Offbeat Eats

During my recent stay in Nashua, one morning I found myself with a breakfast craving: I was specifically craving a breakfast burrito. While in many areas of the country this isn’t much of a problem, up here in Northern New England, what few burrito places we have mostly don’t serve breakfast, or serve up some sort of bland imitation of a breakfast burrito with some tired scrambled eggs and maple breakfast sausage. But luckily, a few online searches later, and I discovered that I was right down the street from a small, local chain that among its many breakfast offerings were several decent-sounding burritos: Pressed Cafe.

Since I enjoyed my little speakeasy excursion in Nashua, on another recent trip down to the area, I decided to go with my coworker Jed to another of the area’s speakeasies, 815. Not as well disguised as CodeX, 815 (named after the address, 815 Elm) hides primarily just by having nothing apparent by the “entrance” other than a phone booth. Calling on the phone, you need a password to get in (I’ll leave to my readers to figure out that detail), although rumor is that really good knock-knock jokes or hula dances may work as well, your mileage may vary.

Every year I spend the better part of a week in Nashua assisting in a FIRST Robotics competition, and as a tradition, after we’re done with the event several of us go to (rather good) El Colima in Nashua to celebrate. For the last two years, I’ve noticed that the space next to El Colima appears to be some sort of used bookstore, but since I’m visiting in the evening, it’s not surprising that they aren’t open. But recently, I found that the bookstore, Codex, is much more than it appears to be. There are a few clues that something’s afoot: first of all, while there are books in the window, you can’t actually see inside. The “main entrance” has a “closed” notice on it, along with a copy of the 18th Amendment, and looking at the various books in the window, you can see a distinct alcoholic theme involved. The door also has a handwritten “enter around the side” notice on it, and, going in through the side door, there’s little in there other than a stairwell, a door for the “Youth Council” (which is apparently exactly that), and a bookcase. I’m sure you can guess where this is going…

After 18 years of living in New Hampshire with regular visits to the Manchester area, I’m still occasionally finding some new neighborhoods to explore, along with a few places to eat. In this case, we were taking a shortcut around traffic and ended up getting off on the West Bank of Manchester (the French “Notre Dame” neighborhood). While that part of town has some great eats (like, say, Chez Vachon or Rita Mae’s, we decided to head south a bit and try a new-to-us place, Francoeur’s Cafe.

(Closed) As I mentioned in last year’s review of El Rodeo, there’s a certain challenge in finding good Mexican places in Northern New England. We don’t get a lot of Mexican (or even Latin American) people moving north of Boston, and when they do, the local tastes up here tend to cause them to water them down the spicing level and amp up the queso factor a bit. So when I’m traveling around and see a Mexican place I haven’t tried yet, I’m usually skeptical, but when I spotted El Colima in Nashua, it looked like it had a fair bit of promise. Nashua is actually generally a pretty good town for restaurants, and several places gave the place good marks, so I figured it was worth stopping in.

One of the notable things about living in a rural area is that, with relatively few restaurants, when a new place opens, it generally gets noticed right away. Just over a year ago, I was driving through the relatively quiet town of Meriden, NH, and noticed that in addition to their Deli Mart (which does serve up some pretty good fried chicken, sandwiches, and snacks), that the house across from the library was getting a major remodel, including a sign announcing the soon-opening Poor Thom’s Tavern. Finally, a real restaurant in Meriden. While it took me until recently to get there for a visit, I was quite happy to see a new place showing up.

A few years ago, my coworker Nick invited us to his house in Lebanon for a summer party, and in addition to coworkers, a lot of his neighbors were in attendance, and there was a pretty good spread of food. One thing that everyone was commenting on was that someone had brought two giants trays of food: one was fried spring rolls, and the other was beef skewers, and both were really good. Talking to Nick, he said that was his neighbor Sarin, who was a Hypertherm worker who did some catering on the side, and he was looking to start up a food truck. Well, a few months later he pulled it off, and a “Phnom Penh Sandwich Station” food truck started showing up at different spots around the Upper Valley, usually at the Lebanon green around noon, and the Hanover green for the late evening crowd. The food was quite good, mostly involving either rice dished or banh mi sandwiches served up out of the truck, often as a lunch special with some minted tea. The service wasn’t always fast, but that was for a good reason: for the main dishes Sarin doesn’t cook anything ahead of time: order a pork sandwich, and the marinated pork goes onto the grill right as you order, and it takes a few minutes to cook. Well, people didn’t mind the wait, and business was brisk. Enough so that, last Fall, Phnom Penh Sandwich Station opened their brick-and-mortar location.

Manchester, NH is a funky little town. New Hampshire’s Queen City, it has a lot of character in some of its neighborhoods. Downtown is located in what used to be the mill district (indeed, most of the Millyard is still there, being converted into various offices, industrial lofts, and the like), and there are even a few ethnic neighborhoods. One of these is the West Side, where two of the larger neighborhoods (Notre Dame and Rimmon Heights) are actually Quebecois in heritage. The area had some tough years, with “urban renewal” between the 1960s and 1980s actually razing two decent neighborhoods and turning them into dismal strip malls, but the area has generally rebounded, diversified a bit, and, well, even gentrified a bit. But in addition to the notable large French Catholic Churches, the neighborhood still has a lot of Quebecois heritage, especially in the food scene. There’s probably no better place for this than Chez Vachon.

As a frequent volunteer for FIRST Robotics, I often find myself having to spend the occasional weekend as a guest judge staying in towns that I’m normally close enough to that I’d just visit them during the day, but due to the early hour that Robotics kicks off, it’s nice staying close by. This also gives me an opportunity to check out some of the local towns in a bit more culinary detail. This year, I was spending a lot of time in Windham, so I ended up getting a room in Nashua. I’ve enjoyed a few places around Nashua before, like Martha’s Exchange or Vietnam Noodle House, but this time, I was craving a gyro. Many other places I’ve lived, gyro joints were a dime a dozen, but in New Hampshire for some reason, they are somewhat rare (although Manchester has a few, like the very good Gyro Spot). But I had noticed that since my last visit, Nashua had added Main St Gyro, so I had to give it a try.

One of the things I learned long ago about living in New England is that certain phrases should immediately make your “Danger, Danger, Will Robinson!” alarm go off. One of those is most any sentence containing both “New England” and “Barbecue”. Also up there is “New England” and “Mexican”. Really dangerous is the combination of “New England” and “Authentic Mexican” food, since, while I’ve been to the occasional good actual Mexican place (including El Rincon down in Manchester, or when they have their A game going, Gusanoz, although for the latter I usually need to budget extra for the extra margarita I’ll need to wash down the bad service), usually I find an “Authentic” place to be dismal Tex-Mex at best, sub-Old El Paso at worse. But every once in a while I do stumble across a place that’s actually putting in a good effort, and not just dishing out queso-flavored disappointment. So, on that note, I introduce you to El Rodeo.