Norwich’s Blue Sparrow Kitchen is feathering a new nest in Hanover.
The three-year-old Norwich cafe, breakfast and sandwich restaurant is opening a second location in the space formerly occupied by Morano Gelato next to the Nugget Theaters on South Main Street. Owner Amber Boland is targeting a May 1 opening.
To be named The Nest Kitchen & Cafe, Amber said her second restaurant “will be focusing on the same things we do at Blue Sparrow, primarily sandwiches and making everything from scratch. The difference is we’ll be offering dinner, too, and that’s a really big step.”
The 40-seat Nest Kitchen, at least while the pandemic forces restrictions on indoor capacity, will largely be a takeout and to-go operation in the beginning, although Boland envisions being able to serve dinner until 9 p.m. from the start.
A former planner with the Upper Valley Lake Sunapee Regional Planning Commission and field specialist with Upper Valley Land Trust, Boland opened Blue Sparrow Kitchen in May 2018, in the center of Norwich. Although two prior cafes in the same space each struggled, Boland has managed to attract regular customers and pivoted Blue Sparrow to takeout only during the pandemic. An added feature has been prepared meals at holidays.
Nonetheless, Boland admits that opening a new restaurant during a pandemic “is a little terrifying, I have to say” but she sees an opportunity to establish Nest Kitchen’s presence as Hanover’s downtown business traffic rebounds. That goal echoes the owners of two Hanover mainstays, Molly’s and Murphy’s on the Green, who each announced that they will open new downtown restaurants aiming to capture the economic upswing.
“What are you going to do?” Boland said. “You have to look at the positive.”
Nest Kitchen’s menu will feature many of Blue Sparrow’s popular sandwiches but will also include “smash burgers and an expanded breakfast and lunch” selection, she said, as well as a wider assortment of bakery items.
Boland said an opportunity to be in the same building as Nugget Theaters was hard to pass up.
Morano Gelato benefited from moviegoers coming and going from the theaters and Boland said she hopes to do the same, either with people wanting a light repast and a glass of wine or beer before a movie or espresso and dessert afterward.
“The location is great. And we’re going to be offering a lot of desserts,” she promised.
The Sharon Trading Post has reopened and been completely renovated by new owner Maplefields. But some of its newest flourishes are two centuries old.
Since the weather-beaten 205-year-old general store was acquired by the Vermont convenience store chain last year, the landmark building fronted by a Tuscan colonnade has undergone a bottom-to-top $1.5 million renovation that aimed to keep the historic character of the structure intact.
On the outside, much looks the same, only with a new paint job, a newly built wheelchair-accessible ramp leading to the front entrance and refurbished slate roofing.
Inside the store the original cross beams, long hidden behind a drop ceiling, have been exposed and the floor space fully opened up from front of the store to back. Artifacts found hidden behind the walls — patent medicine bottles, documents from the 19th century — are now framed and hanging on the wall.
Other changes include a checkout counter with four point-of-sale terminals at the front, an expanded liquor section and a second entrance built into the parking lot side of the store where the gas pumps are located.
Although much of the brightly lit interior layout — with a My Fresh Cafe deli counter and wraparound coolers stocked with beer, soda and energy drinks and display islands selling packaged snacks — now looks like any chain convenience store, the Maplefields-owned Sharon Trading Post will still have the favorite items appreciated by Sharon residents on their commute between home and work.
“We’re trying to keep a lot of the (old) Trading Post going,” said store manager Christine Picken, who worked for prior owners Rob and Cathy Romeo and has stayed on under Maplefields owner R. L. Vallee Inc., which purchased the store and adjacent apartment building last year for $2.1 million.
Other familiar employees continuing at Sharon Trading Post are Cooper Greer, food preparer; Dan Wood, food coordinator; Jim Peavey, who has worked at the store for 22 years; and Picken’s mother-in-law, Cathy Picken, who helps out behind the deli counter.
The deli counter now has 80 items on the digital menu board, and Christine Picken said such Sharon Trading Post specials as their own cut meats — for which Rob Romeo won praise and loyal customers — and prepared dinners to be warmed up at home will continue.
“We kept Trading Post recipes, like meatloaf dinners, shepherd’s pie, and we’ll be getting a chicken rotisserie and going to have our own pulled pork,” Picken said. “We’re trying to keep a lot of the same things we did before.”
Including the store’s famous baked doughnuts for customers’ morning coffee fuel-up.
“The doughnuts aren’t going anywhere,” Picken said.
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
