The building at 2 Main Street has never had one name for long. Locals who've lived in Somersworth long enough remember it as the Speakeasy. After that it was Station 319, a gastropub with soaring ceilings, a big fireplace, and reviews that swung between "charming local spot" and complaints about a kitchen that kept different hours than the sign out front promised. These days the ground floor of that old train depot building belongs to Anatolia Mediterranean Restaurant, and this fall Anatolia is doing something none of its predecessors in that building managed. It's opening a second location, in Concord, inside a hotel that's been standing since before Somersworth's own City Hall was built.
A Building That Changed Names, a Restaurant That Didn't
Anatolia's owners describe their space plainly on the restaurant's own site: the downstairs of 2 Main Street, "formally known as Station 319 and formally known as the Speakeasy." That lineage matters, because it means the address itself has already tried on a nightlife concept and a gastropub concept, both of which came and went. What stuck was a restaurant built around one country's food, served without much variation from the original recipe.
Anatolia's menu is Turkish and broader Mediterranean, built around dishes like lamb kebab, Manti (Turkish ravioli in garlic yogurt sauce), lavash bread, and pistachio baklava. There's no gastropub identity crisis here, no rotating concept trying to be everything to everyone. It's one cuisine, done consistently, in a building that has otherwise struggled to hold onto a single identity for more than a few years at a time.
That consistency is apparently what convinced Anatolia's owners they were ready to leave Somersworth's city limits for the first time.
Two Locations, One 1892 Landmark
In late July, Anatolia announced it's opening a second New Hampshire location inside the Centennial Hotel in downtown Concord, with a target opening in mid-October. The building itself has its own layered history. It opened in 1876 as the Centennial Home, one of the state's earliest charitable homes for elderly women, before the current Victorian brick structure went up in 1892 and was eventually converted into the boutique hotel that operates there today.
On social media, the restaurant put the moment simply:
"From one restaurant in Somersworth to two locations serving New Hampshire, this is only the beginning."
It's worth sitting with what that expansion actually says about Somersworth's downtown. A restaurant that started in a building known mostly for turnover just proved it could carry its concept into one of Concord's most recognizable historic properties. That's not a story about Somersworth being "up and coming." It's a story about a specific kind of restaurant, tightly focused and unapologetically singular in what it serves, finding an audience loyal enough to follow it out of town.
The Rest of High Street Is Playing the Same Game
Anatolia's success isn't an isolated case. A few blocks over on High Street, the same pattern shows up in Bali Sate House, a family-run Indonesian restaurant at 448 High Street that's been quietly building a reputation well past Somersworth. Its menu leans into dishes most Seacoast diners won't find anywhere else nearby: beef rendang, mie goreng, sate babi, and an oxtail soup that regulars specifically call out. Online reviews mention diners driving in from as far as the Boston area just to eat there, a detail that says more about the restaurant's specificity than any marketing campaign could.
Here's a quick snapshot of what's actually anchoring downtown Somersworth's food scene right now, by cuisine and address:
| Restaurant | Cuisine | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Anatolia Mediterranean Restaurant | Turkish and Mediterranean | 2 Main Street |
| Bali Sate House | Indonesian | 448 High Street |
| The Rail at La Stazione | Italian, made-in-house pasta | 400 High Street |
| Continental Restaurant & Bar | American buffet and bar | 509 High Street |
| Fold'd Community Diner | Breakfast and lunch, recovery-focused | 69 High Street |
The Rail at La Stazione follows the same logic in a different cuisine, an intimate Italian spot built around fresh pasta made in-house rather than a sprawling menu trying to cover every craving. None of these places are chasing broad appeal. Each one picked a lane and stayed in it long enough for word to spread past Somersworth's own borders.
What Actually Happened to Teatotaller
If you've heard Somersworth described as home to a beloved queer-owned tea house called Teatotaller, that description is a few years out of date, and the real story is more interesting than the outdated one.
Teatotaller closed its Somersworth cafe at 69 High Street in January 2023. Owner Emmett Soldati and the team didn't shut the concept down. Instead, they worked with Dover's SOS Recovery Community Center to reimagine the space as something new: a recovery-friendly diner built to employ people currently in recovery or previously incarcerated, giving them a path to marketable job skills while serving breakfast and lunch in a welcoming setting. That diner became Fold'd Community Diner, which now operates out of the original Teatotaller storefront across from Somersworth's City Hall.
Teatotaller itself didn't disappear. It kept growing, first opening a Concord location in 2022, then a Dover cafe in early 2024. By March 2025, with the brand well established outside Somersworth, Soldati renamed the business entirely, rebranding it as Totally Tea + Coffee across its Concord and Dover locations while putting the business up for sale.
So the honest version of the story isn't "Somersworth lost its quirky tea house." It's that Somersworth incubated a concept successful enough to expand into two other cities, then made room downtown for a different kind of restaurant with its own specific mission. Two distinct businesses, two different reasons to matter, both worth knowing if you live here.
Why the Specific Wins
Put these threads together and a pattern holds. Station 319, the gastropub that once occupied Anatolia's current space, tried to be a broad concept: burgers, pizzas, sandwiches, a full bar, a rotating menu meant to appeal to as many people as possible. Reviews suggest it struggled with consistency, closing when it was supposed to be open and drawing complaints about unreliable hours. Anatolia, in the same physical space, picked one cuisine and executed it well enough to expand into a landmark hotel forty minutes away. Bali Sate House did the same thing with Indonesian food and pulled diners in from another state. Fold'd did it with a specific social mission instead of a cuisine, and it's still there, three years later, in the storefront its predecessor left behind.
None of this is really about restaurants trying to be trendy. It's about what happens when a small business commits to doing one thing precisely rather than many things adequately, in a downtown small enough that word of mouth still does most of the work. Somersworth's High Street and Main Street corridor isn't competing with Portsmouth's restaurant scene or Dover's. It's building something narrower and, it turns out, more durable: a handful of places that know exactly what they are, and diners willing to drive an hour to prove it.
If you're already a High Street regular, none of this changes your Tuesday night plans. But it's worth knowing that the restaurant you've been ordering Manti from for the past few years just proved something about this town that a lot of outsiders still miss. Somersworth doesn't need to be loud to be good at something. It just needs one kitchen at a time to get specific.
If you're curious what else is changing in Somersworth this year, from the businesses moving in to the values of the homes around them, the team at Nola & Associates keeps a close eye on this corner of the Seacoast. Reach out anytime you want a local read on the neighborhood, whether you're thinking about a move or just want to know what's cooking down the street.
