Way back in 2008, in the early days of Offbeat Eats, we visited Robie’s Country Store. It was a particularly good and lavish breakfast, but in the years following that visit, the store started to struggle, the breakfasts weren’t as good, and while Robie’s Country Store stayed open, the food counter closed. A replacement store, Roots Community Table at Robies, was good, but also closed a few years ago. But then I got notice in January this year that a big shift had happened. The Robie family of Hooksett (which operated the General Store since the 1800s) was actually related to the Robies of the Robie Farm in Piermont, NH, which are pretty well known in the region for their farm-raised meats (it’s pretty common around NH and VT to see “Robie Farms” meats on high-end restaurant menus, and at the various consumer coops). They had refurbished the place, and re-opened as The Robie Store, a specialty product store, cafe serving breakfast and lunch, and a butcher shop providing farm fresh meats straight from the farm in Piermont.
It took us a few months to finally manage to visit the new Robie Store while on a day trip out to the seacoast. As far as the actual store itself, it’s had a bit of a freshening up, and some of the various antiques and decoration have been simplified, but it’s still the same basic dining area that it was before, with a bit of a grocery area selling a rather nicely curated selection of locally-made food items up front, and refrigerators in back with a good selection of meats, beer, and beverages.
The menu is a bit more limited than it was back when this was Robie’s Country Store; the breakfast menu is basically breakfast sandwiches, pancakes, French toast, and eggs-to-order combos, and the lunch menu is a simple menu of burgers and sandwiches. I hope at some point they expand the menu, but one of the real attractions here is that Robie’s uses their own meats, so this isn’t your run-of-the-mill, freshly-thawed from the Sysco truck breakfast meats, but high-quality ham, bacon, and sausage. With that in mind, I got a short stack of blueberry pancakes and some sausage, and Carol opted for a sausage and cheddar breakfast sandwich.
My pancakes were good, well-done buttermilk pancakes with a nice crisp and served up with real maple syrup, but the star here is the sausage (Robie Farm is well known in the area for their meat): a nice, richly-flavored and well-seared and seasoned patty. I’d happily get this again.
Carol’s breakfast sandwich was also enjoyable. Again, the star here was the sausage, but it’s nice when a relatively simple sandwich like this is put together with care instead of slapping things together and microwaving them (I’m staring at you, Dunkin!). A decent English muffin with a nice grilled crisp to it, a not-overdone farm fresh egg, some nice white cheddar, and a nicely seared-and-seasoned sausage patty.
Overall, I’m glad to see The Robie Store doing well. The breakfast menu, while limited, was tasty and reasonably priced, the breakfast meats top notch, and they’ve got a good selection of meats, local beer, and locally-sourced groceries for purchase as well. I’ll have to come back and try their lunch menu at some point, since I do like a good Robie Farm hamburger.
