Offbeat Eats

(Closed) Recently, the Rusty Moose restaurant in Grantham, NH closed, and after several weeks of vacancy, it has reopened as the Grantham Cafe, open for breakfast and lunch 6 days a week (closed Mondays). The owner of the cafe also owns Grantham Video down the way, so the new incarnation of this restaurant sports a Hollywood motif, with movie posters, some film reels on the wall, and most of the menu items named after movies (mine was named after McGuffin, for example).

(Closed) Every since I started going to Edwards AFB regularly several years ago, this place has been on my to-do list. Several people on Chowhound raved about it. Several area guides recommend it. And the place is photogenic to boot. But every other time I’ve come to the area, I’ve had to be out at Edwards early enough that I couldn’t do breakfast. But finally, on my 5th trip out here, I had a chance to go here for breakfast. And I’m glad I did.

(Closed) My experience at the Wickford Diner was a complete fiasco (in the second sense above), but the resulting comedy of errors was so entertaining that I just had to tell other people about it. This isn’t really a complaint, since in the end the humor of the situation greatly outweighed any of the inconvenience. This Memorial Day, I found myself in Wickford, RI, immediately before the morning’s Memorial Day Parade. Carol and I were hungry for a little breakfast (our earlier efforts at Allie’s Donuts failed, due to Allie’s being closed for the holiday), but the Wickford Diner was open. I’ve been to the Wickford Diner several times before in the last umpteen years (previously in 2001, 1996, and probably sometime before that), with pleasant memories of the basic staples of RI cuisine: corncakes and chowder…. It quickly became obvious that something wasn’t quite right that morning…

Every spring, I go with the local high school FIRST Robotics team down to compete at Manchester, New Hampshire, for three or four days. Usually this means that I have a few hours to explore the local food scene a bit more. In the past, that’s pretty much the way I discovered the Red Arrow Diner, Greg’s Place, Golden Bowl, and Gauchos Churrascaria. (And I should actually write up all of these, too.) This time, I made a concerted effort to find someplace good for breakfast that was off the beaten track. A quick web search lead me to Belmont Hall, at the corner of Grove and Belmont SE of the Verizon Arena.

I’ve held off for a long time on review Lou’s, for a number of reasons, including (a) it’s in downtown Hanover, so it’s obvious, and (b) it’s probably the most-reviewed restaurant in the area. But for completeness, and since that’s where I ate this morning, I decided it was finally time to write it up. Lou’s is quite the institution in Hanover, having opened in 1947 (so I’m expecting some minor press next year as the restaurant turns 60). And it obviously has quite the following with both the Dartmouth crowd and the tourist traffic, since the place is universally packed after around 9am every morning (and generally, forget about going there on a saturday). Some would call it small (but by Upper Valley standards it’s pretty roomy), and having a long queue of folks waiting for seats gawking at you while you eat your meal is part of the charm.

Sometimes, the breakfast gods just aren’t smiling at me. Saturday, Carol and I decided that we needed another breakfast, and so we decided to hit The Fort in Lebanon. I rather like the Fort in a number of ways. It’s neat, there’s almost never a wait, and the food is definitely trucker-approved (most of the clientele is truckers when I’m there). This time, I ordered a breakfast skillet with sausage special (eggs cooked in a skillet with sausage, home fries, onions, peppers, and cheese), and Carol ordered the papas y huevos burrito.

(Closed) Today’s review is Wasp’s Snack Bar and Diner in Woodstock, Vt, which several UVScene readers requested that I review (and one person requested that I didn’t, more on that below). It’s been several years (and multiple owners, if I’m not mistaken) since my last trip to Wasp’s Diner, since Wasp’s isn’t open for business on weekends (which is my normal reviewing time), so it’s primary clientele is Woodstock locals. That, and the decidely low-key storefront really keep this place from showing up on too many tourists’ radars as well.

(Closed) Carol and I dropped by the new Farmers Diner location to see how things were going. Back in 2003, when Farmers Diner was in their former Barre, VT location, we had a fairly pleasant meal there, but not longer after that, they closed the Barre location. We’ve been looking forward to their return to the local restaurant scene. For those that aren’t aware of Farmers Diner, in addition to just serving food, they have a particular mission, to spend 65 cents of ever dollar on food that originated within 70 miles of the Diner at local farms and small scale producers. So, a substantial fraction of the menu is made from locally produced meat, cheese, and produce (and, with the current menu, they even highlight in red the items that were produced locally). The goal is to create a larger market for local suppliers, and not have to be bringing in our meat and produce from distant locations when we have good products already here.

It’s not often that people recommend a place to me; I’m usually the one dispensing the recommendations, especially when it’s someplace that I’m more familiar with than the person giving me the recommendation (I used to live in Minneapolis). But after a trip last summer, my friends Jon and Nicki strongly recommended Hell’s Kitchen. And the recommendation was basically “Try the peanut butter. No, really. Try the peanut butter.”

During my recent visit to Minneapolis, I needed to take my hosts Bob and Kath out for breakfast. Our long-time standard for a weekend breakfast (Big Olaf’s) closed a few years back, so I asked them where we should go. They suggested Maria’s Cafe on East Franklin, which features Colombian and Venezualan food, as well as some more typical American favorites. While it was strongly recommended that I try the corn pancakes, I left those for Carol while I tried the daily special breakfast platter (shown), which included beans, sausage, fried yucca, scrambled eggs, and an arepa (basically a small masa pancake). This was an excellent breakfast on all levels: the beans were nicely seasoned with cumin, the yucca was crisp on the outside and tender inside, and the eggs nicely scrambled. The arepa was nicely done as well, but it paled compared to Carol’s corn pancake (which isn’t cornmeal, it’s a regular pancake with corn in it, topped with a dry cheese), which was also very delicious…