Dean Johnson

In a seaside city known for its impressive slew of good restaurants, Vera Ristorante is already near the top of that list.

Cranberry with apple isn’t the most popular combination for a pie, Alaina and Doug Brackett, the owners of Purple Carrot Bread Co. in Lowell, swear by this delicious recipe.

Viviana Acevedo, the owner of the Colombian restaurant Panela in Lowell, shares the recipe for her Panela Pork Loin.

Some people decide to learn traditional family recipes out of love, some out of respect. Jimi Gallant, executive chef for the Lupoli Companies as well as Andover’s new 34 Park, did it out of desperation.

It reads like the perfect definition of insanity: opening a new restaurant in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. Here are some of their stories.

There was a time when dining out options in Groton largely involved deciding between pepperoni or extra cheese. Thanffully, those days are gone.

Here’s something that may have slipped past you while you were desperately making sure your Instacart orders went through: Vinyl record sales revenues, prepandemic, were set to top CD sales this year.

Fabrizia Spirits has been around since 2008, and though limoncello is its core product, the company has branched out over the years to also offer a blood orange liquor, a creamy limoncello liquor, and a line of canned cocktails.

Biddeford’s culinary, arts and business scenes are all blossoming … so much so that local wags have a come up with the word “Biddesance” to capture the city’s resurgence.

Downtown Nashua’s foodie scene is once again happening in a big way, and it should be a template for the Bay State when restaurants re-open in June.

When a restaurant has shorthand symbols for “kiss” (X) and “hug” (O) in its name, you can be reasonably sure that hospitality is a high priority.

Dean Johnson visits Market Basket with his wife and discovers a world in transition as they Texas two-step through the aisles.