I have not gone back and watched this one in a long time, and I will tell you honestly, I was a little nervous to.

This is Episode 1. The very first thing I ever recorded, 70 episodes ago. There was no studio. There was no logo. There were two chairs at a table and a camera my son set up for me, because I refused to spend a fortune on a podcast I was not even sure I could do. I had a stack of handwritten notes in my lap that I could barely read. You can see them if you watch it.

And my guest was Tyler. My son. Eight days after he became a father for the first time, he got in the car and drove almost an hour to come sit with me and let me point a camera at him. I have to say it again -- eight days. With a newborn at home and two businesses running. That is the kind of thing you don't forget.

  "I feel honored being your first guest on your first ever podcast"

That is the first thing he says. And it got me right in the chest then and it got me again watching it back.

Tyler grew up in the Red Arrow. He likes to say he was born in the basement, which is not true, but honestly it may as well be. He worked every single job across all four locations -- Manchester, Concord, Londonderry, Nashua. Dishwashing. Prep. The line. Out front. Manager. There is not a corner of a diner that kid doesn't know.

So when he and Amanda moved up to Maine and bought a roast beef shop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in January of 2023, I was not worried about whether he could run it. I was mostly just sitting back watching, going, oh my gosh, that's my kid.

  What he actually bought

Hap's was on Lafayette Road out on Route 1, and it had been there since 2008. Deb and Joe started it and named it after Joe's father, who by all accounts was the happiest guy alive. Tyler didn't know that when he bought it. A customer walked in one day with an old shirt that said the happiest haddock on the seacoast, with a big smiling haddock on the back, and that's how he found out who he'd inherited.

He told me: "Okay, I would definitely get along with these old owners, right?"

What he bought was not in great shape. Missing lights. Missing ceiling tiles. In his words, a forgotten sub shop. I called it a dive and he did not argue with me.

Here is the part I want every person who has ever thought about buying a restaurant to hear. He did not go in and change everything. He ran it exactly the way the previous owner ran it for a full year first.

"I feel like we did exactly what the old owner was doing. We didn't really switch much. I just wanted to kind of learn what Hap's was."

Almost 40 years in this business and I still think that is one of the smartest things I have heard anybody say about taking over somebody else's place. You cannot fix a thing until you understand what it already is.

  The slicer that fixed everything

Then they started chipping away. Food quality. Fixing things. Replacing things. And the big one, the one everything hinged on -- it's a roast beef shop, so the roast beef had to be perfect.

They tried oven cooking. Convection. Sous vide. All of it.

And the thing that finally cracked it was not a recipe at all. It was a Berkel 910 slicer built in 1986.

"Once we got a roast beef slicer, it started like slicing the beef exactly how we wanted it. So, we wanted to improve the flavor, improve the quality, and that's what we did."

A machine older than he is. I love that.

If you don't know North Shore style roast beef, it is pink and rare. Gray beef is not what you want. And then Tyler said something that I think is the most honest thing anybody in food has ever said on my show. Could they have served gray beef every single day and stayed just as busy? Yes. People care -- but they will eat anything.

  The beefers

I did not know this world existed until my son explained it to me. There is a Facebook community for North Shore roast beef with something like 50,000 members. They call themselves beefers. They give each other a hard time constantly.

They rate everything. Napkin count. Beef to bun ratio. Whether the cheese is melted. Whether the cheese goes on the bottom. I had to text Amanda and ask her to send me the abbreviations because I had no idea what any of it meant.

And if you let a gray beef go out the door? They will let you know. Publicly. With a two star rating and forty-five comments about it.

Tyler said he hates that page and loves that page, and that it is exactly what pushed them to be consistent. That is real. Nobody keeps you honest like a customer who cares more than you expected them to.

  Yes, you have to talk about the bathroom

If you have ever been to the Red Arrow in Manchester, you know that to get to the bathroom you follow the arrows on the ceiling and you walk right through the kitchen. People love it. People are confused by it. That is the charm.

My son took that idea and ran with it. At Hap's, they ripped the bathroom out and built something that does not belong in a roast beef shop at all. Black toilet. Gold fixtures. Wallpaper, murals, portraits, real art on the walls. I told him it was like walking into a New York speakeasy.

And then he tells me it also has its own scent, pumped in through the ceiling. And its own playlist. One song. On repeat -- because, as he put it, nobody should be in there long enough to notice.

I lost it.

People came to that shop because of the bathroom. They'd heard the food was good and the bathroom was worth seeing, so they came for both. There are entire Facebook and Instagram groups that review restaurant bathrooms, which neither of us knew was a thing.

His advice, and I agree with him completely: if you own a restaurant, invest in your bathroom. Have fun with it. It's creative marketing and it works.

He said he got that from me. I told him I got it from him.

  Knowing when to hand it over

The reason we recorded when we did is that Hap's was closing.

Not because of rent, and not because it wasn't working. Tyler had taken over a ten-year lease with two and a half years left on it, and by the time he got to that mark he was a father, they had a kitchen business running in Maine, and there were opportunities to get the Hap's sauces and spice packets into stores across New England. Priorities move. That's allowed.

But here is the part that made me proudest, and it has nothing to do with sandwiches.

He didn't just list the lease and walk away.

"I do care about the community and the beef people and I didn't want this just go on the market and become a florist."

So he went looking. He reached out to beef shops he actually admired and thought were doing it right, and he found Tostimo's Pizza Kitchen out of Seabrook, New Hampshire -- a husband and wife with two little kids, doing exactly what he and Amanda had been doing. He said it basically looked like watching themselves. He called them, went and checked them out, and told them the brand wasn't for sale but the location was theirs if they wanted it.

They took it. They brought pizza to Portsmouth, which is the one thing customers were always asking Hap's for. And they slice their beef to order, which Tyler will tell you is the whole ballgame.

Hap's served its last sandwich on July 25.

  You have to start somewhere

Near the end of the episode Tyler tells me I'll be able to look back at this someday from episode 327 and laugh at the camera angles.

He's right. I already am.

I told him about my very first radio show -- Food for Thought with the Taste Buds, with my friend Michelle -- and how absolutely terrified we were, going out live, no take-backs. We listen to it now and laugh our heads off.

You have to start somewhere. That's the whole thing. That's why I'm putting Episode 1 back up instead of letting it sit buried.

Go watch it. And if you've got a place you want me to visit, tell me -- you all know I read the comments.

Have a happening Hap's day.

Find Beyond the Plate everywhere: linktr.ee/BeyondtheplateNH

This episode is brought to you by Belmont Hall & Restaurant in Manchester, NH -- family-owned for over 90 years. belmonthall.net

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ABOUT CAROL ERICKSON

Carol Erickson has owned Red Arrow Diner since 1987 -- four locations across New Hampshire, open 24/7. She started Beyond the Plate to tell the real stories behind the people who make New England's food and hospitality scene what it is. Not just what's on the menu. What's behind it.

Red Arrow Diner: redarrowdiner.com  |  @redarrow24diner