Tag Archives: breakfast

Health Check: Longfellow Grill (Minneapolis, MN)

Here at Offbeat Eats, we occasionally like to do a “Health Check” review on favorite restaurants, to make sure everything is still going well. In this case, our visit to Minneapolis en route to Duluth gave me an opportunity to revisit an old favorite: the Longfellow Grill. I’ve had several visits to the Twin Cities since my 2009 Review, and while I’ve visited a few of the sister restaurants (particularly Groveland Tap), I’d not made it to Longfellow Grill. So we gathered up some local friends and my old bosses the University of Minneapolis (my PhD adviser, and my sysadmin boss during those same years) for a breakfast as we headed out of town.

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Endiro Coffee (Aurora, IL)

After a nice evening in Aurora, IL, followed by a slightly restless night interrupted by tornado sirens and having to figure out where to shelter in the hotel as we watched extreme winds and rain, we ended up really needing some coffee and sustenance before heading north to Minneapolis. We decided to check out Endiro Coffee in nearby downtown Aurora, IL. It’s worth noting that Endiro has several locations. In addition to the cafe in Aurora, and the nearby roastery, Endiro has ten locations spread across Uganda. Yes, it’s a true partnership between Cody Lorance in Illinois, and Gloria Katusiime in Ugunda, bringing coffee shops to Uganda and bringing Ugandan coffee to Illinois. So it’s not often you run into joint Ugandan-American operations, so I had to check this out.

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Garretts Mill Diner (Stow, OH)

Since we overnighted in Stow, OH, for breakfast we decided to try out a small diner located near our hotel: Garretts Mill Diner. Located in a small strip mall on Hudson Drive, it’s the sort of small, friendly diner that I always like to hit up for dinner: a half dozen tables, a few waitstaff, an owner that circulates around asking the diners how their meal is going, and a healthy flow of locals stopping off for a meal.

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Manory’s (Troy, NY)

I actually drive through Troy, NY quite a bit. The “Collar City”, from its history in making collars back when that was a thing, is also home to RPI, and it’s right on the optimal path between our home in NH and either the NY Thruway or I-87 (if I’m looking to get to NJ while avoiding NYC). What I usually find, however, is that I’m not usually driving through around mealtimes, so I usually don’t stop in town. But our June-July vacation had us departing and driving to Ohio leaving early in the morning from NH, which resulted in a rarity for us, passing through Troy right at breakfast time. We used it as an excuse to visit Manory’s, which has been on our hit list for a few years.

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Amada’s Mexican Food (Mesa, AZ)

While it’s pretty quiet here at Offbeat Eats due to us being in month 8 of the general pandemic shutdown, I’ve still had the occasional travel. In this case, I had to take a trip to visit my parents in Arizona and help take care of some issues around the house. A long tradition of mine when I’m visiting my parents is to indulge in something that’s pretty rare around VT and NH: a really good breakfast burrito. Well, the Phoenix metro area has, seriously, probably a thousand places where one can get a good breakfast burrito, and during these Covid pandemic times, getting some takeout burritos is still a viable strategy. Most trips, I would head over to Amado’s Mexican Food about a half mile away and get a righteous machaca and chorizo breakfast burrito. I just ran into a small glitch this time: Amado‘s Mexican Food isn’t there any more. It’s now, after a sale to a new owner (one of Amado’s co-owners took full ownership), in a triumph of sign updating minimalism, now known as Amada‘s Mexican Food.

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Health Check: Al’s Breakfast (Minneapolis, MN)

Every once in a while it’s nice for me to do a followup on old favorites, revisiting them and make sure that they are staying in form. In this case, my trip to Minneapolis gave me a good chance to stop by and check in on what remains as perhaps my favorite breakfast place ever, Al’s Breakfast. It’s best if you read over my older review, but it’s basically a small, 14-stool diner wedged in what’s literally a roofed over alleyway in Minneapolis’s “Dinkytown” neighborhood. “Narrow” is an understatement, since a limber person literally can touch both walls at points, and as you sit enjoying your breakfast (aside from special events, it is a breakfast-only joint), if it’s at all busy there’s someone hovering mere inches away waiting for your seat. And the food? The breakfasts at Al’s are fantastic, ranging from egg dishes and omelets to pancakes to house-made CBH, and it’s the ultimate in the short order experience: your order belted out by the staff, echoed back by the person running the grill (back in the days, it was almost always one of the two owners, Doug or Jim).

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Bleu (Burlington, VT)

For our annual celebration of Carol’s birthday, we decided this year to head up to Burlington, VT for a weekend of hanging out with friends, exploring more of Burlington’s great scenery and dining options. Our usual go-to for Burlington is Asian food, since it’s the nearest metro area with a decent selection of Asian restaurants (and indeed, our previous night’s visit was to a ramen shop), but Carol was craving seafood, so we opted for a brunch at Bleu, located inside Burlington’s Courtyard by Marriott.

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Café Majestic (Porto, Portugal)

Porto as a city has certainly had a lot of ups and downs in its history, but much of the actual downtown area is a product of the 1920s, when the inter-war period was actually quite good for Portugal. The city had some major redevelopment, including the city hall and the Avenida dos Aliados grand boulevard lined with all sorts of great Art Deco and Streamline Modern interiors, nicely blended with some traditional architecture. And that’s also the era when the café became one of the great parts of city life, with all sorts of politicians, writers, artists, communists, students, and the like all gathers over cups of coffee topped with tall piles of whipped cream; at one point there were literally dozens of these throughout Porto, and a handful survive more-or-less intact; one of these is The Majestic Café.

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Yours Truly (Cleveland, OH)

For our actual “Death March” in Cleveland, we started out at Shaker Square on the far East end of town on the border with Shaker Heights. Both the area and Shaker Square itself are pretty interesting: it was one of the United States’ first “Shopping Centers”, designed to mimic Europe’s town squares while integrating some relatively high density housing, transit (trains at the time, now buses), and provide a gateway to the suburbs, and a bit of an open space that serves nicely for the weekend farmers market. Built in a Colonial style, it’s definitely a little dated, but does provide a nice insight into what early 20th century urban planning looked like, and there’s now a theater and a bunch of smaller shops and restaurants around the square. One of these is a joint with a reputation for a good breakfast, Yours Truly, which also served as a nice gathering spot for our hiking crowd.

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Lone Bull Pancake & Steak House (Lake George, NY)

Our second morning in scenic Lake George, we had a bit of spare time to explore, so went driving a bit north along the western shore of Lake George, seeing some of the nice views, seeing a few of the larger resorts, and finding a place for breakfast. We ended up selecting one of the area’s more venerable establishments, the Lone Bull Pancake & Steak House, now approaching it’s 50th year of operation.

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