Offbeat Eats

Starting with my last pre-Pandemic visit to Minneapolis in 2019, several of my food-loving friends that still live in Minneapolis all had one place they consistently wanted me to try on my next visit to the Twin Cities: Nixta tortilleria. Nixta quickly became known as an excellent source for both hand-made heirloom corn tortillas and takeout meals built around them (birria, quesadillas, chilaquiles, empanadas, tacos, tlacoyos, and tlayuda!), especially during the height of the pandemic… but Nixta wasn’t open every day of the week, and my visits in 2019 and 2021 weren’t able to accomodate Nixta’s schedule. Neither was my visit this spring, but there was a key difference this time: chef Gustavo Romero of Nixta got access to the adjacent storefront, and opened a full retail restaurant, Oro. My visit to Minneapolis happened just a few weeks after their grand opening.

About halfway through my visit to the family in Arizona, my parents noted that almost every food outing my brother and I did was Mexican food (the one notable exception was the obligatory trip for chicken shwarma at Haji Baba). This wasn’t by accident; of the many, many global cuisines that one can easily get in London, Mexican food is distinctly not well-represented, so Dan is pretty much always craving Mexican and Mexican-adjacent food on his trips to the United States. And, while the situation is distinctly less dire, while New England doesn’t suffer as badly as “Old England” does, you’ve still got to go our of your way to find good, authentic Mexican food. So yes, a trip to Arizona usually involves more than few trips for breakfast burritos, usually a trip to one of the area’s old-school Mexican places (this time, we did Los Dos Molinos, which I’ve reviewed back in 2012), and a smattering of other local places. This time, we ended up meeting with our old Social Studies teacher for tacos and cocktails at Tacos Chiwas.

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

If there’s been one noticeable change in the culinary scene around Northern New England, it’s the recent appearance of more than a few decent taco joints sprinkled around the area, like Lalo’s Taqueria in Lebanon, Carlita’s Cocina in Royalton (currently moving into a permanent storefront), Trailbreak in White River Junction, and the occasional food truck serving up some good tacos. One place that’s been on my radar for a bit is Taco Cat Cantina in Randolph, and a slight detour on our return from Lake George allowed us to finally check them out.

After meeting my fellow hikers for our Fitpacking trip along the Centennial Trail, it was time for a big dinner to fuel us up for our trip. The group settled on Puerto Vallarta, a Mexican restaurant located on the north edge of town, on Lacrosse Rd just north of I-90.

For our next meal in the Hotel Zone, we decided to swing back to Mexican cuisine with a visit to Hacienda Sisal. Located at the partner resort The Royal Sands, Hacienda Sisal has a broad menu, relatively few of the surcharges for all-inclusive customers, and it was easy enough to catch the shuttle bus over there and avoid the usual taxi rigamarole. The restaurant itself is quite nice; it appears to be a converted ballroom, but it sports two large dining rooms (and possibly a third, although on our visit it appeared to have been converted to Covid-19 testing), a large bar, and live musical entertainment. Hacienda Sisal is a Mexican restaurant that’s distinctly aimed at the Hotel Zone tourists; the menu leans distinctly towards “Americanized Mexican” cuisine (for example, this is one of the few places we saw American-style fajitas on the menu) over “Authenic Mexican” or Yucatecan food, but they still had a nice cross-section of traditional moles, molcajetes, and carnitas dishes as well.

While the majority of our Cancún visit was spent either touring around the Hotel Zone or taking excursions out of town (to Puerto Morelos for snorkeling, and Chichén Itzá to see the archaeological site), Cancún also has a lot of great restaurant outside of the Hotel Zone. Our hosts Geoff has been vacationing in Cancún pretty much as long as modern Cancún has been in existence, and he has a favorite restaurant that he always likes to visit over on the mainland in downtown Cancún: La Habichuela (“The String Bean”). On our second night in town, we packed into a cab and headed over to check them out.

(Moved) Prior to the pandemic, one of my more regular spots to visit in Vermont was South Royalton. It has several great places we like, including First Branch Coffee/Upper Pass Beer and Worthy Burger, but between reduced operating hours and fewer social gatherings, we hadn’t made it over that was as often. Early in the pandemic, we had noted the opening of Carlita’s Cocina, a primarily Mexican-themed food truck, operating in the large parking lot opposite Vermont Law School. When I had to reschedule one of my periodic Red Cross blood donations to the Sharon Academy, that gave me a good excuse to go on a short hike up to Kent’s Ledge, and then meet up with my friends Rick and Sarah to finally try out Carlita’s.

One of my more unusual destinations in late 2020 and early 2021 was Middlebury, VT, for both work reasons (a subcontractor runs a lab there), and recreation (in the Fall of 2020, we hiked the TAM: the Trail Around Middlebury). Our travels around there also lead us by a favorite winery (Lincoln Peak), and one of my favorite breweries, Foley Brothers in northern Brandon, VT, a nice little western VT town. On one swing through Brandon after visiting the brewery, we noticed that Foley had started up a new business, Foley Taco and Bean, located in downtown Brandon, VT, so we decided to stop in and try it.

In preparation for our June trip to Isle Royale National Park, we needed to do some final outdoor gear shopping, and used the opportunity to check out the relatively new REI in North Conway, NH. After a successful shopping trip, we drove up the White Mountain Highway, the main drag in North Conway, and encountered Luchador Tacos, unmissable due to the large Luchador (profession Mexican wrestler, with the mask) on their signage. Growing up in Arizona, random little taco and burrito stores were extremely common, but here in northern New England, while places like Lalo’s Taqueria are making in-roads, they are still a pretty rare beast, so I decided to drop in and give Luchador a try.