Offbeat Eats

Anyone that’s known me for a long time knows that two of my favorite sandwiches are the related roast beef sandwich, and the French Dip. As I discussed in detail with my review of Jamie’s Roast Beef in Peabody a few years ago, roast beef sandwiches are definitely a regional specialty, but the specialty is really focused on Massachusetts North Shore. While pretty much any town between Boston and the NH border has several roast beef sandwich joints to choose from, the density starts to roll off pretty quickly, and by the time you get to central NH, they are getting kind of thin. But a recent trip through the Merrimack valley had us passing right by an old favorite, Beefside in Concord, NH, and we decided to give it one of Offbeat Eat’s “Health Check” re-visits.

A recent trip down through lower NH gave us a good opportunity to stop in Concord with two purposes: a quick visit to Lithermans Limited brewery, and hopefully a chance to finally check out 603 BBQ next door, which is the rare NH “Barbecue” place that really gets consistently good reviews. While Lithermans was quite good, a few delays in our departure meant arriving at Lithermans at 12:15, by which time the line for 603 BBQ was already a good hour long. Not wanting to spent that much time of a delightfully nice Fall day waiting in line, we opted instead to check out a promising-looking small sandwich shop we had passed on our way in, Nina’s Bistro & Sandwiches.

A few weeks ago, our friends Geoff and Kristi were headed down to Concord, NH, and wanted to check out two spots in downtown Concord: Nawlin’s (a speakeasy that used to be called Mike’s BARbershop) and Hermanos Cocina Mexicana. It’s been a while (2016 to be exact, when I visited El Rodeo in Concord) that I’ve really checked out the Mexican food scene in the Concord/Manchester area, and a quick look at Hermanos Cocina’s menu looked promising, so we decided to give it a look.

Welcome to another of Offbeat Eats’ Health Check reviews, where we re-visit old favorites and check out how they are doing. In this case, a recent trip to visit the Wentworth Greenhouse Farmers Market, which actually had us passing through north Concord’s “Fisherville” neighborhood. This gave us a great opportunity to check up on an old favorite, The Post.

One of the things I learned long ago about living in New England is that certain phrases should immediately make your “Danger, Danger, Will Robinson!” alarm go off. One of those is most any sentence containing both “New England” and “Barbecue”. Also up there is “New England” and “Mexican”. Really dangerous is the combination of “New England” and “Authentic Mexican” food, since, while I’ve been to the occasional good actual Mexican place (including El Rincon down in Manchester, or when they have their A game going, Gusanoz, although for the latter I usually need to budget extra for the extra margarita I’ll need to wash down the bad service), usually I find an “Authentic” place to be dismal Tex-Mex at best, sub-Old El Paso at worse. But every once in a while I do stumble across a place that’s actually putting in a good effort, and not just dishing out queso-flavored disappointment. So, on that note, I introduce you to El Rodeo.

A lot of the places I go on Offbeat Eats are found by research, but some of them are found by pure happenstance, just by walking or driving past a place that, well, looks rather “Offbeat”. In the case of Beefside, I found this place several years ago, when my brother was returning a rental truck to the rental place in Concord, which was on Route 3 east of Concord, NH. It’s an odd area, mostly full of car dealerships and similar, but there are a few restaurants oddly sprinkled in between the car dealers, vacuum repair shops, and the like. One of these, Beefside, features an oddly large and comic sign featuring a cow that looks something like the Black Angus twin of Elsie the Cow. It’s the exact sort of sign that says to me “If they’ve been able to survive with kitschy signage like that for so long, they’ve got to have a lot of loyal followers.” So I decided to check them out, and rather liked the place (I first visited in 2009, it’s just taken me a while to return with a camera).

Last weekend, we decided to spend a day down in SE New Hampshire, and this gave us a good opportunity to check out someplace new for breakfast. After a little bit of research, I decided to try a relative newcomer to the generally sparse Concord breakfast scene, The Newell Post, on Fisherville Road in north Concord (almost in Penacook). The Newell Post opened in April of 2012, and their goal is operating a “small, warm, and welcoming restaurant”, offering breakfast and lunch. Settling in to a nice cozy booth, the waitstaff was very friendly and outgoing, telling us that their main chef was from the Carolinas, and that he was able to whip up good crab cakes and a good Hollandaise sauce. With those recommendations in hand (although I was mightily tempted by the corned beef hash omelet as well), our breakfast order was simple: I ordered the Eggs Benedict, while Carol went for the Crab Cake…