Offbeat Eats

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.

The majority of our trip to Acadia National Park was a hiking trip, and we had most of our meals either on the trail, or prepared in the campsite (despite camping, we ate pretty well, see my review of Fitpacking for the typical fare), halfway through our trip, we had planned an outing to one of the traditional Lobster spots around Acadia, because, well, lobster. Most people’s visit to Acadia involves at least one meal of at least moderate overindulgence in lobster, and why should we argue with tradition? What we would argue about is where to go for lobster. Much like the famous New Haven pizza loyalties, visitors to Acadia all have their favorite lobster “pounds” (Lobster joints where they keep a central tank of lobsters and cook them to order). At the top of most lists are the same two favorites, both on the less-tourist southwest end of the island: Thurston’s Lobster Pound (Bernard), and Beal’s Lobster Pier (Southwest Harbor). We were getting towards the prime dinner hour, so we let basic logistics be the tie-breaker this trip: we were already in Southwest Harbor, so we decided to go to Beal’s.

To rendezvous with everyone on our trip to Acadia National Park, we gathered at a hotel in Orono, ME, and needed to check out the local town for dinner. While Orono is primarily known as the home of the flagship University of Maine campus, it also has a small downtown alongside the Stillwater Rier, with older wood-frame and brick buildings house independent shops, cafés, restaurants, and bars. Here’s where we found a good little spot for dinner: Woodman’s Bar and Grill.

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.