Offbeat Eats

(Closed) Sometimes you find quality in places you really aren’t expecting it. I’ve been a fan of the French Dip sandwich since I was a kid. There’s just something nice about some good rare roast beef served in au jus on a nice crusty roll. Unfortunately, most places don’t do a good French Dip. They use overcooked, cheap roast beef; low-grade salty bullion; and soft buns that quickly get waterlogged. There is, of course, the occasional exception. That place that makes a good case for having inventing the sandwich in the first place, Phillipe, makes a seriously good French Dip (I particularly recommend their Lamb Dip). And, to this day, my gold standard for a good French Dip is the version that was made by the Harrison Roadhouse in East Lansing, Michigan (with extra-rare, cold roast beef on a delicious onion bun, served with a rosemary-infused au jus). Alas, the Harrison Roadhouse itself stopped making it more than a decade ago…

(Closed) After years of visiting Manchester’s famous Red Arrow Diner, I figured it was worth checking out downtown Manchester’s other diner, the Manchester Diner on Hanover St. I recall that this place has been here as a diner for a while under other names (I think the last incarnation was the Golden Oldies Diner), so it’s one of those slightly gritty and worn-around the edges cozy diners that most any New England city like Manchester used to have dozens of, with your basic lunch counter and a few tables, and a few black and white photos and knick-knacks. It also appears to be owner-operated…

I’ve been craving pancakes for a number of reasons (including National Pancake Day on this upcoming Tuesday), and both of my regional favorites (Polly’s and Dana’s) are seasonal and not open until spring thaw. Several people on Chowhound recommended this place to me as a good place for pancakes, and, indeed, they were right. This is probably one of the best meal deals I’ve ever found. The breakfast included pancakes (with real maple syrup), toast, corned beef hash, home fries, bacon, and eggs.

(Closed) It seems everyone is moving to Canaan these days. It’s like it’s becoming the new Enfield. In any case, it was time for another visit to Canaan to check out the food scene. So Finn and I met up with Chris and Val to try out on of Canaan’s newer restaurants: Mom and Dad’s Family Diner, right on Route 4. Mom and Dad’s is your basic diner, with an array of pancakes, waffles, omelets, and related breakfast fare, including some fairly interesting items such as the “Hangover Special” (a poutine-like assemblage of home fries with gravy), as well are the more usual items like biscuits and gravy and CBH.

(Closed) Recently, the Rusty Moose restaurant in Grantham, NH closed, and after several weeks of vacancy, it has reopened as the Grantham Cafe, open for breakfast and lunch 6 days a week (closed Mondays). The owner of the cafe also owns Grantham Video down the way, so the new incarnation of this restaurant sports a Hollywood motif, with movie posters, some film reels on the wall, and most of the menu items named after movies (mine was named after McGuffin, for example).

In one of the more anticipated changes in the local restaurant scene, Umpleby’s new location at 3 South Street in Hanover (approximately where the hardware store used to be before the big South Main/South Street construction happened) is now open, so Carol and I decided to head over there for Sunday breakfast before heading out for a hike. Previously located in Bridgewater, Umpleby’s has been known for several years as the go-to people for croissants and meat pies at the Norwich Farmers Market. Indeed, either the Umpleby’s line would be quite long, or they’d be sold out.

There’s something about old-style roadside restaurants that just draws me in. Hart’s Turkey Farm in Meredith, NH, is just one of those places. Shortly after moving to NH in 2001, I drove by Hart’s on the way to Weirs Beach, and made a mental note to come back and check it out sometime. Well, it was several years before I found myself in the general area needing dinner, but this last weekend after several hours of rock climbing in Rumney, Carol and I decided to finally visit Hart’s Turkey Farm and check it off the list. We’re glad we did.

Every spring, I go with the local high school FIRST Robotics team down to compete at Manchester, New Hampshire, for three or four days. Usually this means that I have a few hours to explore the local food scene a bit more. In the past, that’s pretty much the way I discovered the Red Arrow Diner, Greg’s Place, Golden Bowl, and Gauchos Churrascaria. (And I should actually write up all of these, too.) This time, I made a concerted effort to find someplace good for breakfast that was off the beaten track. A quick web search lead me to Belmont Hall, at the corner of Grove and Belmont SE of the Verizon Arena.

So, it’s lunchtime, and you happen to be in an office on Etna Road in the backwaters of Hanover. You’re hungry, but you didn’t bring a lunch, and you really don’t want to drive all the way into Hanover or Lebanon just to grab something to eat. So where do you go? The Etna General Store, in “Metropolitan Downtown Etna”. I have a bit of fondness for the Etna Store, since it’s your basic General Store, with food (a bit more than your typical gas station or convenience store), video rental, animal feed, and a few other random items like lottery tickets, all in a, umm, distinguished building. They also have a fairly predictable schedule of lunch specials, so, if you like a particular item (like the sausage grinder, every other Friday), they’ll usually have it if you go on the right day

(Closed) Both my job-related travel and my volunteering as coach of the Lebanon Robotics Team give me plenty of opportunities to roam around downtown Manchester on a regular basis. One of the places that has always intrigued me is the Post Office Fruit Luncheonette. This is one of the those little businesses that seems like it is right out of the Twilight Zone. It’s basically a small convenience store style storefront, which used to sell groceries, magazines, stamps, and lottery tickets (the last of these apparently providing the bulk of their revenue). However, it’s plainly obvious that aside from lunch-counter related items, the grocery operation has been slowly petrifying over the last decade or so, with a few tired packets of aspirin and Pepto Bismol with a healthy patina of dust on them being the last major holdout.