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.

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.

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

As I mentioned a few months ago in my review of the Community Supper at the Union Episcopal Church in Claremont, NH, I’ve been trying to make it to more of the various community meals that spring up around the area. Harvest suppers. Fire department fund raisers. Non-profit fundraisers. That sort of thing. And that brings me to an event I had seen advertised a handful of times, a monthly community breakfast run by the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Forest Lodge #69 Breakfast. Held the third Sunday of each month from 8:00 to 11:00 am, the breakfast is served buffet-style, with scrambled eggs, eggs and omelettes to order, blueberry and plain pancakes, biscuits and sausage gravy, corned beef hash, homemade brown beans, homefries, bacon, sausage, fresh-carved ham, and various beverages. Oh, and they use real maple syrup.

One of the more interesting Pandemic-era changes around the “Lower Upper Valley” was that, while there were a lot of restaurant closures, there were also some openings of note, primarily replacing those closures. Particularly when it comes to Mexican cuisine. Newport, NH used to have an outstanding Baja Mexican place, with the odd name of The Little Red Baron, but it closed in a squabble between the town (who owned the building) and the restaurant over septic system refurbishment, and there had been a gap in the area’s Mexican offerings for a while. But, in relatively short succession in 2023, we had three Mexican places show up: Rancho Viejo in Claremont (replacing the departed Pleasant Street Restaurant), Jalisco Mexican Bar and Grill in Newport (replacing the departed and dearly-missed Country Kitchen), and the similar named Casa Jalisco Bar and Grill in Claremont. While I have been to the first two a few times, the last of these I hadn’t had a chance to check it out, and a recent event in Claremont gave me an excuse to drop in.

The last few years, Chef Jeff Porter has been moving around a lot. He was getting good reviews in South Carolina when he moved back to back to his hometown of Newport, NH, and after some time working as a chef at one local golf course, he opened a food truck in Newport. After a pretty good start in the food truck, he moved to brick and mortar, moving his restaurant, Breaking Bread, into another country club, the Newport Country Club (which I’ve never been to, but it’s one of those spots that seems quite itinerant, since it’s been a good half dozen different restaurants in my years living here). Finally, a pair of storefronts on Newport’s Main Street became available next to the police station, and he moved Breaking Bread downtown. On one of our recent trips to an event in Newport, we finally had a chance to stop by and check it out.

As Summer started to turn to Fall, we wanted to make sure we hit a few of the hikes that had remained on our to-do list. We had tried to hike Mt Chocorua last year, but poor weather forced us to turn around most of the way up. This time, the weather was looking a lot more promising, and since we wanted to get an early start, we needed a breakfast spot enroute to the trailhead. We’ve found several nice places over the years in Bristol, but this time we decided we wanted to try a diner, so we headed out to the Bristol Diner, located just south of downtown.

A few weeks ago, our friends Geoff and Kristi were headed down to Concord, NH, and wanted to check out two spots in downtown Concord: Nawlin’s (a speakeasy that used to be called Mike’s BARbershop) and Hermanos Cocina Mexicana. It’s been a while (2016 to be exact, when I visited El Rodeo in Concord) that I’ve really checked out the Mexican food scene in the Concord/Manchester area, and a quick look at Hermanos Cocina’s menu looked promising, so we decided to give it a look.

As I mentioned in my recent review of the Strawberry Festival at the Claremont Union Episcopal Church, I’ve been trying to visit more of the various community meals that spring up around the Upper Valley. Harvest suppers, Church dinners, and fundraisers. With that in mind, in late July Carol and I spotted such an opportunity in the local newspaper, the annual Pie Breakfast sponsored by the Wilmot Community Association in Wilmot, NH. Wilmot is one of the smaller towns in the area, located NE of New London, Wilmot is a cruciform-shaped town that was formed from bits of New London, the Kearsarge Gore (a bit of NH land previously unallocated to any town), and Hill, NH. Like a lot of these towns, it actually has multiple “downtown” areas: Wilmot Center and Wilmot Flat. The Wilmot Community Association (the WCA) hosts occasional community building events, and one of their well-respected annual events is their Pie Breakfast.