Offbeat Eats

One of the things that amazes me about Washington, DC, is that several of the tourist trap food spots seem to have remained almost unchanged since my earliest visits to DC as a child back around the Bicentennial. There are still the food carts next to the American History museum and the Air and Space museum hawking some really dubious looking egg rolls. The exit of the Federal Triangle Metro station still seems to have one of the worst, and most expensive, hot dog stands in the district. Tony Cheng’s in Chinatown is still churning out dubious “Mongolian” food. And the block across the street from Ford’s Theater is chock full of touristy t-shirt shops, souvenir stands, and odd restaurants. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was only April 15, 1865 when the first entrepreneur set up a souvenir stand. But, for as long as I can remember, there’s always been a Waffle Shop across the street from Ford’s Theater.

Every once in a while something happens that causes me to revisit a place, be it finding out that I missed (such as finding out that I had missed the best dish at the now-closed The Pines Cafe in Palmdale, CA, or finding out that a place has a new menu. This is actually my third writeup of Gusanoz (my second introduced you to their burger business, Revolutionary Burger), but a few weeks ago they made another menu change that I thought was worthy of checking out: they added breakfast.

I recently had a family-related trip to Corning, NY (where I was born), and found myself craving dinner in downtown Corning (Market Street, a.k.a. The Gaffer’s District). While this part of town has quite a few restaurants (including one I’ve already reviewed), most of the places are pubs, Italian places, or pizza joints, none of which were really appealing to me. I was craving something a little more upscale, and a quick web search led me to Three Birds. Nestled in at the eastern end of Market Street, Three Birds is in a doubled-up storefront having a rather ornate bar on one side, and dinner tables on the other. Being a solo diner this time, and somewhat light on my appetite, I decided to sit at the bar, which also allowed me to peruse both their normal dinner menu, as well as the lighter bar menu.

A few weeks ago I was driving to upstate New York, which involves the rather difficult process of negotiating Vermont, which lacks major East-West highways (while I love the scenery of Vermont, if they ever wanted to create an interstate heading across the state from either Bennington or Rutland, I wouldn’t complain). This time I went on Highway 7, passing through Chester, and used it as an excuse to visit MacLaomainn’s Scottish Pub, which I had noticed on several recent trips, but never had reason to stop in. Being 1pm and my not having lunch, stopping in for a late lunch seemed to be the order of the day.

Last month we went to the Cabot Hosiery Mills (a.k.a. “Darn Tough Socks”) annual factory sale in Northfield, VT, and afterward decided to go into Montpelier for a little bit of light shopping and eating. We eventually ended up at Skinny Pancake for some crêpes. Skinny Pancake didn’t start here, they actually started back around 2003 as a little cart selling crêpes on Burlington, VT’s Church Street pedestrian mall (not too far down from one of my other favorite Church Street food vendors, Hong’s Chinese Dumplings, which I reviewed last year. I had enjoyed their crêpes from the cart a few times, and then in 2007 they went big time, opening up a storefront on College St down by the waterfront.

(Closed) As anyone reading my article on Eggs Benedict from earlier this year could tell, it’s one of my favorite breakfast dishes from the savory side of things. The combination of a good toasted muffin, some sort of proper meat product, a nicely poached egg, and a well-executed tangy hollandaise makes for quite the nice breakfast. It’s also very, very hard to find such a beast in the Upper Valley. Lou’s can poach a mean egg (their “poached eggs and hash” breakfast is one of my local favorites) biut only has a Benedict as an occasional special. Four Aces had one, but it was a rather poor specimen (limp sauce, and cold ham), and in any case Four Aces is no longer with us. I’ve had an outstanding one at Wasp’s in Woodstock, but that’s outside my normal range, and not open on Saturdays. Benedicts also grace a few other menus of area places (as the occasional special, mostly), but I’m generally left underwhelmed. In an area not particularly well-populated with a lot of breakfast joints, I’m generally forced to lived without.

For the last several years, I’ve bee an active member of The Upper Valley Beer Society, which is primarily a homebrew club, although we also have visiting brewers, go on the occasional brewery/cidery tours, and host the occssional special event, such as last March’s St Patricks Corned Beef dinner in conjuction with Umpleby’s Bakery in Hanover. Back in April, Charles, the owner of Umpleby’s, distributed an essay about the history of the Beefsteak, a New York area traditional that is a lengthy food event featuring profound quantities of beef (and a few other meats), beer, and little else (tradition also mandates that one wear their “second best suit”). We found the tradition compelling, and given our easy access to amazing local beef and beer up here, decided to throw one of our own.

(Closed) As frequent readers of my blog are aware, one of my major clients is NASA Glenn Research Center, so I travel fairly frequently to the Cleveland area. As several of my other reviews, such as Greenhouse Tavern and Wonton Gourmet indicate, Cleveland is quite the food destination, and I’ve so far only touched the tip of the iceberg (with such recommended establishments as AMP150, Lola, Lolita, B-spot, and several others remaining on my hit list for reviewing). However, most of these places (with the noticeable exception of AMP 150) are downtown or other places not easily accessible to GRC (which is by the airport, well west of downtown), so for years the question of “Where shall we go for lunch?” was typically answered with “well, thte food court at the mall isn’t too bad…” Indeed, that’s where we’ve eaten, more times than I could count.

(Closed) A few weeks ago, we found ourselves driving through Hillsborough and Peterborouh in southern NH. Looking for a snack, we had recalled that several years earlier we had passed some sort of German bakery, but couldn’t recall details. This time, armed with GPS and 3G wireless, we found the place: German John’s Bakery in Hillsborough. A modest storefront in a building shared with an ice cream parlor (which appears to be run by the same folks), it’s a cozy little bakery with a several racks of baked goods, a chalkboard listing available sausages, some shelves of German groceries, and a few tables. We opted for a few classic soft pretzels, and went outside to the tables out front.

For the nth year in a row, Carol and I went to the Vermont Brewers’ Festival in Burlington, VT. Every year we like to attend on Saturday, enjoy the festival, and then explore downtown Burlington a bit, and then find a new place to try to eat. This year, we settled on Pho Hong. I’ve always loved Vietnamese food, but it’s one of the hardest cuisines for me to indulge in. From my house in Grantham, I can draw an approximate 60 mile radius circle without enclosing a single Vietnamese place. The nearest is in Manchester (Golden Bowl, which I’ve reviewed here). But I’m always looking for new places, and sometime in 2008 Pho Hong appeared, making it the third Vietnamese place in the Burlington area, and (I believe) the first in the actual city.