Enterprise: People can find places to dine in the Upper Valley on holidays
Published: 10-13-2024 12:01 PM |
A home-cooked meal enjoyed with family and friends who have traveled from afar is the typical portrayal of holiday gatherings.
But that warm atmosphere can also be present when the meal is cooked by professional chefs and enjoyed in festive restaurant setting.
Upper Valley restaurants that offer Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners — and host holiday parties in between — have been doing it long enough to know what they need, particularly in terms of staffing, and what sort of demand they can expect.
“We are a small town and a lot of the community shuts down to be with their families, but we stay open,” said Nici Zuba-Virgin, a supervisor at Woodstock Inn and Resort.
The inn has been serving Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner for years. A Thanksgiving buffet sells out annually with about 400 reservations. This year’s event is open from noon to 7 p.m. and can accommodate outside guests up to a set number, usually about 170, with the remainder for inn guests.
“I would say the majority are hotel guests, but we do get some locals that come in,” Zuba-Virgin said, adding they are one of the few places that are open on the holiday.
The inn also hosts about 20 holiday parties, Zuba-Virgin estimated, with as few as 15 or 20 people to as many as 250. The Christmas dinner at the Woodstock Inn and Resort is also an elaborate affair with full-course offerings that has the same families coming year after year, Zuba-Virgin said.
While finding people willing to work on Thanksgiving and Christmas would seem like a major challenge, the inn has worked to make sure there is enough staff, usually 30 to 40 workers from kitchen and waitstaff to bartenders and hosts.
Article continues after...
Yesterday's Most Read Articles
Zuba-Virgin said they have a reliable combination of a regular, long-time staff, J-1 and H-2 employees on work visas and interns.
“We are very fortunate. It is hard to hire locally,” she said.
The Hanover Inn Dartmouth also serves several hundred Thanksgiving meals, both takeout and in the restaurant, said Rick Thorpe, the inn’s director of sales and marketing. He estimates they have about 350 takeout orders and the restaurant serves about 300, though not all of those diners have a Thanksgiving meal.
“It is very popular and well-attended. Most of the diners are local,” Thorpe said. “We have probably 50% more business than we do on a normal dinner service. A day or two before Thanksgiving, we are kind of maxed out in the kitchen.”
The inn does not have to staff up for the holidays, Thorpe said, as it is coming off three very busy months with Dartmouth College back in session beginning in September.
“We are as staffed up as one can be going into the holidays,” he said.
At Dowd’s Country Inn in Lyme, Tami Dowd, the inn’s owner, believes the business has resolved staffing challenges with the help of an outside company to manage the restaurant. A lack of staff forced the restaurant to close for a year and a half, but it is reopening in October, she said.
“Upper Valley employment was not working for us,” Dowd said.
Though Dowd is not sure about hosting a Thanksgiving buffet at the restaurant this year, in the past it was a very popular event, at times bringing in as many as 450 people, Dowd said.
“A lot of people are from in town and want to get together but don’t want to cook,” she said. “I also think a lot of people want to support our family. They come to the inn and it is decorated for Thanksgiving and it is family-owned, family-operated and we are usually all here working, and so it is a family environment.
“We never have a problem selling out Thanksgiving Day, Mother’s Day or Easter brunch, ever,” Dowd added.
All three Upper Valley restaurants also host holiday parties.
During the week, Dowd’s Inn generally sees smaller groups of 30 to 40, such as a local chamber of commerce or Rotary, and on the weekends bigger companies and corporations will hold their holiday parties with between 150 and 200 people.
This year, Dowd has noticed a new trend.
“January is booking up for holiday parties, which seems weird to me versus December, so I’m thinking it must be a new trend since COVID,” she said. “Usually we did one or two holiday parties after the new year for businesses like us that are busy on the holiday, but now we see more places like at the hospital doing more nondenominational winter parties.”
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.