Support Local: Get a Taste of the Merrimack Valley Region This Winter

Learn more about how New Hampshire’s Main Street businesses are caring for their customers in our “Support Local: Go the Extra Mile” series, which includes regular e-newsletter articles as well as regional videos. Sponsored by the New Hampshire Division of Travel and Tourism.

The Merrimack Valley Region of New Hampshire has long been known for its diversity, dating back to the era when immigrants hailing from far-flung nations worked the mills along the Merrimack River — by 1916, more than two dozen different languages were spoken at the Amoskeag textile mill in Manchester alone. Today, this region, and particularly the Queen City, continues to prosper. With that growth has come more diversity, as well as an ever-evolving dining scene to accommodate an array of cultures and palates.

“There are a lot of different nationalities that live here in Manchester and the surrounding area,” says Jeffrey Paige, a New Hampshire native and the award-winning chef-owner of Cotton in Manchester. “Food is very, very well represented in Manchester, and some of the best food, some of the ethnic restaurants, are family-owned and operated. They’re doing amazing things, from Puerto Rican food to all kinds of Latin American and Spanish and Mexican food, and a lot of Asian too.”

Paige’s own restaurant journey began after he graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in New York and went to work as head chef at Levi Lowell’s in Merrimack. He moved on to Canterbury Shaker Village, north of Concord, where he cultivated his love for farm-to-table dining. In 2000 he and his wife, Peaches, opened Cotton in downtown Manchester, in the city’s historic millyard district.

“Even with some of the downturns in the economy over the years, myself and several of my peers have been able to flourish,” he says. “That’s with tremendous support from the local community for locally owned and operated businesses — it’s been wonderful.”

Paige says the Manchester restaurant scene was generally on the upswing when the pandemic hit, forcing all in-house dining to close.

“Obviously, it was devastating,” he says. “We at Cotton have been fortunate over the years, in that we have a great staff — many have been with us for 20 years. So one of our concerns at that point was, how are we going to take care of our ‘family’?”

Cotton had nurtured a loyal following over the previous two decades (“We have a lot of customers who are on first-name basis,” Paige says), and many patrons immediately began buying gift certificates and taking to social media to offer words of encouragement. “They would add little notes telling us, ‘Hang in there, we’ll see you on the flip side,’” Paige says. “It felt great.”

Not designed to do a large takeout business, Cotton remained closed for three months. During that time, Paige and Peaches used funds from the U.S. Small Business Association and New Hampshire’s Main Street Relief Fund to install custom partitions and a new air filtration system in the restaurant, heaters for the outdoor patio, and new software to improve Cotton’s online ordering.

The couple reopened the restaurant for in-house dining at roughly 50 percent capacity in mid-June; the bar has remained closed. Paige says the recommended precautions they’ve put in place — including masks, gloves, social distancing, and individually wrapped utensils and napkins — have been well received.

“Customer support has been 99.9 percent super-positive,” Paige says. “There’s always that .01 percent that don’t agree with what’s going on, and that’s their right. But I have to do what’s needed to take care of my business and my staff and my customers.”

Even Cotton’s wholesale suppliers have pitched in during the pandemic, eliminating surcharges on many smaller orders.

“The community has been great, and everyone’s been doing their part — vendors, customers, everybody,” Paige says. “For something this devastating, and this bad, everybody’s hurting. Even our suppliers are hurting, because they’re not selling as much.

“But everyone is working together, so it’s less painful for everybody,” he says. “Because everyone is involved in this. We truly are.”

As further proof of the close ties in the Manchester dining scene, Paige points to his collaboration with fellow restaurateurs Tim Baines at Mint Bistro and Steven Clutter at Hanover Street Chophouse.

“We’re good friends and we work together,” he says. “At times, I wouldn’t be able to make a minimum order on a certain product, so I would order from Tim. Or sometimes I had to make a meat order but didn’t have enough to make the minimum, so Steven would let me have that all dropped off at the Chophouse. So we all help each other because we’re all in the same situation.

“You work with your peers,” Paige says. “We all realize that a stronger restaurant scene in Manchester is a better community for all of us.”

Thinking of checking out the dining scene in the Merrimack Valley Region? Here is a sampling of locally owned businesses that are open and ready to take your order! Find more options at visitnh.gov/things-to-do/food-drink/restaurants.

The Copper Door, Bedford and Salem

Hooked Seafood, Manchester

El Rincón Zacatecano Taquería, Manchester

Sabor Brasil, Nashua

The Barley House, Concord

Tucker’s, Hooksett, Dover, Concord, Merrimack, and New London