Offbeat Eats

After leaving Minnesota, we headed up to Duluth to meet up with fellow hikers from Fitpacking, the guides for our trip to Isle Royale. After meeting our fellow hikers and doing a gear shakedown, we packed up and drove up to Grand Marais, MN to spend a night at the Outpost Motel before heading out early in the morning to catch the boat to Isle Royale. It was a nice drive; it’s been 20 years since I’ve been further up Minnesota’s North Shore than Duluth, so it was nice to see a lot of the parks I used to explore when hiking and scuba diving. To get to know everyone in our hiking group, we headed into nearby downtown Grand Marais for dinner. Summertime Grand Marais is quire the tourist town, and actually has a pretty good selection of restaurants, but several of us all had one place in mind, the Angry Trout Cafe.

As our vacation drive to Minnesota continued, we headed across western Ohio, Indiana (with stops at both Bare Hands Brewery and the Indiana Dunes State Park) and southeastern Illinois, ending up meeting up with some of our Chicago-area friends for drinks at Brother Chimp Brewing with dinner following at The Turf Room.

Since I’ve been running this blog for well over a decade, every once in a while it’s worth revisiting some of my old favorites and see how the places are doing. In this case, an outing with a local Upper Valley Foodie facebook group has us revisiting The Baited Hook, the well-known “clam shack” on the shores of Mascoma Lake in Lebanon, NH (years later, I still get in arguments about this, but The Baited Hook in unarguably still in Lebanon). Indeed, it was way back in 2008 that I originally reviewed them, and there was a lot I liked back then: a nice dining room and outdoor patio overlooking the lake, a decent burger, and a fair selection of fried seafood specials. Nothing fancy, but certainly enjoyable, and popular with the folks living on the lake.

If there’s one New England tradition I rather like, it’s that of the Lobster Roll. Our local contribution to seaside fast food, it involves taking a hot dog bun (top-split being the best), and loading it up with lobster meat (preferably, with a few big chunks of claw meat), lightly dressed with lemon, celery, salt, pepper, and, sometimes, mayo, it’s a great way to enjoy fresh lobster, and at times it seems just about every restaurant in New England gets in on the action. You can read about one of my other favorite lobster rolls in my review of Latitudes down the shore in New Castle, NH, but even Panera and McDonalds get in on the action (and actually, for the price, the short-seasonal special McLobster usually is pretty good.) So one idea we had for our second car-shopping trip to Portland was to duck in and get a lobster roll on our way home at one of the better-recommended places in the Portland area: Bite into Maine. There was just one little problem with that plan…. Bite into Maine, primarily being a food truck, with locations at Allagash Brewing and Fort Williams Park (and the occasional special event) is a seasonal production, and during our late April visit, their food trucks weren’t out for the season. But the great folks at Bite into Maine happen to have a solution for this: they maintain a commissary for their trucks off Route 1 in Scarborough, and the commissary now has a small dining area, so you can have your favorite Lobster Rolls any time, including the off-season!

After we got back from Mykines, we did some more exploring around Streymoy and ended up back in Tórshavn for dinner. From 1940 to 1948 the Faroe Islands were under British rule, since the British pre-emptively “invaded” after Denmark fell to the Germans to protect the islands from also falling into German hands. While that occupation was shorter than the American occupation (and later post-war NATO presence), the British occupation did leave a lot of little bits of evidence all around the Faroes. Old foundations of observations posts in the mountains. Artillery pieces on the hill over Tórshavn’s harbor. The airport itself was originally built by the British (with its locations chosen since it was well-protected from naval bombardment). And, on a cultural front, a love for fish and chips. One of the better places in the Faroe Islands to get “Fiskur v. Kipsi” is called “Fish and Chips” (again, the Faroese tendency towards relatively simple names for places).

I mentioned a few times that I didn’t stay in a lot of “hotels” in Réunion during our visit, since a substantial fraction of the lodging on the island is distinctly less formal than a typical hotel, ranging from our mountain gîtes, to a handful of Chambres d’hôtes (basically, B&Bs), and other alternative lodging arrangments. After our hike up Piton de la Fournaise, we came across one of the more memorable gîtes, Matilona in the quiet village of Ste-Rose on the northeastern coast of the Island. Matilona is a rather funky place. It doesn’t really have any one place you can stand and take it all in, so I didn’t really get a picture, but Matilona is built out of a sprawl of several little buildings, Matilona was originally a supermarket, but it’s been turned into a guest house with quite a few rooms (ranging from simple, compact rooms for 1 or 2 people, to large multi-bedroom suites, to the multi-floor suite we stayed in on one end of the complex). A surprisingly large common area, two common kitchens, and a large outdoor common space are all there for guests, as was a very nicely maintained swimming pool. The owner also maintains a collection of local plants, and keeps chickens in the back of the property. The overall vibe that the owner is trying for (with more than a little success) is that you’re staying in a quirky friend’s house.

Our second day of exploring the Western Coast of Réunion had us staying in the resort town of Hermitage-Les-Bains. It’s definitely a resort town, dominated by several large resorts, and the local dining scene caters to it, with a rather large assortment of restaurants offering up large buffets and extensive cocktail bars. While a few of these places (La Marmite and Coco Beach in particular looked like they had a rather nice assortment of Carris and seafood), we opted to check out one of the quieter places a bit off the beaten path. Our first attempt was the diminutive and subtle L’Arc en Ciel, which looked phenomenal, but were unable to fit us in. But around the corner we found Le Manta, a pleasant restaurant built around two very large and lush outdoor dining gardens (one smoking, “le section fumeur” is still alive and flourishing in France) and a rather extensive menu built around Réunionnaise Creole cuisine.

Another of our recent road trips was to the NH Seacoast area, primarily to go to the most excellent NH Hosta Nursery. Afterward, we explored the area, primarily by ducking over into Newbury, discovering two very nice craft breweries (Riverwalk Brewing and the NBPT Brewing Co). After enjoying both of these destinations, we were hungry for a bit of dinner, and decided to head up the road to Seabrook, NH for Jasmine’s Famous Roast Beef and Seafood. As I have mentioned in several other reviews of New England Roast Beef joints, the Roast Beef sandwich is a bit of an art form here: Once you get to the coastal region, all sorts of places are available that sell two things: roast beef sandwiches, and all variety of fried seafood. Not sure where the combination came from, but it’s a common one. But the thing that ties so many of these places together is the focus on a basic sandwich: roast beef.

After a pleasant day trip to Bruges, we took the evening train back to Brussels, where Sophie took us to one of her favorite seafood joints, La Marée. Is located a few blocks to the west of Place Ste Catherine, which used to be the big open air fish market of Brussels. It isn’t anymore, but that area (especially the restaurants lining the West side of Place Ste Catherine) is still the epicenter of seafood dining in Brussels, and La Marée, while not being one of the big places right on the Place, is still a good go-to place for good seafood.

There are three food items I always think of when I’m in Maryland for business: Crabs, pit beef sandwiches, and crabcakes. I’ve reviewed a few crabcake places before (like G&M in Linthicum), but on a recent trip to NASA Goddard, several of us wanted crabcakes for lunch, and Lambert’s had be recommended to us by a few NASA folk. Lambert’s Seafood is one of those places you really have to know about by recommendation or reputation, since, aside from one tiny ~4″ tall sign on the front of the strip mall, the place is completely unsigned, and you’d never know this place was there. Even looking at the front door, there’s no clear “Lambert’s” sign or anything.