Offbeat Eats

At the beginning of August, we went on a one-week backpacking trip in Yosemite National Park. After a week of carrying backpacks in elevations above 8000 feet, when we returned to Fresno, it was time for a celebratory dinner. We were staying in a hotel adjacent to the Fresno Airport, which, while very convenient for travel, isn’t exactly a food mecca. But a quick check of the map showed that nearby Clovis, CA had a lot of good looking options, especially for the combination of “beer” and “burgers” which always seems to be one of my top post-backpacking cravings. So we ended up taking a short drive to check out Colton’s Social House.

Back in mid ’22, Carol and I had a pleasant visit with friends in South Royalton, VT, stopping off at Carlita’s Cocina, which was a semi-permanent food truck in one of the large parking lots by Vermont Law School. Carlita’s was serving up a combination of burritos, tacos, and rice bowls that I’d primarily call “Asian-influenced Mexican fusion”. They were tasty, and we thought they’d be a good addition to the overall dining scene in SoRo. The food truck also burned down in an apparent accidental fire in May 2022, just weeks after my review posted. But this wasn’t the end for Carlita’s. They had already been considering a transition to a brick and mortar location, and 6 months later, they actually opened their new version of Carlita’s, the now-named Carlita’s Cantina, on nearby Chelsea Street across from the South Royalton Green. As I’m writing this review, they just passed their first anniversary in the new location.

In early August, I got to try out one of the more welcome additions to the Upper Valley’s breakfast scene. Every since the Pandemic started and The Lebanon Diner closed, most of the Upper Valley’s breakfast joints have been overwhelmed with demand, so it was very welcome that Taste started serving traditional breakfast and lunch at the north end of the West Lebanon Strip.

One of the obligatory parts of living in New England is that you’ve occasionally got to give into the urge, and go find a seafood restaurant and get one of the hallmark dishes of New England summer, such as a lobster roll or fried clams. And while the options are better on the coast, you don’t necessarily need to travel that far. As we mentioned in our Wit & Grit review, several times this summer we headed up to Burlington, and on our last trip up there, we decided to visit Vermont’s “inland coast”, going to Shanty on the Shore, on the shores of Lake Champlain just south of downtown Burlington.

The useful thing about catching a flight out of Kona at 10pm is that, after a very short connection in Phoenix, we arrived in Boston mid-afternoon, which actually is nice for a change. Instead of an early-morning or light-night drive back home, this gave us a chance to stop by Byfield, MA and get some barbecue.

Our last day in Hawaii was a very long Saturday spent touring coffee plantations, doing some light hiking, checking out the old Kona airport and the Kona Brewery, and finding a last relaxing dinner before heading off to the airport for a 10:30pm flight. Earlier in the trip, we had passed Jackie Rey’s Ohana Grill on the Kuakini Highway just outside of Kailua-Kona, and it looked like a great place to have a nice, relaxing dinner before watching the sun set.

I’ve always been a great fan of gelato, that Italian cousin to ice cream. Most everything I enjoy about a good ice cream is better with gelato, with a smoother texture, and often several more options that are dairy free (damn that lactose intolerance of mine). And I used to have a world-class gelato place, Morano Gelato a short drive from my office. But unfortunately, Morano Gelato had some business difficulties in 2019-20, and then when Covid hit in the Spring of 2020, Morano closed permanently after a 10 year run. So I’m always on the lookout for a good gelato place when I’m traveling, and while we were headed to Teshima’s Fine Foods, we spied Gypsea Gelato and vowed to try them out. A few days later, after touring nearby Greenwell Farms coffee, we had a chance to stop by and check them out.

On our second to last day on the Big Island, we got up early and drove out to Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park to see Kilaulea and hike along the shore. The road back to Kailua-Kona from Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park is a long drive (it’s over 90 miles, putting the ‘Big’ into ‘Big Island’), and we wanted to make sure we didn’t miss dinner. There’s actually not that many places to stop along the route, but the mainstay of local Hawaiian Cuisine was there for us: a location of L&L Hawaiian Barbecue in Ocean View.

After my conference wrapped up, we spent another few nights on the Big Island, moving up the coast to the Royal Kona Resort, which originally was built as the Hilton Kona Resort. It’s a surprisingly well-maintained old resort that has much of the 1960s charm to it, but it currently doesn’t have a lot of dining action, and I quite frankly wasn’t impressed with the limited breakfast options. So we headed down Ali‘i Drive to see what we could find. As I mentioned in my review of The Fish Hopper, Ali‘i Drive is basically ground-central for the central Kona coast tourist trade, with any number of restaurants vying for tourist dollars. My eye caught a rather low-key outdoor dining spot almost immediately adjacent to The Fish Hopper called Kalikala Cuisine, and after talking with a man (who I found out was the owner) on the bench out front with a nice dog, we decided to give the place a try.

One of the places I was looking forward to visiting on our trip to the Big Island was Kuleana Rum Shack. Since discovering their most excellent rum products back in 2021 (when they were one of the sponsors at our annual Ohana charity luau), I wanted to both see if what the distillery was up to, and try the Rum Shack (which is their restaurant and tasting room).