A growing culinary empire: A New Hampshire couple expand with a third restaurant

Five years ago, Chris Viaud traveled to Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, to look at a property he heard was empty. The Massachusetts-born chef had decided it was time to strike out on his own and start his own restaurant. But, for one reason or another, it didn’t come to pass and another chef moved in, creating a restaurant called Pavilion.

Which actually worked out just fine for Viaud, because he soon found a gorgeous property in Milford, New Hampshire, an hour or so south of the Lakes Region: In 2019, he opened Greenleaf, a farm-to-table focused restaurant that’s gained the 32-year-old Viaud considerable notice.

Fast forward to March 2023 and Viaud was happily back in Pavilion in Wolfeboro, beginning service in what is now his third restaurant. Seems like destiny, or just determination.

“It is interesting that my original plan was to open a restaurant in this space,” said Viaud this past summer. “I toured it before it was a restaurant, but it was a question of timing. It just didn’t work out. Instead, we traveled to this town we never knew existed and fell in love with this historic bank building,” he added.

Indeed, it should be noted Greenleaf is set in a handsome brick building  dating to 1865, when it was built to house the Souhegan Valley Bank. That original building was renovated in 1907 by Boston-based architect Luther Greenleaf who further embellished the successful local bank. Greenleaf’s original hand drawn blueprints are framed and hang inside the restaurant named for him.

Learning to Build a Restaurant

Born in Everett to Haitian immigrant parents, Viaud grew up in Randolph, Massachusetts, before the family moved to Londonderry, New Hampshire. He graduated from Johnson and Wales University in Providence, a school renowned for its culinary program — which is where he and his wife, fellow chef Emilee met!

Viaud gained his practical chef’s legs whilst cooking at Deuxave on the cusp of Back Bay and the Fenway in Boston. The noted French-styled restaurant then led him to, “a more corporate job,” he said, working with Paparazzi Metro, the popular New England casual Italian restaurant chain, which taught him additional skills away from the skillet.

“This is where I learned how to build a restaurant from the ground up and how to build a team,” he said. “It gave me great skills I used when I opened Greenleaf.”

Growing Reputation

Then the COVID-19 pandemic changed the world and Viaud quickly learnt a major new skill: pivoting. That same year, Viaud received a call from an old colleague who had dropped his name to the casting department at “Top Chef.” He was accepted to appear on the Bravo TV show’s Season 18, making for a very interesting time during an already strange year.

“Once I was accepted, it was a fast drop to appearing on the show,” Viaud recalls. “I’d just opened Greenleaf and opened up a bakery in Milford too. I was flown to Portland, Oregon, and I got on the plane hoping they would all still be standing when I got back.”

They were.

Appearing on a top TV cooking show, which aired spring 2021, did nothing but bolster his reputation and as Greenleaf gained traction, Viaud received a considerable nod as a 2022 semifinalist in the James Beard Awards “Emerging Chef" category — the New York City-based James Beard Foundation awards are commonly known as the Oscars of the US restaurant world.

Another pivot: diversifying. At the beginning of 2021, Viaud set up a casual Haitian cuisine influenced pop-up Ansanm in Milford. With the pandemic still causing shutdowns and caution, it did a roaring trade in take-out.

Honoring Heritage

In the fall of 2022, Viaud put Ansanm into a brick and mortar space, also in Milford. (The bakery, Culture, was eventually sold to a friend and colleague in 2021; it closed in early 2023.)

“It was important to honor my heritage and how I grew up,” Viaud said of Ansanm. “I wanted to tell my story in food and have it be part of a greater conversation in how the culture is shifting, and to educate on Haitian cuisine and Haitian culture.

“After the pop-up, there was so much interest,” he added. “It was a family decision to open up the space. Everything is a family decision,” he added, “This is a family business.”

Hence, the name: "Ansanm," in Haitian Creole, means "together." A word that gained wider, deeper meaning during the pandemic.

Viaud's overarching Northern Comfort Hospitality Group includes sister Kassie as director of operations and Chris’ parents, Yves and Myrlene Viaud, who run Ansanm, with Myrlene providing the authentic Haitian dishes like griot (braised pork shoulder) and pate (like a hand pie or pasty), and an irresistible Haitian butter cake.

“That’s my mom’s recipe,” Viaud said proudly.

The causal diner, which, unlike Greenleaf and Pavilion, serves both lunch and dinner, also showcases pikliz — a pickled spicy cabbage slaw embellishing just about every Haitian meal; and epis, a dried pepper, celery, garlic, and herb mix used in many savory dishes, including rice and beans, stews, and soups.

