BEYOND THE PLATE WITH CAROL

How the heck are they making food THIS good in the back of a convenience store? In Manchester, New Hampshire, husband-and-wife team Ron and Tyra Torres have turned a tucked-away kitchen inside Parkside Convenience into Mi Familia Kitchen -- a destination for Puerto Rican comfort food, family recipes, and people who keep coming back. In Episode 79 of Beyond the Plate with Carol, Tyra traces her coo...

Dave LeBlanc spent about 30 years coming back to The Omelette Factory in Ogunquit, Maine. In spring 2025, he and his wife, Sara LeBlanc, longtime Vermont childcare entrepreneurs, bought it -- their first restaurant, and the fourth ownership chapter for the Route 1 breakfast spot that first opened in 1982. On this episode of Beyond the Plate with Carol, Dave sits down with Carol Erickson right in t...

Welcome to Episode 77 of Beyond the Plate with Carol Podacst! This week, Carol sits down with sisters-in-law Brylie Murphy and Kylie Murphy, the duo behind Daily Dough Co., a homemade cinnamon roll stand in Manchester, New Hampshire! It started with one cinnamon roll recipe. Then another. Then about five. By June 2026, sisters-in-law Brylie and Kylie had turned their shared love of baking into Dai...

Phil Meyer grew up on a dairy farm in Iowa, joined the Air Force at 18, and worked his way into cyber security before becoming the volunteer CEO of Nourish New England, the man behind New Hampshire Eats, and the Farmboy Foodie. In Episode 76, Phil is back on Beyond the Plate with Carol for a redo of his first interview, and it kicks off with a chai latte taste test between Williams & Sons Coff...

On Friday, October 23, 2026, Manchester Country Club turns into the Emerald City. The Wizard of Pawz Gala -- There's No Place Like a Furrever Home -- is the annual fundraising gala for Friends of the Manchester Animal Shelter, and in this episode Carol Erickson heads to 490 Dunbarton Road in Manchester, New Hampshire to find out what it pays for. She sits down with Judie Brown, Vice President of t...

Being executive chef was always the dream for Travis Greene -- he just never expected to find that kind of fine-dining opportunity in the Lakes Region. He started as a first-year culinary student at Lakes Region Community College, plating baked haddock for the public at a student-run cafe. Now he's the Executive Chef at The Lake Estate on Winnisquam, one of New Hampshire's newest luxury resorts, r...

Jenny Cyr of Live Life Bites never planned any of this -- she was 14 years old washing dishes at a small bakery, and now her protein bites are feeding cancer patients at a treatment center affiliated with Dana-Farber. In this episode, Jenny sits down with Carol to trace the whole path: a Pastry Arts degree from Johnson & Wales, staging in NYC kitchens under Bobby Flay and Todd English, burning...

Bianca Alicea of Mama Bear's Cookies didn't set out to become a baker. She ran a successful jewelry manufacturing business in Rhode Island with her mother -- then sold everything, packed up her family, and moved to the quiet woods of Sullivan, New Hampshire for a completely different life. When COVID hit while they were still unpacking boxes, Bianca started baking cookies to keep herself sane. Her...

Throwback -- this is Episode 1, originally recorded in spring 2025 and first aired June 19, 2025. Hap's Roast Beef closed in July 2025. Seventy episodes ago, before Beyond the Plate with Carol had a studio, a logo, or a single subscriber, it had two chairs at a table, a camera Carol Erickson's son set up for her, and that same son sitting across from her. This is Episode 1 -- Carol's very first po...

Deb McCluskey bought one small cafe in Kittery, Maine in 2021. Five years later, she and her son Michael McCluskey run seven restaurants across Maine and New Hampshire -- and she signed the lease on the seventh one without telling him. Carol Erickson sat down with Deb inside Salty Spirits, the 500-square-foot oyster and cocktail bar in Kittery Foreside with just 14 seats at the bar, to walk throug...

Nick Carnes and Dan Haggerty have close to 40 years in restaurants between them, and they just opened a bar that will not pour you a single drop of alcohol. Without is Manchester, New Hampshire's first fully alcohol-free bar and restaurant, on the corner of Elm Street and Hanover Street across from City Hall -- and Carol Erickson recorded this entire episode of Beyond the Plate with Carol inside i...

Corey Fletcher started out washing dishes at a family-style restaurant in Milford, New Hampshire -- and almost 30 years later, he owns one of the busiest kitchens in downtown Concord. Revival Kitchen and Bar opened on Depot Street in 2016, taking over the space of the shuttered Sunny's Table, and it has been a farm-to-table anchor of the Concord, NH restaurant scene ever since. In this episode, Co...

