Offbeat Eats

In early June, Carol and I did a short vacation to Acadia National Park with our Fitpacking friends. People always ask me if we go to Acadia a lot since “we live so close”, but the realities of both Northern New England roads and the scale of Maine itself mean that the more interesting parts of the Maine Coast aren’t exactly next door: Acadia National Park is a full 5.5 hour drive from our house, which means we’re stopping someplace mid-drive for lunch. In this case, several recent trips to Maine showed me that Biddeford (one of North America’s oldest settlements, and a former lumber and textile powerhouse) was a good place to stop. In this case, for a trip to Sacred Profane Brewery and Tankpub.

We recently had reason to celebrate a major milestone on a Friday evening, and other obligations of mine already had me visiting Woodstock, Vermont the same day. Normally, this would have been a great opportunity to visit Oakes & Eveyln, which is my go-to for this sort of thing, but others obviously had the same idea: they were booked solid. So I decided to try another nearby spot that I’ve driven by hundreds of times in the decade since they opened, 506 Bistro, located inside On the River Inn. The name of both the restaurant and inn have subtly changed a few times over the years (for example, a few years ago the Inn was “506 On The River”, with the Bistro being “The Bistro at 506”), and I’m not really sure what the 506 stands for (it’s definitely not the address), but the place has been around long enough I decided that it was worth checking out.

A recent hiking trip had us passing through Claremont, New Hampshire during breakfast time. Claremont has a good selection of restaurants, but it also has several locations that just, for one reason or another, seem to be challenging for restaurants to find success. These locations have a rapid series of different restaurants back-to-back, while the local diners hope that at some point something finally manages to stick. One of those locations is on Washington Street, the main route between Claremont and Newport, next to the Burger King. This location has been more than a few restaurants in my years living in the area; of the ones I remember, it was a “flash-fired pizza” place run by Ramunto’s (which I actually liked), then vacant for a bit, and then for a few years it was Claremont Country Cafe (unrelated to the now-shutter Country Kitchen in Newport), then that changed into Fast Lane Diner, which only lasted for a few months before reopening as Odd Duck Diner and Donuts.

Anyone that’s known me for a long time knows that two of my favorite sandwiches are the related roast beef sandwich, and the French Dip. As I discussed in detail with my review of Jamie’s Roast Beef in Peabody a few years ago, roast beef sandwiches are definitely a regional specialty, but the specialty is really focused on Massachusetts North Shore. While pretty much any town between Boston and the NH border has several roast beef sandwich joints to choose from, the density starts to roll off pretty quickly, and by the time you get to central NH, they are getting kind of thin. But a recent trip through the Merrimack valley had us passing right by an old favorite, Beefside in Concord, NH, and we decided to give it one of Offbeat Eat’s “Health Check” re-visits.

A recent trip over to Dover, New Hampshire resulted in us looking for breakfast options around the greater Hooksett area (the region between Concord and Manchester, NH, straddling the Merrimack River). Until very recently, this would have been an almost automatic choice of The Robie Store for breakfast sandwiches… but The Robie Store closed permanently a few weeks ago. So, after taking a look at various online reviews, I ended up picking Shirley’s Kitchen in Suncook Village as a good option. Their online media showed a mean-looking Benedict with some decent home fries, and I always have rather liked Suncook Village (just around the corner from Shirley’s is Oddball Brewing, which we’ve previously visited and enjoyed).

Last month, we were looking for a good place to go to celebrate Carol’s birthday, and realized we hadn’t been to one of our area favorites for a while: Windsor Station in Windsor, VT. As you might suspect from the name, Windsor Station is in the former railroad station, and it’s one of the area’s best fine-dining options.

We recently had to do a short day trip over to the Adirondacks in New York, and that left us looking for a new place for breakfast on the drive over. We’ve had a lot of great little spots on this drive, like Sugar and Spice and Big Apple Diner, but on this particular trip our timing lead us to wanting to explore Fair Haven and Castleton a bit. We ended up going to downtown Fair Haven, where we found The Wooden Soldier.

Back in 2021, one of my favorite breakfast spots, Country Kitchen in Newport, NH, announced that they wouldn’t be reopening after Covid-19 closures. I miss that spot; it was definitely a bit of a dive, but the food was good, the prices quite affordable, and they really had a nice selection of locals that were always dining there. But the place wasn’t closed for long, in 2022 it was announced that the building was reopening, this time as Jalisco Mexican Bar and Grill.

One of the odd details of NH that you don’t really appreciate until living here is that we only have two major interstates (I-89 and I-93), and if you aren’t driving between Manchester and Vermont (I-89), or heading to the Whites from Boston, there’s a good chance the ideal route for your travel isn’t highways, but a lot of 35 mph driving through some of NH’s quieter towns. Particularly, for us the optimal routes to Maine or Lake Winnipesaukee regions end up passing through either Franklin or Bristol NH, both fairly quiet former mill towns. Bristol, in particular, is a surprisingly nice little town, just south of Newfound Lake, with a nice little downtown. The downtownalready punches about its weight with at least three breakfast diners (The Bristol Diner, Gina’s Place, and Gilly’s), a good Mexican place (Cielito), and a brewpub (Shackett’s), but I repeatedly found myself driving by a place that opened a few years ago, Odysea.

After a weekend of robotics judging in Burlington, activities wrapped up around 7:30pm. The I-89 route back to my home in New Hampshire isn’t exactly heavily populated with dining establishments, and many of the few options start closing at 8pm, so I consulted my list of places in the Burlington area that I wanted to check out, and decided to check out Zaytoona for some Middle Eastern food before heading home.