Offbeat Eats

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.

After almost three weeks of traveling through the Midwest, mostly exploring NE Minnesota and northern Michigan, it was time for us to head home. While in normal years we’d debate the merits of the Canadian and domestic route options, pandemic restrictions resulted in us having to take domestic routes home due to border closings. When it comes down to it, there’s basically two efficient ways to cross New York, going through Buffalo via the Thruway, or taking the Southern Tier/I-88 route across the southern part of the state. We ended up doing the slightly more efficient Thruway route after overnighting in Erie, PA, which left us looking for breakfast around Buffalo. We here at Offbeat Eats have a lot of favorite spots in and around Buffalo, but since we’re usually hitting Buffalo mid-afternoon instead of morning, we’re still working on the breakfast scene. Looking at the options, I decided to try out a new place a bit off the beaten path: The Poked Yolk.

After three days of hanging out in the Keweenah Peninsula, it was time for us to start heading home, with a stop to visit with Carol’s family in the Lower Peninsula. As we worked our way back toward the Mackinac Bridge, we decided to stop for breakfast in Houghton and check out one of our favorites from a previous visit, Suomi Home Bakery & Restaurant. Located on Huron St just a block away from Portage Lake (which separates Houghton from the sister town of Hancock), Suomi. My previous review of Randall Bakery discussed the mixed Cornish and Finnish culinary heritage of the Upper Peninsula’s copper country, and Suomi Home (for those not fluent in Finnish, ‘Suomi’ is the Finnish word for Finland) is nod to the area’s Finnish-American Heritage, and is a well-known favorite for both Finnish-style breakfasts and Finnish-style pasties. On this visit, we were hoping to score a bit of both, stopping in for breakfast while grabbing some pasties to eat as a picnic on our way south.

During our stay on the Keweenah Peninsula, we stayed in the historic Victorian Hall bed and breakfast. Laurium is an interesting little town, it’s a small village next to the larger town of Calumet, and back during the copper mining hey days Laurium held a lot of the Victorian homes of the various owners, professionals, and other well-to-do folks associated with industry in the area. It’s also the home of George Gipp (as in “win one for the Gipper”). While the town definitely isn’t as affluent as it used to be, it’s still a pleasant, quiet town to stay in while in the area. Laurium doesn’t have a lot of restaurants (most of those are over in Calumet), but it does have a Mexican place (the Matador), a pasty shop (Toni’s), and a diner (Miner’s). For breakfast before our day hiking in the Keweenah, we decided to drop in and check out Miner’s Cafe.

Here at Offbeat Eats, we occasionally like to do a “Health Check” review on favorite restaurants, to make sure everything is still going well. In this case, our visit to Minneapolis en route to Duluth gave me an opportunity to revisit an old favorite: the Longfellow Grill. I’ve had several visits to the Twin Cities since my 2009 Review, and while I’ve visited a few of the sister restaurants (particularly Groveland Tap), I’d not made it to Longfellow Grill. So we gathered up some local friends and my old bosses the University of Minneapolis (my PhD adviser, and my sysadmin boss during those same years) for a breakfast as we headed out of town.

After a nice evening in Aurora, IL, followed by a slightly restless night interrupted by tornado sirens and having to figure out where to shelter in the hotel as we watched extreme winds and rain, we ended up really needing some coffee and sustenance before heading north to Minneapolis. We decided to check out Endiro Coffee in nearby downtown Aurora, IL. It’s worth noting that Endiro has several locations. In addition to the cafe in Aurora, and the nearby roastery, Endiro has ten locations spread across Uganda. Yes, it’s a true partnership between Cody Lorance in Illinois, and Gloria Katusiime in Ugunda, bringing coffee shops to Uganda and bringing Ugandan coffee to Illinois. So it’s not often you run into joint Ugandan-American operations, so I had to check this out.

Since we overnighted in Stow, OH, for breakfast we decided to try out a small diner located near our hotel: Garretts Mill Diner. Located in a small strip mall on Hudson Drive, it’s the sort of small, friendly diner that I always like to hit up for dinner: a half dozen tables, a few waitstaff, an owner that circulates around asking the diners how their meal is going, and a healthy flow of locals stopping off for a meal.

I actually drive through Troy, NY quite a bit. The “Collar City”, from its history in making collars back when that was a thing, is also home to RPI, and it’s right on the optimal path between our home in NH and either the NY Thruway or I-87 (if I’m looking to get to NJ while avoiding NYC). What I usually find, however, is that I’m not usually driving through around mealtimes, so I usually don’t stop in town. But our June-July vacation had us departing and driving to Ohio leaving early in the morning from NH, which resulted in a rarity for us, passing through Troy right at breakfast time. We used it as an excuse to visit Manory’s, which has been on our hit list for a few years.

While it’s pretty quiet here at Offbeat Eats due to us being in month 8 of the general pandemic shutdown, I’ve still had the occasional travel. In this case, I had to take a trip to visit my parents in Arizona and help take care of some issues around the house. A long tradition of mine when I’m visiting my parents is to indulge in something that’s pretty rare around VT and NH: a really good breakfast burrito. Well, the Phoenix metro area has, seriously, probably a thousand places where one can get a good breakfast burrito, and during these Covid pandemic times, getting some takeout burritos is still a viable strategy. Most trips, I would head over to Amado’s Mexican Food about a half mile away and get a righteous machaca and chorizo breakfast burrito. I just ran into a small glitch this time: Amado‘s Mexican Food isn’t there any more. It’s now, after a sale to a new owner (one of Amado’s co-owners took full ownership), in a triumph of sign updating minimalism, now known as Amada‘s Mexican Food.