Offbeat Eats

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.

Here at Offbeat Eats, every once in a while we do a “health check”, revisiting one of our old favorites and see how things are doing. In this case, our planned backpacking trip to Mount Rainier with Fitpacking had us all rendezvousing at a hotel by Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. After going to the airport at 0-dark-30, by the time we arrived at Seatac we were quite hungry, it was lunch time, and, conveniently, our walking route to the hotel took us right by one of our favorites for airport dining: 13 Coins (our previous review from 2014 is here).

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.

Most of my years my business travel has some unexpected twists and turns, and I certainly wasn’t expecting Colorado Springs to be my top travel destination for the last few years, with almost three weeks spent there since 2019. But I rather enjoy Colorado Springs. It’s a bit of a funky mish-mash, since there’s two “downtowns”, the actual downtown (where I stayed), and to the west Old Colorado City that got absorbed into Colorado Springs in the early 1900s. And there’s a lot to do with Pikes Peak and Garden of the Gods park nearby. And then, after hiking and exploring, there’s a good selection of restaurants, diners, breweries, and the like that I discovered on my first trip out this year; and followup trips really gave me a chance to explore downtown Colorado Spring’s culinary offerings. In this case, King’s Chef Diner.

(Closed) Every once in a while, I’ll revisit a favorite place around the Upper Valley and realize that I’ve never actually reviewed it here. Indeed, since moving to the Upper Valley in 2001, I think I’ve been to the Fairlee Diner at least two dozen times, and I was prepared to do one of my “health check” reviews where I check in on an old favorite that I’ve review before, only to find that I’ve not reviewed it (actually, looking at notes, that’s not completely true: I did review the Fairlee Diner for one of my Diner Day reviews for the long-defunct UVScene website… anyone remember that?). But it’s time to remedy that.

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.

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.

Every once in a while it’s nice for me to do a followup on old favorites, revisiting them and make sure that they are staying in form. In this case, my trip to Minneapolis gave me a good chance to stop by and check in on what remains as perhaps my favorite breakfast place ever, Al’s Breakfast. It’s best if you read over my older review, but it’s basically a small, 14-stool diner wedged in what’s literally a roofed over alleyway in Minneapolis’s “Dinkytown” neighborhood. “Narrow” is an understatement, since a limber person literally can touch both walls at points, and as you sit enjoying your breakfast (aside from special events, it is a breakfast-only joint), if it’s at all busy there’s someone hovering mere inches away waiting for your seat. And the food? The breakfasts at Al’s are fantastic, ranging from egg dishes and omelets to pancakes to house-made CBH, and it’s the ultimate in the short order experience: your order belted out by the staff, echoed back by the person running the grill (back in the days, it was almost always one of the two owners, Doug or Jim).

I really like wandering around the back roads of Vermont, and while a lot of the little towns in central Vermont (especially along Route 100) seem to have a lot of neat restaurants, I unfortunately don’t often seem to be driving through those parts of the state when we’re looking for food. But a recent trip to a beer festival in Killington, VT finally gave us a chance to check out one of the places that’s been on our hit list: Creek House Diner in Bethel, VT.

Our next culinary stop in Columbia was another reminder that my last major visit to Columbia was back when this was a relatively new blog, and thus some of my standard Columbia places hadn’t gotten a proper writeup. In this case, I’m talking about Ernie’s (or, to use the full name “Ernie’s Cafe and Steakhouse”), to which my first visit was well over 20 years ago. Ernie’s is a Columbia tradition, indeed, the sign proudly proclaims “Since 1934”, so even on my first visit the place was over 60 years old. In any case, it’s still a great place to get a breakfast in Columbia.