Concord's Food Scene Is Growing on Two Different Streets This Fall

Ali Kalem has spent this summer standing in a kitchen that used to belong to someone else. The space inside the Centennial Hotel on Pleasant Street last served guests as the Granite Restaurant & Bar, and before Kalem can put his own menu in front of Concord, he has to make the kitchen his. He already runs Anatolia Mediterranean Restaurant in Somersworth, a spot he built inside a converted train depot in 2021, and this fall he is opening a second location inside one of Concord's most recognizable old buildings, a Victorian brick structure built in 1892 on a site that had housed the Centennial Home, one of New Hampshire's earliest charitable homes for elderly women, since 1876.

Across town, on Fort Eddy Road, an entirely different kind of opening happened this past August. Anna's Taqueria, a Boston-based chain that has never operated a single New Hampshire location before, opened its doors at Fort Eddy Plaza with three tacos for ten dollars and a raffle line out front. No turrets, no century-old brickwork, just a strip-plaza storefront built for volume and speed.

Both of these are real Concord restaurant openings happening in the same season. Neither one tells you the whole story on its own. Put them side by side and a pattern comes into focus that's easy to miss if you only pay attention to whichever corridor you happen to drive through most.

Two Corridors, Two Different Bets

Concord is placing two very different bets on its own future as a place to eat, and they are happening in two different parts of town at the same time.

Downtown, along Pleasant Street and Main Street, the newest additions are chef-driven and building-specific. They are betting on character, on a destination, on people who will drive in and park because the room itself is part of the reason to come.

Along Fort Eddy Road and Loudon Road, the newest additions are regional and national chains making their first or second appearance in the state. They are betting on visibility from the road, easy parking, and the kind of repeat convenience that doesn't require a special occasion.

Neither bet is wrong. But if your mental map of "what's new in Concord" only includes one of these corridors, you are missing roughly half of what actually opened this year.

What's Landing Downtown

The Centennial Hotel move is the one worth watching most closely, because of what the building itself represents. Kalem's Anatolia is expected to open sometime around mid-October, serving both hotel guests and the surrounding community, and he has said he wants Concord to feel the same way his original Somersworth location does. "We're hoping to create like a big Anatolia family," he said of the new space. Before Somersworth, Kalem owned a restaurant called Mediterrano in Hillsborough, which he later sold to another Turkish family, and food has been central to his life since childhood cooking lessons from his mother.

Downtown got another new address back in January, too, when Kosta Alexandropoulos opened Yamas Greek Eatery. Alexandropoulos already runs a Yamas location in Plymouth and recently opened a seafood spot there too, called The Codfather. His approach to Concord centers on a Greek word he uses often: philoxenia, the love of strangers. He wants tables of people who don't know each other to end up pulled together over a shared bottle of wine by the end of the night. The bar program leans into the same spirit, with drinks like the Toasted Maple Martini and the Merry Mule, plus a Greek take on a margarita called the Yamarita that has become the eatery's top seller.

What both of these openings have in common is that they depend on downtown Concord working as a place people choose to walk to. That's not incidental. It's the entire business model.

What's Landing on the Fort Eddy and Loudon Road Corridor

Meanwhile, the corridor running along Fort Eddy Road and out toward Loudon Road has quietly become the address for a different kind of Concord first.

Anna's Taqueria's arrival in August wasn't just a new taco spot. It was the chain's first New Hampshire location, period, after nearly three decades of operating almost exclusively around Boston, Cambridge, Newton, Somerville, and Woburn, with only one other location outside Massachusetts, in Cranston, Rhode Island. The Fort Eddy Road build-out runs nearly 2,800 square feet, with seating for 40 inside and another 26 on a patio.

Along that same corridor, NH Doughnut Co. relocated in May after closing its longtime spot at Capital Plaza. Owner Amanda Baril moved the whole operation to 89 Fort Eddy Road, with more parking, a full kitchen, and a new espresso bar that the old location never had room for.

And back in January, Raising Cane's opened its second New Hampshire location on Loudon Road, near Aldi and the old Regal movie theater site, with an ice-carving demonstration and giveaways to mark the day.

None of these openings depend on foot traffic or a historic building doing any of the work. They depend on a road, a sign, and a parking lot. That's not a lesser bet, it's just a completely different one than what's happening on Pleasant Street.

The Fall Calendar Still Belongs to Downtown

Here's the part that ties the two corridors together, even though only one of them needs it.

The Concord Farmers' Market runs Saturday mornings on Capitol Street, drawing people downtown on foot every single week through the fall. Intown Concord keeps its First Friday tradition going every month, encouraging downtown businesses to stay open late with sales and activities designed to get people wandering from storefront to storefront. And when Halloween approaches, the Halloween Howl fills Main Street with costumed kids and trick-or-treating, the same sidewalks Yamas and the future Anatolia location are counting on for foot traffic.

None of that programming happens on Fort Eddy Road. It doesn't need to. A doughnut shop with its own parking lot and a taco chain with a drive-adjacent plaza aren't relying on a festival calendar to bring people through the door. They're relying on the fact that people are already driving that corridor to get somewhere else, and now there's a reason to stop.

That's the actual difference between these two parts of Concord's food scene this season. It isn't just where the restaurants happen to be. It's what kind of foot traffic each one is built to survive on.

Two Concords, Same Season

If you live near downtown, you've probably already noticed the scaffolding-and-signage version of this story: something is clearly happening at the Centennial, and Yamas has been busy since January. If you live closer to the Fort Eddy or Loudon Road stretch, you've probably already stood in line for tacos or grabbed a doughnut from the new spot without thinking much about what it means that a Boston chain picked this exact corridor for its first New Hampshire foothold.

Both halves of that story are worth knowing, because they say something true about where Concord is headed. The historic core is still attracting the kind of chef who wants to build something inside a building with its own history. The commercial corridor is still attracting regional chains that see enough traffic and enough rooftops nearby to bet on a first location here. A town growing in only one direction would be simpler to describe. Concord isn't doing that, and that's worth noticing before the leaves are all the way down.

If you're the kind of person who likes knowing what's actually happening in the town you live in, not just the version that shows up in a generic "best of" list, that instinct tends to serve people well no matter what they're deciding next, whether it's where to grab dinner this weekend or where to put down roots for the next chapter. If a move, a sale, or a search for the right Concord neighborhood is somewhere on your horizon, Holistic Homes Group knows this town street by street, corridor by corridor. Schedule your free 30-minute consultation whenever you're ready to talk it through.