There’s also Myrlene’s soupe joumon.

“This is the most well known Haitian dish,” said Viaud. “It is also called Independence Soup. Traditionally it was made for the masters, but in 1804 when Haiti gained independence, we started making it for ourselves,” he said, noting the liberation of the former French ruled island.

Each New Year’s Day, Jan. 1, it is still traditional for Haitians to cook soupe joumon and take a batch on their visits to friends, neighbors, and family’s homes. “It’s like a soup swap,” Viaud explained.

“It’s a hearty soup with squash, some cabbage, onion, and potatoes.” Cloves and fiery Scotch Bonnet peppers give the soup spice. “Some people add meat,” Viaud added.

Interestingly, French cuisine has played a big part in Viaud’s cooking life: firstly, enslaved Africans, kidnapped and forced to work on sugar and coffee plantations in Haiti adapted the cooking traditions of French colonists. But, more happily, he gained French fine cuisine skills during his time at Deuxave.

“I learned a lot at Deuxave. I learned French cooking techniques, but also how to go to a farm and learn about the growing cycles,” Viaud said.

That is reflected in Greenleaf, and now at Pavilion, whose menus are greatly shaped by Viaud’s experience of being born and raised in New England and beginning his career at a time when the locavore, seasonally focused farm-to-table movement was no longer a novelty, but a back to roots norm.

“You have to put the farmers first — I travel to the farms or go to incredible co-ops and am inspired by what’s there,” Viaud said. “We will take the ripest, tastiest vegetable and create interesting dishes by cooking and serving them in multiple ways: grill them, puree them, braise them. So you get a blend of flavors and textures on the plate.”

On the Sweet Side

There is another important element at Greenleaf and Pavilion: Emilee Viaud.

After Emilee, who was born and raised in Concord, New Hampshire, earned her bachelors in Pastry Arts at Johnson and Wales University, she began her own pastry business, Sweet Treats by Emilee, creating custom cakes and cookies. Since the Pavilion acquisition, she is now executive pastry chef for both restaurants, creating tantalizing desert menus and prepping and training staff on plating and presentation.

Try resisting chocolate and peanut butter semifreddo drizzled with caramel; or a tangy yuzu vanilla cake with Meyer lemon curd and strawberry puree. Just as Viaud changes up seasonally, so does Emilee.

Emilee and Chris, and their 3-year-old daughter Maddie split their time between Wolfeboro and Milford, but kitchen duties are currently concentrated on shaping up Pavilion, leaving Greenleaf in the hands of longtime associate, chef de cuisine Justin O’Malley, a Lowell native and Culinary Institute of America graduate.

A Personal Touch

Pavilion, which stands next to the boutique Pickering House Inn on Wolfeboro’s Main Street, flows out from a raw antique wood accented front bar to a rear garden patio. Because Pavilion was already named and renovated — it was turnkey, basically — taking over posed a different scenario from that of starting a restaurant from scratch, as with Greenleaf and Ansanm.

“We opened straight up with the format and layout that was already here,” said Viaud. “I will make changes, give it my personal touch, but also while honoring this beautiful space.”

The menu, however, is all Viaud’s.

Various fishes and meats are treated to seasonally changing embellishments. Menu standard, the grilled pork loin’s pairing of a rich roasted strawberry barbecue sauce served with homemade corn bread morphed into that of bright tasting green apple, yuzu, and fennel, and the accompaniment of apple bread.

Late summer into fall is often when the most voluptuous crops are really ready: juicy late season tomatoes, a myriad of squashes, and, of course, the sweetest corn cobs imaginable. Among the gluten free dishes, a plant-based mushroom risotto gets a boost from peak mushroom season, too, and Emilee swaps over from berry fruits to local apples and pears for inspiration.

“The first menu came as we were in that transitional phase at the end of March, when New England produce isn’t so plentiful,” he said. “But we made use of good root vegetables and that moved into the spring peas and asparagus. Once the produce changes, the menu changes.”

Visit

Ansanm is open noon to 8 p.m., Wed.—Sat.; and noon to 6 p.m., Sundays, at 20 South St., Milford. ansanmnh.com

Greenleaf is open 5 p.m.—9 p.m., Mon. —Sat. at 54 Nashua St., Milford. greenleafmilford.com

Pavilion is open summer: 5 p.m.—9 p.m., Wed.—Sun.; fall & winter: 5 p.m.—9 p.m., Thur.—Sun., at 126 South Main St., Wolfeboro. pavilionwolfeboro.com

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: 'Top Chef' contestant, James Beard nominee set for third restaurant