Offbeat Eats

Prior to the pandemic, I had a pair of sister restaurants in downtown Manchester, Republic Café and Campo Enoteca, that I enjoyed for light dinners when around Manchester. The former served up “European” food, mostly with a French influence, and the latter served up Italian food. Unfortunately, the pandemic severely stressed both restaurants economically; for a while they were operating in a combined manner as “Republic of Campo”, but in 2022 the operation drew to a close. Republic Café closed permanently, and Campo Enoteca sold to new owners (who continue to operate it today, as of 2025). But this wasn’t the complete end for “Republic”. In 2024, two locals, Pete Maconehas and Mike Brown, decided to open a new brewery on Old Granite Street next to Hometown Coffee Roasters, where Mike is an owner. Pete was formerly with both Republic Cafe and Campo Enoteca Restaurants, so they decided (with the blessing and support of the former owners) to reinvigorate the old Republic name, christening the new brewery Republic Brewing Company.

As I mentioned in our review of Sally’s Apizza Woburn, our travels recently have resulted in our having several visits to Woburn, MA, usually trying to get a meal before we head home. There’s an extremely high restaurant density in that part of Woburn, but on our various drive-bys, I had noticed one relative newcomer that looked worth checking out: Saigon Eatery.

When Carol and I moved to the Upper Valley way back in 2001, the fine dining scene was substantially different; there were fewer options for fine dining, and most of the stalwarts from that era, such as Hanover’s Cafe Bon Gustaio, have long since departed the landscape. And most of the remaining places that aren’t associated with hotels have moved on as well. But one particular fine dining restaurant has managed to stay in pretty much continual operation for over fifty years, and that’s Woodstock, VT’s The Prince and the Pauper.

One of our goals at Offbeat Eats for the last few years has been to try and visit a bunch of those places that we’ve driven by several times and always thought to ourselves, “We should stop there.” Well, we’ve tried to be better about actually stopping at those places. In this case, our drives to the east often take us through the nice old mill town of Franklin, NH. If it’s around lunch or dinner, we’ve already reviewed two great places in Franklin, Broken Spoon and Vulgar Brewing Company, that we really enjoy, but we still hadn’t really done breakfast in Franklin. A recent trip through there at 8am, however, gave me good reason to stop by Wyatt’s Family Restaurant, on the west bank of the Pemigewasset River right before it merges with the Winnipesaukee River to form the Merrimack River.

Right before heading out of town for a week, we met up with our friends Liz and Wesley and headed over to Oakes & Evelyn for dinner. You might be thinking, “didn’t Rich write up Oakes & Evelyn fairly recently (I did, in 2023)?”, as it’s a semi-regular fine dining destination of ours. But in this case, we weren’t doing the hour and a quarter drive up to Montpelier, but instead, driving to Woodstock. A few months ago, Oakes & Evelyn announced that they were opening a second location, taking over the restaurant operations in Woodstock’s The Jackson inn. After several months of renovation and preparation, Oakes & Eveyln finally had their opening night at their new location, and we decided to give it a try.

As I mentioned in previous reviews, particularly of Pepe’s and Modern Apizza, I was essentially raised on New Haven style pizza (a.k.a. “Apizza”, pronounced more like “A-beetz”). In the world of Italian-American pizza traditions, it is one of the classics, with its faithful adherents, and it’s three major denominations (Pepe’s, Sally’s, and The Modern, all of which have intertwined heritages). To the point where I can mention to peope that I had family in “New Haven” and they would immediate ask “Pepe’s or Sally’s”, waiting with bated breath for my answer, and the ensuing judgement. I’ll have to clearly state that, both through family history and my own preferences, I’m definitely in the Pepe’s faith, but I’ve been known to go to, and enjoy, Sally’s on more than a few occasions, although often having to turn up my coat collar and hope none of the extended family sees me (although the strongest adherents of the Faith in the family have now passed). Well, recent years have seen a lot of change in the New Haven Pizza scene. The biggest change was 2006 when Pepe’s started to become a chain (the adjacent “The Spot” not really counting as a second locaiton) with a location in Fairfield, and eventually growing into a family of locations all over New England. And more recently, Sally’s joined the fray, opening a handful of Connecticut locations starting in 2021, and then their first location outside of Connecticut in Woburn, MA in late 2023. A recent visit of ours to Woburn, MA, finally gave me a chance to see how one of the “New Sally’s” is doing.

My visit to Lewiston reminded me not only that Maine is a pretty large state, but that the highway infrastructure is all coastal in nature. Lewiston is a little over 100 miles as the crow flies from my place, but the options for getting there are basically (a) 3 hours and 180 miles via divided highway (with tolls), or (b) 3 hours and 20 minutes and 140 miles via various NH and ME back roads. Of course, I took the latter, and had a reasonably nice drive and saved a bit of gas, but it’s also what led to a drive down Route 202 just north of Gray, ME in the small town of New Gloucester. There, I encountered a fairly new output of the regional brewpub chain Brickyard Hollow (the original is in Yarmouth, ME’s “Brick Hollow” neighborhood, hence the name). While not needing lunch at that point, I made it a point to return via the same route a few days later and try them out.

As I mentioned in my review of Kathmandu Spice, much of my early spring is spent volunteering at various FIRST Robotics competitions. In March, this led to my visiting the rare new-to-me New England city, Lewiston, Maine. Like a lot of smaller New England cities, it’s a former lumber and textile mill town, with the challenges that brings, but it has a lot of interesting food and drink options. It has a strong French-Canadian heritage (indeed, the event venue I was at was covered by Mailhot Sausage banners), and more recently, a surprisingly large Somali population, and the downtown has a decent collection of restaurants ranging from diners, to brewpubs, to Mediterranean, to even a few Somali restaurants. The first of these is what caught my eye on this visit, with my visiting The Pub at Baxter.

Like most springs, I spent a lot of my weekends volunteering at various FIRST Robotics competitions as a robotics judge, and that usually means I spend a lot of time staying at hotels in various smaller towns and cities around New England, but it also gives me a nice chance to try out a few places on my hit list. In this particular case, heading back home from a weekend in Salem, NH, this gave me a good opportunity to stop off and visit one particular Indian and Nepalese place in Manchester: Kathmandu Spice.

One of the places that I’ve always enjoyed in New Hampshire for a nice dinner outing is Greenleaf in Milford, NH, run by well-respected local chef Chris Viaud. We’ve been to Greenleaf a handful of times in the last few years, including our 2021 review. But every once in a while, I like to revisit a few old favorites for a new review, and see how they are doing. When we saw that Greenleaf was doing a Black History Month dinner in collaboration with area chef Antonio Wormley, we decided it was worth checking out, and headed out to Milford