Offbeat Eats

A recent trip up to visit with friends in Burlington, Vermont had us again looking to try new options for breakfast as we drove along Interstate 89. While we really liked our last visit to Wit & Grit, we had another spot in Randolph that’s been on our hit list since they opened: Wee Bird Bagel Cafe. This little cafe on the NE side of Randolph Vermont has been one of those spots that seems to perennially be experiencing changeover; just in the last 10 years, this spot has been Three Bean Café, Café Salud, Green Light Café, and the Huggable Mug, all variants on a basic cafe theme. But while none of them really had much tenure in the spot, Wee Bird, opened by Chelsie Brown of nearby Bent Hill Brewery (one of our area favorites), started a major renovation of the building and now runs the Wee Bird Bagel Cafe, featuring bagels, breakfast sandwiches, and other light bakery fare.

Several times a year, we end up traveling just north of Middlebury, VT to pick up wine from Lincoln Peak Vineyard. As I mentioned a while back in our review of The Cluckin’ Cafe, that gives us a nice excuse to check out a few of the sights and restaurants in Western VT. In this case, we had seen a lot of good online reviews for a bakery in downtown Middlebury next to the river: The Haymaker Bun Co.

When my brother was visiting the States last fall, in addition to satisfying his cravings for, among other items, New Haven Pizza and American-style pancakes, we also had a bit of family busy to attend to, visiting my aunt and uncle in Rhinebeck, NY. There are a lot of nice places to dine around Rhinebeck, but heading just south of town, there’s an attraction you can’t really miss in Hyde Park, the Culinary Institute of America.

Way back in the early days of Offbeat Eats, I discussed the issue of “Pasties” at length. While originating in Cornwall (which still has an extremely active Pasty culinary scene), during the late 19th century, the rapid decline in the Cornish mining industry resulted in Cornwall’s major historical export over much of the last century was… Cornish people, who settled in all sorts of pockets of around the world, with major settlement waves primarily in those regions with mining interests: Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Minnesota’s Iron Range, Pennsylvania and West Virginia coal mining, and even notable pockets in Mexico, Australia, and Spain. And they brought their culinary traditions with them, adapting them to local ingredients, traditions, and conditions. In the case of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the pasty was particularly embraced by the locals, especially with the mining crowds, and got quickly adapted. In particular, the other major expatriate group in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula mining community, the Finnish, adapted it to their own tastes based upon the Karelian Pasty. Tthis is where much of the substitution of carrot for the more Cornish-traditional turnip or rutabaga (a.k.a. ‘swede’) came from, along with some different preferences for crusts. The result is still quite popular; indeed, I remember driving US-2 between The Bridge and Wisconsin, and encountering over 4 dozen places selling pasties along the shore. And there are almost as many varieties: I’ve had flaky crust and firm crust pasties; pasties ranging from ‘moist’ to ‘dry’, spicing between mild and “black pepper bomb”, and everything ranging from traditional Cornish ingredients (hanger steak, rutabaga, potato, onion), to Finnish (either substituting carrot for rutabaga, or omitting it), or even “new” pasties with interesting ing . And the crimp? It ranges from the Cornish side crimp, to a Finnish- or Devon-like top crimp, to even the baseball like “tuck-under”, resulting in a more spherical-like pasty. With that in mind, it was important during our crossing of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to make sure we stopped at least a few times, and try out a local pasty. In this case, our first stop was in the Western UP, in the quiet town of Wakefield, for pasties from Randall Bakery.

