Offbeat Eats

Way back in 2008, in the early days of Offbeat Eats, we visited Robie’s Country Store. It was a particularly good and lavish breakfast, but in the years following that visit, the store started to struggle, the breakfasts weren’t as good, and while Robie’s Country Store stayed open, the food counter closed. A replacement store, Roots Community Table at Robies, was good, but also closed a few years ago. But then I got notice in January this year that a big shift had happened. The Robie family of Hooksett (which operated the General Store since the 1800s) was actually related to the Robies of the Robie Farm in Piermont, NH, which are pretty well known in the region for their farm-raised meats (it’s pretty common around NH and VT to see “Robie Farms” meats on high-end restaurant menus, and at the various consumer coops). They had refurbished the place, and re-opened as The Robie Store, a specialty product store, cafe serving breakfast and lunch, and a butcher shop providing farm fresh meats straight from the farm in Piermont.

So, it’s lunchtime, and you happen to be in an office on Etna Road in the backwaters of Hanover. You’re hungry, but you didn’t bring a lunch, and you really don’t want to drive all the way into Hanover or Lebanon just to grab something to eat. So where do you go? The Etna General Store, in “Metropolitan Downtown Etna”. I have a bit of fondness for the Etna Store, since it’s your basic General Store, with food (a bit more than your typical gas station or convenience store), video rental, animal feed, and a few other random items like lottery tickets, all in a, umm, distinguished building. They also have a fairly predictable schedule of lunch specials, so, if you like a particular item (like the sausage grinder, every other Friday), they’ll usually have it if you go on the right day