Offbeat Eats

I really like wandering around the back roads of Vermont, and while a lot of the little towns in central Vermont (especially along Route 100) seem to have a lot of neat restaurants, I unfortunately don’t often seem to be driving through those parts of the state when we’re looking for food. But a recent trip to a beer festival in Killington, VT finally gave us a chance to check out one of the places that’s been on our hit list: Creek House Diner in Bethel, VT.

In the post-war Era, literally thousands of “Polynesian” and “Tiki”-themed restaurants showed up around the US, peddling a mostly even mix of Polynesian, Maori, Asian, Pacific Island, and Escapism. Providing a spot where you could get away and sip any one of a number of Tiki or tropical drinks, nosh at a pu pu platter, and, for the larger establishments, maybe even catch a floor show. Sure, if one is looking for “authentic” food (Chinese, Polynesian, Japanese, or otherwise), this isn’t your place, but like I said in last year’s House of Wu, these sorts of places still have a valuable niche in American cuisine, with somewhat equal parts sentimentalism, nostalgia, preservation, adaptation, and, admittedly, bastardization. Once plentiful, changing American tastes, a wider variety of competing cuisines, changing local economies, and different challenges of running a huge restaurant have taken their toll, and many of these 1950s and 1960s places have faced the wrecking ball (including the recent 2018 closings of both Chicopee’s Hu Ke Lau and Lynnfield’s Bali Hai, both former Tiki icons). Despite the trend, Kowloon, in Saugus MA, still hangs on (and heck, it’s one of New England’s highest volume restaurants).

Sometimes it can be nice to break a curse. We all know them, those “cursed” restaurant locations that, for one reason or another, seem to consistently fail to thrive as a restaurant for one restaurateur after another, until finally either a restaurant manages to break the curse, or the building owner gives up and converts the space to something other than a restaurant. Well, recently I was heading back home from SE New Hampshire, and decided to meet Carol for dinner in New London at Little Brother’s Burger Company for dinner. Looking up the address, 420 Main St (an, ahem, memorable address), I immediately recognized it as New London’s cursed spot. In my 18 years living in the region, that same address has had one failed restaurant after another. Most recently, it was Cataleya’s Caribbean Grill. Before that, the Hole in the Fence Cafe. A tavern before that, and several other places that have since faded into memory (Snyder’s Tavern, College Cafe, …). The track record for places opening here is, quite frankly, dismal. But hey, a new owner, some new ideas, maybe something will catch this time?

(Closed) As a NH resident who is primarily going to Boston, Worcester, or Natick when I visit, there are some surprisingly large regions of Massachusetts that I haven’t explored in much detail, just because they sit between my usual traffic routes, such as Melrose (just north of Malden) which I visited for the first time earlier this year, or Andover, which I’d somehow managed to visit every surrounding town but not Andover itself. But a recent Robotics event I was judging in Salem, NH had me looking for cheap but decent hotel accommodations, and I ended up at a reasonably pleasant Holiday Inn Express in North Andover. And, while my various robotic judging activities did include a reasonable amount of food, after things wrapped up one evening I was still interesting in having a light dinner, so I drove over to downtown Andover to finally check it out. It’s a pleasant New England downtown area with a good number of shops and restaurants, and while I originally was eying Andolini’s Italian restaurant, since I was looking for just a light dinner, I ended up in what is essentially their annex next door, 15sx.

While this particular London trip was a flurry of visits to different cuisines ranging from Chinese, to Malaysian, to Turkish, I try to make it a point to visit at least a few places featuring classic British cuisine on each visit, both on the casual side of things (a near-obligatory visit to The Regency Cafe happening on this trip as well) and the formal end as well. After an informative trip to The Postal Museum and it’s related, not-to-be-missed Mail Rail exhibit taking you through old, compact mail tunnels running under the streets of London, it was time to wander down Farringdon Road and get a lunch of classic, old-school British fare at Quality Chop House.

Our second to last full day in London involved a trip out to Crystal Palace Park to gaze upon what little remains of the old Victorian era Crystal Palace. Built in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851, and later moved to Southeast London on top of a hill, the palace itself burnt down in the 1930s, but bits and pieces of the former wonder still remain: the foundation, the main staircase, some sphinxes, and some curiously outdated but historical dinosaurs. After a nice walk seeing the park, being a Sunday, we decided it would be nice to duck into a pub and score some classic pub food, wandering over to Westow House on the west edge of the park.

