'Zhush and polish': 70 North opening its doors later this year in the Weirs

LACONIA — Like the building it advertises, the large sign in front of 70 Endicott St. N. is hard to miss. Especially when, nearly two years after Faro Italian Grille’s name was taped out, a new one appeared there this month.

Scott Hoffner, the chef behind 70 North — a three-part harmony of an upscale restaurant, quick-bite marketplace and event space preparing to make its debut — believes the wait will be worth it. 

The space inside the restaurant at the heart of the Weirs throughway has been divided into three sections, one to house each of 70 North’s pillars. 

“Walking in for the first time, I immediately saw that the space was just too big” to work well as a restaurant, Hoffner said. “I think that may have been one of the problems for past businesses here.”

The idea for 70 North, he said, was built into the space itself and renovations helped bring that vision to life. “We accentuated the existing subdivisions of the space.”

The marketplace, slated to open in March, will offer specialty coffee through a partnership with Wayfarer Coffee Roasters, house-made pastries, a rotating hot cereal selection and elevated sandwiches and salads to go. It also will sell meats, cheeses and the corresponding accessories for charcuterie boards. Eventually, that menu might expand to more hot food like flatbreads.

It will be a remote-work-friendly space, and eventually, Hoffner hopes, be open seven days a week.

The restaurant, which Hoffner said is likely to open sometime in the second half of this year, will be a highly upscale, multi-course dining experience only accessible through pre-purchased tickets.

Each time the restaurant serves will be an occasion: the courses will use locally sourced, seasonal ingredients and be driven by a theme. 

“'Curated' is really the word coming to mind,” said Hoffner, who will at first be spearheading the restaurant’s menus. “It’ll be polished, even if that’s a polished-casual sometimes.”

Sometimes that might be a multi-course, Spanish-inspired feast, and others it might be specialty cocktails with complementing hors d'oeuvres, Oktoberfest or Mother’s Day brunch, Hoffner said. Everything will be rotating and the menu “will be very fluid.”

The two biggest challenges to opening a successful restaurant right now are staff supply and sustaining buzz. This ticketed model, according to Hoffner, addresses both of those hurdles.

The Lakes Region has an array of successful and enjoyable drop-in, neighborhood staple restaurants, Hoffner said. 70 North isn’t angling to enter that niche. 

The event space, which also will open later this year, will utilize the building’s outdoor deck and be available for everything from rehearsal dinners to cheese-making classes hosted by 70 North. 

The property owners bought 70 Endicott St. N. in 2020 after Faro's closing the previous year. Buyer Rob Csendes, who has owned the lot across the street that used to house the Weirs Beach Waterslide since 2010, said the new owners knew they wanted to keep the building a restaurant, but didn’t plan to run it themselves.

Hoffner, who worked as a restaurant consultant before joining forces with 70 North’s owners, also helps run the Boardwalk Bar & Grille across the street. 

Leaving the D.C. metropolitan area behind, Hoffner and his family settled in the Lakes Region in 2021.

70 North, Hoffner noted, will have a different feel than many of the other restaurants in the neighborhood. He’s confident it will complement and add to the existing momentum of the area while also drawing in new crowds.

“There’s nothing within a drivable range that’s similar to this concept and uniqueness. We hope to pull people up from Concord or down from Plymouth,” Hoffner said. “It opens up the customer base to the neighborhood.”

During the pandemic, a crowd of people fleeing cities, including Hoffner, made this area their full-time home.

“Many of them have elevated expectations and tastes,” he said. “We hope to accommodate that as well as offer the local community something not currently available.”

Growth on Governor's Island in Gilford, as well as the construction of luxury condominiums on Union Avenue, Weirs Boulevard and just up the street on Endicott North, Hoffner said, create a growing hunger for what 70 North will offer. 

“Additional high-end housing brings additional high-end requests on the area,” he continued. 

“It’s about ‘zhush,’ love and polish. We see there’s enough people in the area that want that,” Hoffner continued. 

By living in the area, and falling in love with it, Hoffner said he has a deep personal interest in the well-being of the community, something he said the owners share.

“We’re not looking to extract wealth, we’re looking to contribute,” he said. “We’re not trying to sink anyone’s ship.”

The rollout will be relatively slow-going, Hoffner said. Eventually, there are plans to take down the red lighthouse tower that was a trademark of both the Lobster Pound and Faro restaurants. While this year 70 North will close during Motorcycle Week to allow vendors to use the grounds, the marketplace will weave its way into the festivities in future years.

While 70 North may have a different approach than other businesses in the Weirs, there’s a kinship in their interests.

70 North hopes to reinvigorate the sense of enchantment the Weirs had in its good ole days and make the neighborhood a year-round destination.

“We want to be part of the positive change to recapture some of the old glory,” Hoffner said. “It’s a ‘rising tides lift all boats’ scenario.”