Offbeat Eats

Shortly before the pandemic (in that era now affectionately known as “the good old days”), on one of our many trips to Northampton, MA, we decided to duck over and check out nearby Easthampton, MA (which, despite the nominally cardinal names, is not east of Northampton, but southwest…), finding a nice little restaurant called Coco that also had an outstanding cocktail bar called The Cellar Bar. I actually quite enjoyed Coco, particularly for their fried chicken dinner, and their creative cocktails (that’s one of the few places I’ve ever encountered Mastika in a cocktail). But that was 2019, and like many, many restaurants, Coco struggled mightily with staffing and finances through 2020 and 2021, eventually announcing abruptly in August 2021 that they were closing permanently. But the underlying demand in Easthampton was strong enough that a handful of employees got together with some other local restaurant owners, and after six months of closure, the restaurant re-opened as Calico.

One of our goals this summer was to head down to Stockbridge, MA, to re-visit the Norman Rockwell Museum to see their Art and Humor of MAD Magazine exhibit (which is on display until October 27th; I really highly recommend it). Stockbridge is about a three hour drive for us, especially if we eschew the particularly boring I-91 drive, so we decided it would be best if we at least got a light meal before heading north. Looking around the greater Stockbridge area, we decided to take a short drive to the south to visit Barrington Brewery & Restaurant.

After a recent hiking trip to Mount Holyoke in Hadley, MA, we were looking for a nice spot for dinner on the way home. Luckily, Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley has quite a few great options for dinner. While normally we’d hit up either one of our favorite spots in Northampton, or potentially visit our old favorite The People’s Pint in Greenfield, this time we decided we’d mix it up a bit, and check out a place that had been one our perennial hit list, Magpie Woodfired Pizzeria in Greenfield.

After our hike up Mount Greylock, we headed off to Northampton for after-hike beers and dinner. As I’ve mentioned in a few other reviews, I really like Northampton as a destination that’s not too far from our home (it’s around an hour and forty if there isn’t traffic), so while it was a slight detour getting home, it’s worth it, getting a chance to revisit one of our favorite breweries (Progression), and look for dinner. There are a lot of great restaurant in town (including favorite Hungry Ghost), but this time, we wanted to revisit a previous spot, Homestead.

When we first moved to New England, we’d occasionally make some road trips down to Western Massachusetts, and we still routinely visit the Pioneer Valley, but for several years the more western reaches of Massachusetts seemed to fall off our radar. But a few recent trips hiking on Mount Greylock (MA’s highest point, and a decent hike) re-introduced us to the area, and have lead us to check out a few of the more interesting destinations. On a recent weekend, we went to The Clark Art Institute to see both their permanent collection, and a visiting Edvard Munch exhibit (pics here, they really do have a great collection), and afterward explored some of the area’s food and drink scene. After a pleasant round of beers at Bright Ideas Brewing in North Adams, my eye landed on a nearby option for dinner: Casita.

The useful thing about catching a flight out of Kona at 10pm is that, after a very short connection in Phoenix, we arrived in Boston mid-afternoon, which actually is nice for a change. Instead of an early-morning or light-night drive back home, this gave us a chance to stop by Byfield, MA and get some barbecue.

One of my annual traditions that I’ve finally been able to resume after several years’ pandemic-related interruption is judging student-built robots for FIRST Robotics, which usually has me traveling a few weekends at the end of each winter to various events in the district. This year, I was judging in Salem, NH, and staying in a relatively nice DoubleTree Hotel over in Andover, MA across the board. While Andover is no culinary slouch (see, for example, my 2019 review of 15SX, which unfortunately burnt down in November 2022), when I’m in the area I’m usually drawn to nearby Lowell, which has a very good selection of restaurants, particularly Southeast Asian ones and old-school American ones (like The Owl. But this time one particular establishment had drawn my attention: The Keep.

Wusong Road Those that know me well, know that I rather love the combination of good cocktails and the occasional Americanized Asian food, and that usually means one thing: a Tiki Bar. However, doing this well is challenging. Even a few years ago, Massachusetts had quite a few hold-outs from the mid-20th century Polynesian Pop craze, including Chicopee’s Hu Ke Lau, Cambridge’s Aku-Aku, and Saugus’s Kowloon. In their day, they were popular, often packed every night of the week, and they survived for decades even as the Polynesian Pop craze faded, although the drinks often got watered down and the food a bit more mass-produced. Starting in the 2010s there’s been a noticeable resurgence in Tiki culture. A few places still hang on (like the abovementioned Kowloon, although they are supposed to close and rebuild as a smaller restaurant), and the occasional new place has started to open (like Tiki Rock in Boston, but despite the resurgence, there have been a lot more closures than openings. It’s actually a bit hard to find a place to go with friends for some quality cocktails and good (Americanized) Asian food food at the same time, but in November 2021, the regional Tiki bar scene got noticeably better with the opening of Wusong Road in Cambridge.

My brother’s visit to the States was a short one, and we soon found ourselves heading back to Logan Airport so he could catch his flight. Since we had a bit of time to spare, I decided to take the kindler, gentler route to the airport, which involves avoiding Boston itself and taking Route 1 down to East Boston. He mentioned that he had one last food craving he wanted to satisfy, and that was a “proper Massachusetts-style roast beef sandwich”, so I decided that the best thing to do would be a short diversion to Peabody, MA to visit Jamie’s Roast Beef.

As I discussed in my 2018 review of House of Wu, there was a nice mid-20th century tradition toward Tiki culture, combining Americanized Chinese food and other Asian cuisine and Tiki-style cocktails in an over-the-top Polynesian theme. The result is a mix of cultural integration, cultural preservation, adaptation, preservation… as well as more than a little improvisation and occasionally appropriation, but there’s an entire two generations of Americans that grew up with this sort of joint. But while there’s been a recent resurgence in both cocktail culture and Polynesian cuisine, the last few decades haven’t been kind to a lot of these older venerable restaurants, and many in New England (Chicopee’s Hu Ke Lau, Worcester’s Ken Chin, Woonsocket’s Ho Kong, Lynnfield’s Bali Hai) have shuttered in recent years, and a few of the others like Wind Tiki in Webster, MA falling to other fates like structural fires. So it’s important to enjoy some of the places that still remain, like Mon Kou in Attleboro, MA.