Update: As of late 2011, the Grantham Cafe is closed. It’s now a similar place called the Farmer’s Table.
Recently, the Rusty Moose restaurant in Grantham, NH closed, and after several weeks of vacancy, it has reopened as the Grantham Cafe, open for breakfast and lunch 6 days a week (closed Mondays).
The owner of the cafe also owns Grantham Video down the way, so the new incarnation of this restaurant sports a Hollywood motif, with movie posters, some film reels on the wall, and most of the menu items named after movies (mine was named after McGuffin, for example).
I’m glad this space has reopened, since Grantham suffers from having a fairly large population with very few restaurants (the new pizza shop and Bistro Nouveau are basically the only other restaurants), and it was frustrating to see one of the area’s few breakfast joints shuttered. So Finn and I went by to try out the place with it’s new name and owners.
Myself, I opted for the McGuffin breakfast sandwich (I wanted to try the homemade corned beef hash, but they were out…), while Finn got the pancakes and eggs special.
My McGuffin worked out pretty well, it was a decently executed breakfast sandwich with a nicely fried egg and some better-than-average bacon. It’s not anywhere near as good as the similar breakfast sandwich from this place’s previous incarnation, but nothing disappointing, either. I’d give it 8 out of 10.
Finn’s breakfast, however, was a little more interesting. The pancakes were a decently executed version of what we like to call “Sysco Truck Pancakes”, which are just your basic instant pancake mix cooked up on a grill. Nothing special, but nothing wrong with it, either. The eggs were decent as well, so we’d give this around 6 or 7 out of 10.
However, the service had more than a few kinks. When ordering, the waitress took Finn’s order, then disappeared into the kitchen before realizing that she didn’t take my order. Carol’s side of strawberries for her pancake didn’t come with the order, and it took several iterations to get the syrup and hot sauce out on our table.
But more interesting was the table next to us, where one person ordered a “Western Omelette”, but the waitress didn’t know what a “Western” omelette was, so the customer had to describe what it was. No big deal. But his omellete came out with just peppers and onions in it, and even after several iterations with both waitresses, their solution was to just bring him out a boatload of fried up ham. Is it that hard for them to just remake the omellete?
All in all, a pretty decent breakfast, but a lot of startup jitters and service issue. I hope they can work out some of the kinks in the service
