Offbeat Eats

A recent trip to various spots of interest around Newfound Lake had us passing back through Bristol, NH around dinner time. While I’ve already got some good places in Bristol that I enjoy, such as The Bristol Diner and LinCross Roast Beef, I decided that this was a good chance to check out another spot. We’ve driven past Cielito in Bristol several times (it’s across the street from The Bristol Diner), and decided that this time we’d actually have dinner there.

A few years ago, we had a pair of favorite restauarants in Manchester, Republic Café and Campo Enoteca, that were a favorite light dinners when we were in the area, with Campo serving up French-inspired food, and the latter serving Italian food. But the pair didn’t survive the pandemic intact, at first, they combined operations as “Republic of Campo” (and you can still see the “Republic” on Campo’s sign today), but that didn’t last, and in 2022 Republic Café closed permanently (the name lives on in the only lightly-related Republic Brewing a mile away) and Campo Enoteca was sold to new owners. However, the new owners of Campo Enoteca have been successful at keeping the place operating, so I figured it was worth dropping in and doing one of our Offbeat Eats “Health Check” re-visits.

As I mentioned a while ago in my review of Claremont Union Episcopal Church’s Strawberry Harvest Supper, I’ve been trying to avail myself of the various community meals that spring up around the Upper Valley. Harvest suppers. Fire department fund raisers, Non-profit fundraisers, and that sort of thing. As I find them, I like to work them into my schedule. This year, I noticed in the Kearsarge Shopper an announcement for Newport, NH’s Church of the Good Shepherd’s fall Roast Beef Dinner on November 1st (yes, this means I’m 9 weeks behind at the moment; working on it…).

The Upper Valley region doesn’t have many “fine dining” restaurants, especially once you get out of the core. Since we moved to the area in 2001, the New London Inn has been one of the area’s few “dinner date” restaurants, but the actual restaurant has had a lot of iterations, ranging from the “New London Inn” which we found a bit stodgy, the Coach House (which we rather liked), and most recently, it’s now operated as “The Elms” by the same team as the Oak Roam at the Inn at Pleasant Lake. Celebrating our anniversary in October (well, the anniversary is in late September, but September was a crazy-busy month) gave us a good reason to go over and check out The Elms and see how the new ownership was doing.

A recent trip down through lower NH gave us a good opportunity to stop in Concord with two purposes: a quick visit to Lithermans Limited brewery, and hopefully a chance to finally check out 603 BBQ next door, which is the rare NH “Barbecue” place that really gets consistently good reviews. While Lithermans was quite good, a few delays in our departure meant arriving at Lithermans at 12:15, by which time the line for 603 BBQ was already a good hour long. Not wanting to spent that much time of a delightfully nice Fall day waiting in line, we opted instead to check out a promising-looking small sandwich shop we had passed on our way in, Nina’s Bistro & Sandwiches.

One of the things we’ve committed to here at Offbeat Eats is to take several of those places we’re always driving by, saying to ourselves “I should check out that place sometime”, and actually stopping to check it out. In this case, we regularly drive through Hopkinton, NH when taking the “back way” to Bedford, Manchester, or a lot of Northeast Massachusetts; it’s a nicer drive than the interstate, it’s more fuel efficient, it passes right by Flight Coffee in Bedford, and it saves the toll. The back way takes us right through downtown Hopkinton, NH, and just east of downtown, on the shore of Kimball Pond, is the Lakehouse Tavern. We finally decided to stop in for dinner after a day of errands in Manchester.

One of the things I like to follow in the world of Restaurants is the annual James Beard Awards, seeing which chefs and restaurants, especially in New England, are getting recognized. I’ll be honest, New Hampshire usually doesn’t get a lot of nominations (Vermont and Maine definitely do better in this respect), so when a NH place gets to the semi-finalist or finalist list multiple years in a row, I know that place is worth checking out. In this case, it was in the “Outstanding Bakery” category, and unlike the usual pastry shops and bread bakeries, this one was an ice cream place: Bethlehem’s Super Secret Ice Cream, who was a semi-finalist in 2024, and a finalist in 2025.

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.