He wanted to be a Disney animator. Instead, Chef Evan Hennessey became the first chef in New Hampshire history to win the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northeast -- and this year, he opened his fourth venture in Dover. Carol sits down with Evan right at Stages at One Washington to talk about the whole arc -- from a dishwashing job with no career plan, to staging in some of the country's best ki...

Andy Day built way more than a bar -- he's the owner and chef behind Cask & Vine in Derry, NH, and the founder of both Doire Distilling and Daydreaming Brewing Company, all under one roof. This week's episode is mixed up a little bit -- we're on location at Cask & Vine in Derry, New Hampshire! Carol sits down with Andy to talk through how a 2010 beer festival turned into an entire craft be...

John Milliard ran the toaster at Pappy's Pizza & Subs when he was just 12 years old. Over three decades later, he owns the place -- and he's carrying forward the legacy of the man who mentored him, founder Ron Pappas. In this episode, Carol sits down with John at Pappy's on Elm Street in Manchester to talk about buying back his mentor's restaurant, the three-month renovation that brought it in...

What's it really like to be 8 years old and growing up outside the walled city of Lucca, Italy -- with a go-kart, a backyard full of chickens, and grandparents who make their own tomato sauce every summer? On this special episode of Beyond the Plate with Carol, Carol sits down with her great-nephew Oliviero -- Oli, as the family calls him -- for a conversation that has nothing to do with restauran...

What's it really like to be 8 years old and growing up outside the walled city of Lucca, Italy -- with a go-kart, a backyard full of chickens, and grandparents who make their own tomato sauce every summer? On this special episode of Beyond the Plate with Carol, Carol sits down with her great-nephew Oliviero -- Oli, as the family calls him -- for a conversation that has nothing to do with restauran...

Ryan of Crazy Dreamers never planned any of this. A random line his wife said years ago -- "keep dreaming, you crazy dreamer" -- became the name of the New Hampshire food content account that's now grown to roughly 20-26K followers on Facebook and more than 50,000 on TikTok. Ryan builds all of it around a full-time job at his family's concrete company in New Hampshire and raising his 4-year-old so...

Jim Varney spent 25 years designing consumer products -- until he saw one of his own designs sitting in a pile of "trash" at a modern art museum, and it changed everything. Now he and his wife Deanna run Wavelength Coffee Roasters out of a solar-powered former rope mill in Shirley, Massachusetts. In this episode, Jim and Deanna talk about the industrial design background that led to their steel-ca...

There is a camp in Bedford, New Hampshire with a 250-person waiting list. And most people in this state have never heard of it. In this episode, Carol Erickson sits down with Mel Gosselin, Executive Director of Camp Allen NH, and Emily DiRusso, Camp Director -- to talk about 95 years of changing lives for people with developmental and physical disabilities. Camp Allen is not just for kids. Their o...

I just could not wait to share this -- so here it is early!! At Camp Allen in Bedford, NH, Carol sat down with Executive Director Mel Gosselin and Camp Director Emily DiRusso to talk about everything that makes this place run. But she also got to do something even more special -- she sat down with the campers directly and heard about the Camp Allen experience straight from the people who live it....

He helps run a Facebook community of 212,000 people who love food in New Hampshire. He is a truck driver by day. He organized the food trucks at Granite State Comic-Con. He flew to New Zealand in 2024 for a budget endurance car race -- and got sent to the penalty box. Jason Hopkins is one of the admins and moderators of New Hampshire Eats, one of the largest food communities in the state. Carol sa...

In 2017, Carol Erickson had a heart attack at her home in New Boston, New Hampshire. The firefighters who showed up that morning saved her life. One of them was Bill Mortimer -- and he's our guest today. Bill is a Firefighter and AEMT at Hudson Fire Department in Hudson, NH. You may have seen him on NH Chronicle making smash burgers for his crew. But there's a story behind why Carol really wanted...

Carol brought At the Plate all the way to Greece for this one -- recorded on the back of a 52-ft sailing yacht named Baron, at the end of a 7-day charter through the Greek islands with Yachtsailing.com. In this episode, Carol sits down with the two people who made the whole trip unforgettable: Chef Dimitri, who left traditional restaurant kitchens behind for life cooking on the water, and Captain...

He played 8,000 shows in Las Vegas. Won 27 Emmys. Built a kindness empire. And now he's in the burger business -- and he's only 6 months in. In Episode 57 of Beyond the Plate with Carol, Carol Erickson sits down with Justin Spencer -- founder of Recycled Percussion, creator of the Emmy Award-winning Chaos & Kindness TV series, and co-owner of the fast-growing NH smash burger concept BAD BRGR....