Offbeat Eats

Like my previous review of Big Apple Diner, driving between Saratoga Springs and New Hampshire four different times in September also had me passing by another entry on my perennial “I should check that place out” list. In this case, it was a place in Hudson Falls on US-4 as you are heading from Fort Ann into Glens Falls/Queensbury, Sally’s Hen House.

As I mentioned back in my review of Frazer’s Place, 2024 has ended up being one of those years that’s given me a lot of opportunities to finally visit some of those places I’ve driven by dozens of times and thought to myself “I should stop there.” One of these is the Big Apple Diner, located on Route-4 just over the border from Vermont (across from the former infamous Finius T. Flubberbuster’s Roadhouse). Pretty much every trip of ours to the Adirondack’s has driven past the Big Apple Diner, and coming back from one of my weekend trips in the Adirondacks, I finally managed to stop by and check it out.

I love it when you pass by cozy little cafés and can immediately tell that the place is popular with the locals and has its set of “regulars”. That was the case with a small little cafe located just about two short blocks from my friends’ condo in Saratoga Springs: the Country Corner Café.

After completing a day of working remote in Saratoga Springs, I took off to explore the downtown area while waiting for my hosts to arrive. After having a really enjoyable pint at Whitman Brewing, I wandered along Broadway doing some liht window shopping and looking at both cocktail and dinner menus. One place that drew my eye was a relative newcomer to Saratoga Springs, Rhea. Seeing folks enjoying bowls of ramen and some nicely-composed cocktails, I decided it would be on my short list for dinner, and when my hosts arrived, they agreed. So we headed back to Rhea and managed to score three seats at the bar, despite the relatively busy Friday evening.

I was recently helping friends with a hike along the Northville-Placid Trail in upstate NY, and my friends Liz and Wes helpfully offered that I could stay in their condo in Saratoga Springs over the weekends while doing the trail support. This worked out quite well, since I was able to drive over early on a Friday, work remotely for the day, and have the entire weekend available for hiking and trail support. It also gave me a chance to explore Saratoga Springs, which, honestly, my previous first-hand experiences had been merely getting stuck in traffic on my way to the NY Thruway. On my first trip there, they had left a number of recommendations for lunch, so on my lunch break I decided to go check out the sandwich shop on the list: Fat Paulie’s.

Last Spring, as we were doing one of our preparatory trips to Lake George for Ohana, we stopped in for dinner at Common Roots Brewery in South Glen Falls (our review here). At that visit, I had noticed that Common Roots (whose brewery building itself is relatively new) had been on quite the building spree. Across the parking lot from their main brewery, Common Roots also runs their Bierhall & Barrel House Private Event Center, which in the mornings also operates as Common Roots Café for breakfast. The space is quite nice, albeit extremely cavernous when not being used for events. Since I was passing through South Glens Falls in early September on my way to the Adirondacks, I decided it was a great opportunity to stop in for coffee and breakfast.

One of the more interesting Pandemic-era changes around the “Lower Upper Valley” was that, while there were a lot of restaurant closures, there were also some openings of note, primarily replacing those closures. Particularly when it comes to Mexican cuisine. Newport, NH used to have an outstanding Baja Mexican place, with the odd name of The Little Red Baron, but it closed in a squabble between the town (who owned the building) and the restaurant over septic system refurbishment, and there had been a gap in the area’s Mexican offerings for a while. But, in relatively short succession in 2023, we had three Mexican places show up: Rancho Viejo in Claremont (replacing the departed Pleasant Street Restaurant), Jalisco Mexican Bar and Grill in Newport (replacing the departed and dearly-missed Country Kitchen), and the similar named Casa Jalisco Bar and Grill in Claremont. While I have been to the first two a few times, the last of these I hadn’t had a chance to check it out, and a recent event in Claremont gave me an excuse to drop in.