Margaret's Kitchen brings soulful breakfasts to Sanbornton

SANBORNTON — Dustin Paquet-Martel always loved cooking, but it was only within the past few years that he decided to open his own place. The result is Margaret’s Kitchen, just west of the Mosquito Bridge, where Paquet-Martel has been serving breakfast and lunch for just over a year.

“I’ve always been into cooking, and food. As early as I can remember, I was adding things to my Chef Boyardee. Instead of watching Saturday morning cartoons,I’d watch Julia Child,” he said.

Paquet-Martel grew up in Laconia, graduated from LHS in 2004 and went on to the New England Culinary Institute.

He worked for the past several years as a sous chef in local restaurants – The Manor on Golden Pond, The Lakehouse Grille, for example – until he reached a point where he wasn’t sure if he wanted to take the next logical career move, and take the top chef job in an established kitchen. Instead, he decided to jump off the track he was on and forge his own way.

“It wasn’t until the last couple of years that I said I wanted to own my own place,” he said. “The next step in my career was to either be the executive chef and work for someone else, or open my own place.”

When it came time to think of his restaurant’s concept, he thought back to where his love of cooking originated: in the kitchen of his adoptive father’s mother, his grandmother Margaret.

“I just remember being in her kitchen more than any other kitchen. I remember eating her peanut butter balls, the weird old people candy out of the glass jar, those are definitely my first food memories,” Paquet-Martel said.

Margaret’s place was where the family gathered, he said, and when she died, he realized how much she meant to him. “Not being able to go there for Christmas really messed me up. I think it was then that I decided I wanted to work in kitchens, I feel at home behind the stove.”

Margaret’s Kitchen opened in May of last year. Because of his chef’s schedule, Paquet-Martel was always busy at night but had time off in the mornings, so he got to know the local breakfast market well. He figured he could offer breakfast and lunch food that can’t be found nearby.

Business has been building, slowly, and mostly on the reputation that Paquet-Martel has been establishing on his food: southern-inspired, home-made.

“The difference between us and the standard breakfast joint is we are cooking everything here,” he said. “It gets your soul full.”

Though some of the recipes are inspired from locales hundreds of miles away, Paquet-Martel has sought to keep the ingredients close to home. The purveyors list includes Wayfarer Coffee Roasters, Fox Country Smoke House, Winnipesaukee Woods Farms, The Bread Peddler, Restoration Acres, and BrookRidge Farm supplies organic eggs.

Paquet-Martel said the fried chicken and waffles benedict is their signature item and their sales leader. Go on a Sunday and he’ll likely have a special offer, corned beef fried rice, cooked with ginger, garlic, carrots, snap peas and sprouts. And if you’re feeling brave, try the “Big D,” a staggering breakfast that comes with a free T-shirt if you eat every bite. Paquet-Martel’s advice: don’t leave the pancakes for last, that’s when most people throw in the towel.

Margaret’s Kitchen is located at 1002 Laconia Road in Sanbornton, and is open for breakfast and lunch, Thursday through Monday.