Hanover's New Restaurants Aren't as New as They Look

Walk down South Main Street this week and you'll see the signs of Hanover Restaurant Week everywhere: chalkboard menus outside Molly's, a new sushi case glowing in the window of Tuk Tuk Thai Cuisine's relocated dining room, a line for smoothie bowls that didn't exist eighteen months ago. The event runs through August 22, and if you haven't picked a night yet, you have twelve days left to catch a prix fixe menu before it disappears until next summer.

But spend enough time comparing addresses and owners, and a different story starts to surface. The wave of "new" restaurants that has reshaped downtown Hanover over the past two years is not really a story about new restaurants. It's a story about a small circle of people and one nonprofit landlord rearranging the same storefronts, right as the town debates ripping out the parking spaces that make half of this dining scene's outdoor seating possible.

What Restaurant Week Actually Is

Hanover Restaurant Week is organized by Main Street Hanover and runs from August 8 through August 22 this year. Participating restaurants build a prix fixe menu, usually two or three courses, and set their own pricing tier. Part of the proceeds goes back to Main Street Hanover to fund the group's downtown programming. It's a low-stakes way to try somewhere you've been meaning to visit or revisit a favorite with a different lens. Given how much has changed in the past twenty months, there's more reason than usual to use it that way.

One Owner, Two Kitchens, One Football Field

Start with the connection most diners don't clock. Jennifer Packard owns both Molly's Restaurant and Bar and Buddy T's Grill and Sports Bar, and the two sit close enough that chef Ryan O'Day splits his working hours between them, walking what amounts to a football field's distance between kitchens. Packard bought Buddy T's space, at 7 Lebanon Street, from Molly's previous owner Tony Barnett on January 1, naming the new spot for the late Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens. It opened January 14. The same seller, Barnett, had already sold Molly's to Packard in 2024 and Jesse's Steaks, Seafood and Tavern to its longtime manager Patrick Reed. Three of the Upper Valley's better-known restaurant names changed hands within the same small network of people over roughly two years.

That's not a criticism. It's a fact about how a small commercial district works. When a restaurant closes here, it rarely goes to a stranger. It goes to someone who already knows the walk-in cooler and half the staff.

The Landlord Who Moved Two Businesses at Once

The more telling story is what happened at 5 South Main Street. Tuk Tuk Thai Cuisine spent a decade in a downstairs space there, reached by a steep staircase, after owner Pannipa Pace opened it in 2015. Earlier this year, property owner Jon Livadas moved forward with plans to demolish the rear annex of the building to build 35 units of housing. That annex held both Tuk Tuk and Walt & Ernie's Barbershop, and both had to find new homes. The front of the same building, where Dirt Cowboy, Murphy's on the Green, and Simon Pearce operate, stayed put.

Tuk Tuk closed its old location on June 16 and reopened days later in a ground-floor space at 44 South Main Street, adding a sushi bar to the menu along the way. That address has its own history worth knowing: it was Market Table cafe for eight years until 2020, then Impasto (a sister restaurant to Murphy's), then an events space called Venue, and now Tuk Tuk. Four concepts, one storefront, over roughly a decade. Ken Pace, who's been helping with the buildout, noted the new spot sits a bit farther from Dartmouth's campus than the old one, joking that he's hoping students will walk the extra hundred yards for their usual order.

Here's a quick look at who's actually behind some of the names you've seen on South Main and Lebanon Street lately:

The Nonprofit Deciding What Opens Next to the Movie Theater

That last line in the table is worth sitting with. Playa Bowls, which moved into the space where the Nest Kitchen and Cafe used to be, leases its storefront from the Hanover Improvement Society, a nonprofit that also oversees Storrs Pond Recreation Area, Campion Rink, the Nugget Theaters, and Hanover Scoops, the ice cream shop a few doors down. In other words, one nonprofit organization controls the leasing decisions for a meaningful stretch of South Main Street's food and entertainment options, not a chain landlord or a private real estate group. The Society's longtime executive director, Jeff Graham, retired this year after twelve years in the role, with Jennifer Rickards stepping in. Whoever holds that job effectively curates part of what you can eat before or after a movie.

Sawtooth Kitchen owner Kieran Campion has described a real resurgence in new restaurant openings downtown since the pandemic slump. That's true. It's also true that a lot of that resurgence is running through the same small set of landlords, owners, and one nonprofit board.

The Parking Spot Under Your Patio

None of this happens in a vacuum, and the town is currently negotiating the one variable that could shrink outdoor dining options across downtown. Since the pandemic, Hanover has allowed restaurants to rent street parking spaces for patio seating between May 1 and October 31. It's why you can sit outside at several spots along South Main through the warmer months.

That program is now colliding with a proposed $14.9 million infrastructure overhaul of South Main Street, which as of this spring was in early planning stages, with a full design expected within the year and a resident vote at Town Meeting slated for May 2028. The plan would eliminate 28 on-street parking spaces and shift the east side of the street to parallel parking. Bob Romano, owner of Hanover Haircutters, started a petition against the seasonal patio-to-parking swap that had gathered about 80 signatures as of this spring, arguing he's lost customers who couldn't find a spot. Heather Cantlin, who runs Bean's Art Store, has voiced similar concerns about competing with big-box alternatives in West Lebanon when parking gets tighter downtown. Packard, whose restaurants depend on that same seasonal patio space, supports fixing the street's aging infrastructure but worries that losing nearly 30 spaces is too much too fast.

None of this is settled. But it means the outdoor tables filling up during Restaurant Week this month are sitting on contested ground, literally, and the shape of downtown dining in a few years may depend less on which chef opens next and more on how that parking fight resolves.

What This Means If You're Just Trying to Get Dinner

None of this should stop you from enjoying the next two weeks. Try the sushi at the new Tuk Tuk. See what Buddy T's kitchen does with a prix fixe menu built around the same scratch cooking that made Molly's a staple. Grab a smoothie bowl before or after a Nugget showing and notice that you're standing on Hanover Improvement Society property while you do it. Knowing who's actually behind the storefront doesn't change what's on the plate, but it does change how you read the next round of "grand opening" news that comes through town, and it's a reminder that even a small commercial strip has its own quiet architecture of ownership, leases, and civic decisions running underneath the menu boards.

If you're the kind of person who likes understanding how a place actually works, not just what's for sale in it, that curiosity tends to serve you well no matter what you're looking into next, whether it's a new restaurant or eventually a new address. Alan DiStasio has spent 25 years paying attention to exactly this kind of detail across Hanover and the Upper Valley. If you ever want a conversation about what's happening in this market, beyond what shows up on a listing sheet, reach out anytime.