Offbeat Eats

Before I had to head out to Wokingham for my work trip, I went out with Dan and Sophie for dinner. We wanted a place with some interesting cuisine that was still a short walk from Pimlico, and Dan had just the place picked out Chinese food at Má Là Taste of Sichuan.

While our group was attending the Farnborough Airshow, we staying at a hotel on the outskirts of Wokingham. This was convenient for our transportation to and from the Farnborough Airshow itself (Wokingham is about halfway between Heathrow and Farnborough), but the hotel itself was on the edge of town, so aside from it’s on-site pub (which, oddly, had beer from Shipyard in the States on tap), there wasn’t much in walking distance. However, there was one notable exception to this, The Oakingham Belle. So on our second night in town, we decided to walk over and check them out and enjoy some good, old-school English pub classics.

This July landed me an interesting assignment: the State of New Hampshire and the NH Aerospace Defense Consortium were leading a trade mission to the UK, with the primary goals of visiting the biennial Farnborough International Airshow and then doing a small side trade mission to West Yorkshire, focusing on Leeds. This was an excellent trip in itself (Farnborough is one of the best airshows in the world for both aircraft displays and having virtually every aerospace company in the West in attendance), but my trip also gave me a handful of days before and after the official trip to visit with my brother and sister-in-law in London. Shortly after arrival, Dan announced that we should go out for lunch, and had a specific destination in mind: heading out to Peckham for pozole at Guacamoles.

As our regular readers know, we here at Offbeat Eats have been trying to avail ourselves of the various community meals that spring up around the region. Looking through the local Kearsarge Shopper as we approached the 4th of July holiday weekend, I noticed an announcement for Warner, NH’s United Church of Warner’s 4th of July Community Breakfast. Since we didn’t have anything planned for that morning, we figured it would be good to drive down to Warner and check it out.

During our annual trip to Lake George, we usually end up going out for breakfast several times, exploring the area. One of our more regular destinations (one that somehow has managed to avoid a review to this point, probably due to lack of photos) is down in Queensbury: The Silo. The Silo is one of those roadside institutions that gives an old school aura, like farmland and its buildings were converted to a restaurant; That’s partly true: The Silo used to be a barn and, well, silo, but not in Glens Falls, but at a more rural location in Saratoga County, getting relocated here in the 1980s to make a restaurant and gift shop.

Like most years, we spent almost a week in June attending the Ohana: Luau at the Lake charity even in Lake George, NY. Getting to Lake George always involves crossing Vermont East-West, which doesn’t have any truly optimal routes. This time, we decided to take a more southerly route, taking us through Wallingford, VT around time for a late breakfast. Which was good, since Wallingford has a new-ish (since 2023) breakfast option I had been wanting to check out: Bacon & Batter.

After a very pleasant hiking trip in Acadia National Park, we decided to have our celebration meal someplace that was on the way back towards NH and MA. We decided that Ellsworth, just outside of Acadia National Park. was a particular good spot to check out. Ellsworth started as a fishing site, then in the early history of our country grew into a major 19th-century lumber and shipbuilding powerhouse, before those industries started to shrink. Nowadays, Ellsworth is primarily situated as “The Gateway to Acadia National Park” and the “Downeast” region. Looking over the available options, we found a quirky one that sounded just up our alley: Josie’s Country Café, located inside Josie’s Country Store on Surry Road, just outside of downtown Ellsworth.