Offbeat Eats

(Closed) The lousy winter continues here, so we again ended up heading north on Sunday, this time to the Trapp Family Lodge. Which again meant get breakfast on the way. We were a little later getting started, so instead of a repeat visit to Coffee Corner, we decided to check out a place that’s been on my hit list for a while: Limerick Irish Eatery. We figured we’d give them a try. Limerick Irish Eatery opened up in Quechee, Vermont, in the space vacated by the closing of Maple Grove Bakery about a year ago. They’ve set the place up so that it both serves as a coffee bar for the takeout crowd, and having table service for those seeking a full meal. Menu-wise, the primary theme is “Irish Comfort Food”, with a menu focusing on Irish breakfast fare, sausages, meatloafs, and the like. And hey, they even have Guinness on tap…

(Closed) It’s been a fairly lousy winter here, at least with respect to winter sports. We’ve really been wanting to get out and do some more cross-country skiing, but the distinct lack of snow has limited our outings. We decided this last weekend that we just had to give in and go to where the snow was, which was Smuggler’s Notch (our x-country passes are good there, too). Which meant a nice little drive through Waterbury. And a chance to stop at Coffee Corner for breakfast. My review of Coffee Corner is sadly overdue. A few months ago, I was recommending Coffee Corner to a coworker, and was going to email her the requisite link to my Offbeat Eats review…. only to find out that I hadn’t actually reviewed it. It’s not like I haven’t been there (I’ve probably been two dozen times since I started this blog), and I’ve got plenty of pictures… but this weekend’s trip was a good chance to get some fresh photos and do a full review….

(Closed) Two weekends ago, we had to head down to Boston to do some errands, which from our house is around a 2.5 hour drive on a quieter weekend. This always gives us some good opportunities to stop for food on the way down. Frequent stops of our for breakfast have included The Foot Hills of Warner (which I’ve noticed I haven’t reviewed here… I’ll have to fix that), Robie’s, The Red Arrow Diner, or The Dream Diner. And all of these places are great. But the world of breakfasts is vast and wide, and there are still plenty of places to explore on the way down to Boston, so this time we decided to check out the west side of the river in Manchester (the old Quebecois neighborhood), eventually settling on Rita Mae’s Restaurant…

(Closed) One of the biggest things I miss living in rural New England is that Mexican breakfasts are almost non-existent. Good Mexican places are few and far between, those that serve breakfast doubly so. But my parents live in Mesa, AZ, which always has had a reasonably good selection of Mexican restaurants, with even more showing up in recent years. And, luckily for me, most of them serve breakfast. So when we had a free morning while visiting my parents, Carol and I were craving breakfast burritos, so I decided to check out Amado’s Mexican Food…

While I may have mentioned this before, one of the things I generally don’t like when I’m traveling is free breakfast in hotels. I have several reasons for this, but the big reasons are that (a) hotel breakfasts generally suck, especially for the price, and (b) one of the perks of the otherwise dismal life of the business traveler is the ability to try new places to eat. So, like most every time my schedule allows me to try a local place for breakfast instead of having bland waffles at the hotel, I try to do so, even if it requires getting up early. This time, I decided to walk several blocks from the hotel to Northside Social Coffee and Wine in Arlington.

The morning after Carol’s sister Cathie’s wedding, she and her new husband George wanted to meet up for breakfast someplace in the Northwest Detroit metro area. Looking around at some of the options, one place that grabbed my eye was Toasted Oak in Novi, MI. A relative newcomer to the local scene, Toasted Oak opened in 2010. It’s one of the places that’s easily overlooked, since it’s actually part of the Renaissance Hotel in Novi, in the outer loop of the Twelve Oak’s Mall. Really, it’s in the sort of location that I usually pass over (I’ve had a lot of dismal brunches in hotels by malls, to be honest), but the place had a lot of good buzz, so I decided to give it a try. Especially since that positive buzz talked about their housemade sausages…

The day after the Death March, I unsurprisingly found myself rather hungry (walking across most of San Francisco will do that to you), so Steve and Emily took me to Plow in the Potrero Hill neighborhood (walking about, including checking out a rather cool antiques store, while waiting for our name to come to the top of the waiting list). A relatively new restaurant, Plow focuses on breakfast and lunch, focusing on quality ingredients. We settled in at a pleasant table outside on the sidewalk and watched the other diners as we perused the menu….

(Closed) After an April filled with trips to Austin and San Francisco, it was time to take a break and spend a little more time exploring my local area. In this case, it meant heading down to Stonewall Farm in Keene, NH, for their annual “Dance of the Ladies”. Having been in the barn all winter, this is the first time the cows have been in the pasture all year, and they generally respond with manic bounding and “dancing”, as well as the occasional head-butting and just hanging out. It was rather a cool sight, actually, and you can check out flickr photos of the event. But afterward, we were craving a breakfast, and decided that this would be a good opportunity to cross the river and see what we could find in Brattleboro, VT. After driving about a bit, we happened across Elliot Street Cafe. Nestled into a small building that, from the presence of a large pizza oven, apparently used to be a pizza joint, Elliot is a modest little neighborhood cafe with a decent breafast menu, with a selection of burritos, omelets, biscuits, bacon, and other breakfast sandwiches and wraps…

After a very successful Friday of BBQing and food-trucking, day two of the Central TX BBQ Run started with a trip to Snow’s BBQ in Lexington, TX. Snow’s is a modest little BBQ joint, but got catapulted to fame back in 2008 when Texas Monthly gave it a Best BBQ in Texas award. It’s been popular ever since, and their 300 pounds a day BBQ soon found itself surprisingly popular, and increasing their production four-fold. So it was only natural that a group such as ours would go seek out Snow’s. However, going to Snow’s is a bit of a logistical issue, since they only serve from 8 until noon on Saturday (they are closed the rest of the week), and they frequently run out of food, sometimes as early as 9:30. That means that if you aren’t taking it home, that means barbecue for breakfast!

Third time’s the charm? Recently, Carol and I read in the paper that West Lebanon’s Four Aces Diner had reopened. The Four Aces has had a bit of a rough history. A genuine Worcester Diner (#837), it originally was located downtown, but after a fire was relocated to its current location at 23 Bridge St (and is now enclosed by a surrounding building). Since I moved to the area, in 2001, it’s been through a couple owners. After closing up shop in 2008, it reopened as a “more upscale eatery” in 2009, but I wasn’t impressed (for my meal, “upscale” apparently mean “benedict with cold deli ham, broken sauce, and runny eggs”) and didn’t go back. After a bit more than a year that owner packed it in as well, and the Four Aces went on the market…