Offbeat Eats

After a week spent on Santa Cruz Island (part of Channel Islands National Park, we arrived back in Ventura, CA, looking for a nice dinner to celebrate our trip before wading back into LA-area traffic getting back to Hermosa Beach. Ventura has quite a vibrant dining scene, but since we were fairly scruffy (and somewhat smelly) folks literally fresh off the boat, I was hoping for a spot with good outdoor seating, and that led us to Bright Spark Brewing.

As we explored downtown Hermosa Beach as we got everything prepped for our trip out to Santa Cruz island, we walked by an interesting looking store: Redwood Pie, right on Pier Avenue. Notably, it had a short line for the lunchtime crowd, and seemed to be doing a pretty brisk business, so when we wanted a light dinner before calling it an early evening, we decided to go down and check them out.

As I mentioned in previous reviews, particularly of Pepe’s and Modern Apizza, I was essentially raised on New Haven style pizza (a.k.a. “Apizza”, pronounced more like “A-beetz”). In the world of Italian-American pizza traditions, it is one of the classics, with its faithful adherents, and it’s three major denominations (Pepe’s, Sally’s, and The Modern, all of which have intertwined heritages). To the point where I can mention to peope that I had family in “New Haven” and they would immediate ask “Pepe’s or Sally’s”, waiting with bated breath for my answer, and the ensuing judgement. I’ll have to clearly state that, both through family history and my own preferences, I’m definitely in the Pepe’s faith, but I’ve been known to go to, and enjoy, Sally’s on more than a few occasions, although often having to turn up my coat collar and hope none of the extended family sees me (although the strongest adherents of the Faith in the family have now passed). Well, recent years have seen a lot of change in the New Haven Pizza scene. The biggest change was 2006 when Pepe’s started to become a chain (the adjacent “The Spot” not really counting as a second locaiton) with a location in Fairfield, and eventually growing into a family of locations all over New England. And more recently, Sally’s joined the fray, opening a handful of Connecticut locations starting in 2021, and then their first location outside of Connecticut in Woburn, MA in late 2023. A recent visit of ours to Woburn, MA, finally gave me a chance to see how one of the “New Sally’s” is doing.

After our pastry stop in Fão, another 90 minutes of hiking and crossing of the Cávado river, we arrived in the town center of Esposende. Another of the region’s seaside resort towns, Esposende is also a regional hub for agriculture and fishing, so the town is pretty substantial, around 30k residents, and has two reasonably busy business areas (one on the waterfront, and a similar one around the old town). However, we arrived on a Monday, which is one of the nights when many restaurants are closed. But with a short walk around town, we found Pizzeria Di Pappi, which was open, and quite popular, especially the outdoor patio, but they managed to fit us into the inside seating.

On our last full day visiting with our friends in Saratoga Springs, we decided to drive down to nearby Ballston Spa in order to do some thrift store shopping. Oh, I’m already well-stocked, but our friends managed to score quite a few items for their new condo, including a most-awesome, mint-condition vintage 1960s waffle iron from ReShop, identical to the one that my parents still use to this day (“don’t try to clean that, the seasoning is over 50 years old!”). After a few other choice finds, including some vintage FiestaWare, we retired to the nearby Speckled Pig Brewing Company for some lunch.

After a recent hiking trip to Mount Holyoke in Hadley, MA, we were looking for a nice spot for dinner on the way home. Luckily, Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley has quite a few great options for dinner. While normally we’d hit up either one of our favorite spots in Northampton, or potentially visit our old favorite The People’s Pint in Greenfield, this time we decided we’d mix it up a bit, and check out a place that had been one our perennial hit list, Magpie Woodfired Pizzeria in Greenfield.

With all the traveling I do, I occasionally find myself visiting one of my favorite restaurants, and realizing upon reviewing the extensive history of Offbeat Eats that despite thinking that I’ve reviewed a place, that I actually hadn’t written it up yet. A trip late last year to New Haven resulted in my brother and I meeting up for pizza at what’s always been the benchmark for pizza in our extended family: Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana. And I was shocked that somehow, over almost 18 years of reviews, that Pepe’s hadn’t yet gotten a review. Pizza, more than most any other common food I can think of, is a story of regional styles (before they restructured their content, Serious Eats had a really good guide on it, but a similar guide is still to be found over on Spruce Eats), and one of my overall favorite styles (much of this courtesy of Pizza Cognition theory, since it was the “pizza” I was raised with as a benchmark), “New Haven Style Pizza” remains my overall favorite pizza style. And for anyone around New Haven, or familiar with its “Apizza” style, it’s impossible to have a discussion of the style without an argument about which iconic place dominates. Most folks recognize the triad of New Haven pizza places at the top of the food chain: Frank Pepe’s, Sally’s Apizza (down the street), or on the other side of town, Modern Apizza (which I have reviewed), but if I’ve got the time, I still always gravitate towards Pepe’s. Admittedly, much of this is faith (I’ve still got extended family members with strong preferences, and a visit to Sally’s is an eyebrow-raiser), but when I think of “New Haven Pizza”, a slice of Pepe’s is exactly what I’m picturing in my mind. So after a call to my cousin, we all gathered at Pepe’s to catch up and enjoy our favorite pizza.

In late October, right before the snow started to fly around here, we got together with our friend Alex for a set of short hikes in Marlboro, Vermont around the old Hogback Mountain ski area, which was situated along the tops of Mt Olga and Hogback Mountain. It used to be one of southeast Vermont’s more popular ski areas, but rising expenses and insurance costs in the late 1980s made the resort unprofitable, and it closed. In 2010, after local fundraising efforts, most of the old resort was acquired by the Town of Marlboro, and is now a natural area for hike-in skiing and hiking. After a pleasant hike looking at the now-abandoned ski lift equipment, we decided to check out the nearby brewery, Beer Naked Brewery, and their associated pizzeria, Pizzapalooza.

(Moved) Often, a dining experience is contextual. If I think over some of my most enjoyable meals, while the food items themselves were the vast majority of the experience, the other factors of location, history, or shared experience contribute substantially to the experience. That’s what makes comfort food work. It’s what makes historical dining trips to places like Louis Lunch work. And it’s what makes quirky places like Kex (inside a converted biscuit factory), Gite de la Caverne Dufour (dining at 8000′ on the side of the highest mountain in the Indian Ocean), or Quinta do Bomfim (picnicking among the port wine grapes) truly enjoyable. And occasionally, it elevates what otherwise would be unremarkable fare to the next level. In this case, I’m talking about the Windigo Store.

I’ve always enjoyed Franklin, NH a bit. One of the quirks of New Hampshire is that if you live in the western part of the state, there’s no direct route to the White Mountains or the Lakes region, instead, you end up taking various shortcut routes through Merrimack County, which usually means driving through one of several classic New England “Former Mill Towns”, be it Plymouth, Tilton, Bristol, or Franklin. Franklin has a rather nice downtown, with a nice library, an old majestic theater, and quite a few buildings lining an old-town Main Street. However, Franklin’s economy hasn’t been all the strong over the last few decades, and often, many of the storefronts are closed up and boarded up. But recently there’s been a lot happening in Franklin. The town has long planned Mill City Park, a whitewater park on the Winnepeasaukee River, has actually broken ground, and some new restaurants are starting to show up as well; you can read up on my visit to Broken Spoon early this Spring. But this trip, our destination was a brewery: Vulgar Brewing Company.