One of the enjoyable aspects of my London trips is that, in addition to all the great British and Commonwealth cuisines that get good representation, the London metro area has quite a good collection of Turkish restaurants. Previously, I’ve gotten to enjoy Tad in Hackney, and Likya in Golders Green, and particularly Kazan right down the street from my brother’s flat. Kazan isn’t the only Turkish option in Pimlico, either, just around the corner lies Cyprus Mangal. We’ve been there a few times before, when the food was excellent but I would have called the dining room ambiance “cozy”. But sometime in the last few years Cyprus Mangal had a rather major renovation and we decided it was a good opportunity to drop in and give them another try.

My primary reason for our visit to London this year was celebrating my brother’s 50th birthday in style. He invited people from a cross section of family and friends to descend upon London to toast, roast, and otherwise celebrate his 50 years of continued existence on this planet. The choice of venue was almost a given, since several years ago, Dan partook in two of the indulgences of a modern professional living in London: joining one of the City of London’s Livery Companies (The Worshipful Company of Security Professionals), and joining one of London’s Clubs, in this case, The Oriental Club.

My brother has a bit of an odd hobby, but with a good cause. London is quite multi-ethnic, and unfortunately, various right-wing sources claim that large stretches of London are now “Islamic No-Go zones” where police don’t tread and roving bands of religious police enforce Sharia law. The concept is laughably incorrect, and is what I believe most journalists would call “bull”. But my brother’s hobby is visiting these alleged zones and checking them out, often while enjoying an alcoholic beverage and perhaps some pork while at it. So when I was visiting, he decided to take a walk to one such falsely-identify no-go zone, Elephant and Castle. It’s long been a London crossroads, and it’s basically a large bus hub, a major Tube stop, and the site of a rather sad and forlorn late 1960s shopping centre that supposedly is going to be demolished any year now, but some how hangs on. What it definitely isn’t is a no-go zone. And, after a walking trip involving the Imperial War Museum, some light shopping at the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre (which is practically a 1975 time capsule), we were going to head to the nearby “box park” (London thing: pop-up shopping centre made out of shipping containers) to visit Marcel and Sons to try out some Mauritian food (and compare it to the related food over on Réunion). There was just one little problem: the box park, and Marcel and Sons with it, closed in December 2018, two weeks earlier. So, after a quick shopping trip to the nearby Asian grocery, we instead picked another well-reviewed local restaurant: Leños & Carbón

You know, sometimes it’s good to have some misconceptions, since you can then get delighted when everything turns out unexpectedly great. On our second day in London, after a morning trip to the Victoria and Albert museum, we were meeting up with another friend of ours, Guido, who was also in town. After some back and forth, we settled on rendezvousing across from Victoria Station for lunch. Throughout the entire decade we’ve been regular visitors to London, one of the most notable truisms is that Victoria Station has been in an almost unbroken string of construction projects, and heck, even on this visit various bits and pieces of construction fencing, plywood, and such still linger. But they did finish most of the project, and one of the major construction activities was the construction of Market Hall Victoria. This used to be part of a bus depot outside of Victoria, and then for years after that it was a kinda tacky nightclub fenced in by the sorts of touristy, red-bus-keychain selling souvenir booths outside many of London’s stations, but with this last renovation, it became Market Hall Victoria. To quote their marketing material, “Market Halls are redefining the British concept of food halls. Our goal is to give you the best food and drink in London, all under one roof.” Yeah, it sounds like a mall food court. I was dubious. That was my first misconception. Well, in some respects, it actually is a mall food court. With one little detail different: the folks that arranged Market Hall Victoria really did their homework and have a solid set of food vendors with some real chops. There’s Kerbisher and Malt serving up fish and chips. Koya Ko selling some really good looking Japanese udon and ramen bowls. Bunshop selling some funky bao-like British buns (Beef and barley, rarebit, etc), and Baozi Inn selling authentic bao. And, well, a lot of other places. But the one that drew me in was Gopal’s Corner.