Offbeat Eats

Luxbar Benedict I’ll start out with a disclaimer on this post: My meal at Luxbar was essentially free, so I’m going to be honest and say that it probably effects my review. But read on…. When I was first planning our trip to Chicago, I asked the authors of another blog I follow, Passport Delicious [...]

Work has me regularly traveling to Cambridge, and several times I’ve found myself passing Craigie on Main on my way too and from Toscanini’s. It’s also been my hit list for a while, since it’s a perennial entry on various Boston “Best Hamburger” lists, and it always looks like a rather inviting little bar/bistro for that neighborhood (despite the U-haul place and Tootsie Roll factory across the street).

Well, I’ll be honest, I still haven’t had the burger, but it’s on my hit list. But last month we noticed that Craigie on Main also had a particularly interesting looking brunch menu, so when we had another free morning in the Boston area, we decided to head back over to Cambridge and try out their brunch. I’m rather glad we did.

One of the primary reasons I started this blog was that the greater Upper Valley area suffers from a dearth of restaurants. I’ve long been surprised that many of the area towns lack a decent number of eateries, and for a long time downtown Lebanon has lacked a real breakfast joint. Rumors would occasionally swirl around about a place opening up (there was even talk of another Farmers Diner happening here at some point), but nothing ever materialized.

Until last month. Andy Hill used to be one of the bartenders/managers at Salt hill Pub on the other end of the Lebanon Mall, and I remember him telling me a few years ago that what he really wanted to do was to open his own breakfast spot in the community. Well, after several years of planning, he and his wife (city councilor and former mayor Karen Liot Hill) were finally able to bring the plan to fruition, opening the Lebanon Diner on the west end of the mall (across from The Cave, in a location that’s been, in my time here, a smoke shop and an eyeglass shop).

Last month, my brother came to visit from England, so on the morning of St Patrick’s Day we had to pick up my brother at Logan, which meant this was a good opportunity to try out a new place for breakfast someplace down in the Boston area.

I know a rather good selection of places to eat in the Boston area, but not a lot of breakfast places (a byproduct of the fact that Boston is around 2.5-3 hours from here, depending on traffic, is that we usually get there well after breakfast hours). But several of my friends up here in NH have lived down there, so I asked coworker A for a good Saturday brunch suggestion. She was already going to be in Boston that weekend, so she simply recommended that we just join her and some friends at Sofra in Cambridge for some of their “Turkish Inspired Cuisine.”

he lousy winter continues here, so we again ended up heading north on Sunday, this time to the Trapp Family Lodge. Which again meant get breakfast on the way. We were a little later getting started, so instead of a repeat visit to Coffee Corner, we decided to check out a place that’s been on my hit list for a while: Limerick Irish Eatery. We figured we’d give them a try.

Limerick Irish Eatery opened up in Quechee, Vermont, in the space vacated by the closing of Maple Grove Bakery about a year ago. They’ve set the place up so that it both serves as a coffee bar for the takeout crowd, and having table service for those seeking a full meal. Menu-wise, the primary theme is “Irish Comfort Food”, with a menu focusing on Irish breakfast fare, sausages, meatloafs, and the like. And hey, they even have Guinness on tap…

It’s been a fairly lousy winter here, at least with respect to winter sports. We’ve really been wanting to get out and do some more cross-country skiing, but the distinct lack of snow has limited our outings. We decided this last weekend that we just had to give in and go to where the snow was, which was Smuggler’s Notch (our x-country passes are good there, too). Which meant a nice little drive through Waterbury. And a chance to stop at Coffee Corner for breakfast.

My review of Coffee Corner is sadly overdue. A few months ago, I was recommending Coffee Corner to a coworker, and was going to email her the requisite link to my Offbeat Eats review…. only to find out that I hadn’t actually reviewed it. It’s not like I haven’t been there (I’ve probably been two dozen times since I started this blog), and I’ve got plenty of pictures… but this weekend’s trip was a good chance to get some fresh photos and do a full review….

Two weekends ago, we had to head down to Boston to do some errands, which from our house is around a 2.5 hour drive on a quieter weekend. This always gives us some good opportunities to stop for food on the way down. Frequent stops of our for breakfast have included The Foot Hills of Warner (which I’ve noticed I haven’t reviewed here… I’ll have to fix that), Robie’s, The Red Arrow Diner, or The Dream Diner. And all of these places are great. But the world of breakfasts is vast and wide, and there are still plenty of places to explore on the way down to Boston, so this time we decided to check out the west side of the river in Manchester (the old Quebecois neighborhood), eventually settling on Rita Mae’s Restaurant…

One of the biggest things I miss living in rural New England is that Mexican breakfasts are almost non-existent. Good Mexican places are few and far between, those that serve breakfast doubly so.

But my parents live in Mesa, AZ, which always has had a reasonably good selection of Mexican restaurants, with even more showing up in recent years. And, luckily for me, most of them serve breakfast.

So when we had a free morning while visiting my parents, Carol and I were craving breakfast burritos, so I decided to check out Amado’s Mexican Food…

While I may have mentioned this before, one of the things I generally don’t like when I’m traveling is free breakfast in hotels. I have several reasons for this, but the big reasons are that (a) hotel breakfasts generally suck, especially for the price, and (b) one of the perks of the otherwise dismal life of the business traveler is the ability to try new places to eat. So, like most every time my schedule allows me to try a local place for breakfast instead of having bland waffles at the hotel, I try to do so, even if it requires getting up early. This time, I decided to walk several blocks from the hotel to Northside Social Coffee and Wine in Arlington.

The morning after Carol’s sister Cathie’s wedding, she and her new husband George wanted to meet up for breakfast someplace in the Northwest Detroit metro area. Looking around at some of the options, one place that grabbed my eye was Toasted Oak in Novi, MI. A relative newcomer to the local scene, Toasted Oak opened in 2010. It’s one of the places that’s easily overlooked, since it’s actually part of the Renaissance Hotel in Novi, in the outer loop of the Twelve Oak’s Mall. Really, it’s in the sort of location that I usually pass over (I’ve had a lot of dismal brunches in hotels by malls, to be honest), but the place had a lot of good buzz, so I decided to give it a try. Especially since that positive buzz talked about their housemade sausages…