For the first year and a half of opening his Loudon restaurant, Beanie’s Bar & Grill, Nasi Georgopoulos would work 100 hours a week.
He’d arrive at 5 a.m. to help the wait staff, stay through closing, clean up and lock the doors. Oftentimes he wouldn’t bother going home, opting instead to catch a wink of sleep in a booth before starting the cycle all over again.
When Beanie’s went up in flames early on Monday, that work was destroyed in a matter of hours. Charred, damp debris littered the perimeter of what remained of the building, with scraps of kitchen appliances and furniture visible through the rubble. Other parts remained untouched — patio furniture, stacked cases of Fanta soft drinks — offering a haunting image of what had been there before.
“It just sucks,” Georgeopoulos said, a cigarette perched between his fingertips as he surveyed the damage. “A lot of time and effort, it’s emotional to look at it as it is now.”
The Loudon Fire Department dispatched to the intersection of Route 129 and Route 106 around 3 a.m. on Monday, said Chief Tom Blanchette. He soon upgraded the fire to a second alarm, seeing the glow of the blaze reflected in the sky on his way to the scene.
Crews knocked down most of the flames within half an hour, Blanchette said, when he proceeded to put out a third alarm to get more people on site. It was past 4 a.m. before firefighters got the burn under control.
One firefighter suffered a minor injury, Blanchette said, but did not require transport to the hospital.
The cause and origin of the fire were still under investigation by the state fire marshal’s office on Monday morning, but Blanchette suspects it started in a back corner.
“The back 50% of the building is pretty much consumed,” Blanchette said.
More than a dozen fire and emergency departments assisted Loudon in extinguishing the fire, including Allenstown, Belmont, Bow, Canterbury, Chichester, Concord, Epsom, Gilmanton, Northwood, Pembroke, Pittsfield, Tilton-Northfield and Webster.
Nasi runs Beanie’s with his dad, George Georgopoulos, who is the official owner. The family has worked in restaurants most of their lives, including Veano’s Italian Kitchen, which is now located in Pembroke.
Beanie’s opened about four years ago and served American food. More than that, Nasi said, it had become a gathering place for the community he grew up in. People would stop in on their way to or from Town Hall or meet there to carpool to sporting events.
The way customers-turned-friends would line up at the bar reminded Joyce Cotnoir, George’s cousin who manages the servers and bartenders, of the namesake pub of the beloved sitcom “Cheers.”
“You have your regulars,” Cotnoir said, “like every night, there they are.”
The tang of smoke still hung in the air Monday morning, but the family is already making plans to rebuild.
“It’s become kind of like an unofficial meeting place for the town, too,” Nasi said. “It’s going to be missed for a little while, but we’ll be back.”
