Offbeat Eats

Since the closing of The School House Cafe in Warner, NH, I had been on the lookout for a new place to catch a breakfast or lunch if we were driving down south along I-89, and one of the places that had been on my radar for a while was the Everyday Cafe in Contoocook, NH. With a trip in May to the NH Sheep and Wool Festival (this year located in Deerfield, NH), we finally had a reason to be passing near Contoocook at breakfast time, and decided it was a good change to check out Every Day Cafe.

There are few London traditions of mine as sacred as going out for a good old-fashioned fry-up: a “Full English” breakfast, with at least bacon, sausage, eggs, beans, and toast, and I usually like to add even more to that (at a minimum, tomatoes, and usually black pudding as well). In the area around Pimlico, there’s exactly one place that anyone should even consider for that, and it’s the classic greasy spoon, The Regency Cafe. Virtually every trip of mine to London, even short ones, involve a trip to The Regency, except for holiday trips where they are closed. Indeed, one of my earliest reviews here in 2007 was for The Regency.

On many of our trips to either Boston or Rhode Island, we’re usually looking to stop for breakfast on the way, but a lot of the places we used to frequent along I-89 (such as The Footfills or School House Cafe in Warner, both of which closed permanently during the pandemic) closed, so we much more frequently find ourselves looking for new breakfast joints around Concord or Manchester. While Purple Finch in Bedford remains one of our favorites, we occasionally take the time to check around town for other options, and a recent favorite of ours has been The Breakfast Club.

After a successful outing to Pepe’s the night before, on our way out of New Haven over to New York State we decided that a classic American-style diner breakfast was what we really were craving. As an American expatriate living in the UK, Dan has a lot of access to British-style breakfasts (which are great), but he really wanted an American breakfast (in particular, American-style pancakes), and I was craving some sort of Benedict, so we set off for a well-recommended local place: The Pantry.

My next stop after our trip to Mount Rainier was a much-overdue trip to visit my parents in Arizona, and this trip was the first time in several years that my brother and I were able to visit at the same time. While the primary goal is just spending time helping out my parents, Arizona is also a great opportunity to experience one of my other great loves: a proper breakfast burrito. In particular, a machaca burrito, which are extremely rare in New England. While I normally go just a short drive to

Our annual trips to Ohana Luau By The Lake (“The Best Little Event in Tiki”), have us doing most of our activities at The Tiki Resort. Like much of Lake George, while it’s definitely a bit rough around the edges at times, it’s more than a bit of a Mid-century Americana Time Capsule: a mostly intact Tiki-themed resort, with Tiki-themed bar, a nice pool deck, and even (during high season) a Polynesian stage show. It’s also got it’s own breakfast restaurant, the Garden Cafe, located just off the lobby.

As mentioned in our previous review of Vertex Sky Bar, both before and after our Centennial Trail backpacking trip, we stayed in downtown Rapid City at the historic Hotel Alex Johnson. Looking at the various options for breakfast, a simple look out the hotel window showed us that there was a very popular breakfast spot right across the street: Tally’s Silver Spoon. Even at 8am they had a healthy backlog of diners waiting out front for breakfast, so we decided to check it out.

(Closed) Okay, I can see most of my readers already scratching your heads, asking “Howard Johnson?! Did Rich fire up the Offbeat Eats time machine?” In a way, we did, with our annual trip to Lake George, NY. Lake George is a bit of an odd place: as primarily a summertime getaway for the Northeast, it maintains a little protective bubble where the ravages of time and America’s changing tastes and economic factors are buffered: there’s an old-school, 1960s era Tiki-themed Polynesian Resort, a still (seasonally) open A&W Root Beer stand, various “Trading Posts” and many mini-golf courses… and the very last remaining Howard Johnson restaurant. Actually, the vibe is a bit less “protective bubble” and more “they didn’t get the memo”, but yes, the Lake George HoJo soldiers on.

While most of my breakfasts in Girdwood involved getting sourdough pancakes at The Bake Shop, we did go branch out and try some of the other places in town. In particular, Spoonline Bistro over in “downtown” Girdwood generally had a quite a following as well, with most mornings having a line almost as long as The Bake Shop. So we decided to check it out.

Our home base in Girdwood was a small studio condo at the base of the Alyeska resort ski slope, and even when we first checked in, there was a noticeable pleasant aroma of baking bread and spices. On our first trip back out to the parking lot to get the rest of our luggage, we immediately discovered why: the front door to the condo building exits pretty much directly into the outdoor dining patio for The Bake Shop, one of the primary breakfast joints in Girdwood.