While I try to keep much of my Offbeat Eating, well, “offbeat”, sometimes it’s good to go back to old favorites. And since a trip of our up to the RAF London museum had use out in the northwestern suburbs of London, that meant a side shopping trip for my brother to pick up bagels. You see, growing up in the Kaszeta household, one of the more holy culinary traditions is that Sunday mornings were typically celebrated with toasted bagels. So when my brother moved off to London, he found himself with the occasional craving for a good toasted bagel. Which actually is a bit of a challenge in London. Sure, those that are somewhat aware of the culinary scene in London are already going, “But there is Beigel Bake on Brick Lane!”, but, just like the spelling of “beigel” differs from “bagel”, the product itself varies, mostly due to the different culinary adventures the baked good has had along its various Yiddish voyages to New York, Montreal, or London. Don’t get me wrong, I rather like a good salt beef beigel from Beigel Bake, loaded up with delicious beef and hot English mustard. But the beigel itself is a bit more bready and less chewy than my expectations for a “bagel”…

One of the neater things about traveling is occasionally discovering completely-new-to-me food concepts, the “Things that I did not know where a ‘thing’”. Like learning that the Valencian Orxata is actually a pretty different item than the Mexican Horchata. Learning what a “Debris Po Boy” is in New Orleans. And learning that a Reunionnaise “Carri” is a splendidly different rendition of a “curry”. In this case, a walk through the streets of Bath had us come across Sally Lunn’s Historic Eating House, “Home of the Original Bath Bun.”

We actually rather enjoy going to Northampton, MA. Located in the west of Massachusetts in the Pioneer Valley, it’s a rather pleasant college town, with a really nice rail trail (the primary reason for our visit), several nice art galleries, a nice downtown, and even an outpost of Dobra Tea. But after a day of biking around, we were looking for a nice, substantial dinner, and that’s when we found Hungry Ghost.

As I mentioned in my review of Montreal’s Fairmount Bagel a few years ago, bagels are generally a fairly regional food item, with various world metropolitan areas all having their own variations on the same theme. One of the more respected ones, the Montreal Bagel, is also one of the most regional: it’s rather difficult to find a proper “Montreal bagel” outside of Quebec (and heck, they get pretty scarce outside of Montreal itself). So it was with a bit of skepticism that upon hearing that a relatively new addition to Burlington’s bagel scene (which, to date, hadn’t really impressed me that much, even with the relatively low standards I’ve had for “New England” bagels). But a trip this summer by Carol up to Burlington to get an issue with her Mini Cooper fixed let her to try out Myer’s Bagels, and she came back excited: “They really are good, Montreal-style bagels”. So the next time we were both up in Burlington, it was time to check out Myer’s.

For the last stop on our food tour, they took us to Leonard’s Bakery, a modestly-sized bakery located in the Kaimuki neighborhood, not to far from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, with their gleaming sign advertising malasadas and pão doce. The destination wasn’t particularly a surprise, since I’m pretty sure that Leonard’s Bakery was far and away the most-recommended place on Oahu, with literally dozens of people telling me that I had to go to Leonard’s and order a malasada. But I’m sure quite a few of you are now asking “what’s a malasada?” Well, as I mentioned, Hawaii is quite the culinary melting pot, and that influence includes Portuguese cuisine (a large number of Portuguese workers came to Hawaii from the Azores in the late 19th century to work on the sugar cane plantations). This immigration added several major items to Hawaiian cuisine, including Portuguese sausage (available at most breakfast places in Hawaii, and also widely available as a choice in a standard plate lunch), pão doce (Portuguese sweet rolls, kind of like a sweet dinner roll), and the malasada. The malasada is basically a Portuguese donut: a nominally egg-sized lump of dough is fried up and, in its most basic form, served up rolled in granulated sugar. It’s one of the classics of Hawaiian cuisine (indeed, the wedding we attended had fresh malasadas at the reception), and it’s a dessert widely available across the state. And, as I mentioned above, most anyone’s list for “Best Malasada” has Leonard’s near the top of the list.

The next stop on the food tour was Liliha Bakery. Located in Kalihi, which is one of the older and distinctly less touristy parts of town, Liliha is one of those places known for three things in particular: coco puffs (no, not the cereal, we’ll get back to that), great pancakes, and being open 24 hours a day (except for Mondays, when they take a day off). Indeed, when I was getting recommendations for places to check out for “local eats” in Honolulu, several people all gave me the suggestion “Get some coco puffs from Liliha Bakery”. So when our Hawaii Food Tours van pulled up and stopped at Liliha, I had an inkling as to why we were there.