Marts chain includes seven other locations in New Hampshire. The acquistion would have significantly expanded Energy North Group’s footprint in the Granite State.
Cheshire Oil owner Jim Robertson declined to comment. An Energy North Group representative did not respond to a message for comment last week.
Justin Barrett’s Piecemeal Pies, the British-inspired meat pie and hard cider bar on South Main Street in White River Junction that opened in 2016, has now expanded its hours to open at 8 a.m. for breakfast Tuesday through Friday (closed Monday). The morning menu includes “buttermilk biscuit breakfast sandwiches, kimichi fried rice and a daily quiche, among other items … Lake Sunapee VNA & Hospice, the visiting nurse and home care provider serving Grafton, Sullivan and Merrimack counties, is holding a jobs fair and well be conducting walk-in interviews at its New London offices on March 2 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Lake Sunapee said it is seeking to fill a wide range of positions, including personal care service providers, LNA’s, RN case managers, and a hospice home health aide, among others.
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