Uncle Bill’s Pancake House As I mentioned in my review of Jame, having aerospace clients generally means a lot of trips to El Segundo, CA, and nearby Manhattan Beach. While these trips come in waves (I’ll find myself going 4x a year some years, and not at all others), it’s still given me a chance to come up with a few favorites, like Uncle Bill’s Pancake House, which I originally reviewed way back in 2008. This trip I had a nice, free morning, so after a nice 6 miles hike down the coastline, I met up with my friend Tanya to revisit my favorite breakfast spot in the area. Uncle Bill’s has a lo ..read more

Ercole’s My second night staying in El Segundo, I took the short drive down to Manhattan Beach for dinner. The next town south from El Segundo, it’s got a decent downtown, a nice beach and wharf, and a good cross-section of restaurants from fine dining all the way down to dive bar. In fact, that’s what brought me to Manhattan Beach, I wanted to revisit an old favorite from previous visits: Ercole’s. Ercole’s Interior Located on Manhattan Avenue a block up from the beach, and just two blocks off of Manhattan Beach Boulevard, Ercole’s has a great central location in central Manhattan Beach. Un ..read more

Jame Back when I started Offbeat Eats, I had a lot of business travel to both Edwards AFB and the LA area. During these visits, I got into a nice groove where, instead of fighting LA traffic on arrival, I’d instead take the short drive to nearby El Segundo or Manhattan Beach, have a nice relaxing meal, and then proceeding to my destination as the evening traffic started to abate. These visits have gotten a lot less frequent, but I still try to follow that basic procedure when I’ve got the time. This time, I chose El Segundo, with a visit to Jame in the downtown area. Jame Interior El Segundo ..read more

The Post Welcome to another of Offbeat Eats’ Health Check reviews, where we re-visit old favorites and check out how they are doing. In this case, a recent trip to visit the Wentworth Greenhouse Farmers Market, which actually had us passing through north Concord’s “Fisherville” neighborhood. This gave us a great opportunity to check up on an old favorite, The Post. The Post The Post (which was “The Newell Post” when we first visited them back in 2012) sits on Fisherville Road (a.k.a. Route 3) five minutes up the road from Concord proper in North Concord. The name is the big change; the curre ..read more

Haymaker Bun Co. Several times a year, we end up traveling just north of Middlebury, VT to pick up wine from Lincoln Peak Vineyard. As I mentioned a while back in our review of The Cluckin’ Cafe, that gives us a nice excuse to check out a few of the sights and restaurants in Western VT. In this case, we had seen a lot of good online reviews for a bakery in downtown Middlebury next to the river: The Haymaker Bun Co. Haymaker Building Haymaker has a nice little building that they originally shared with a fine dining restaurant, The Arcadian. But the Arcadian “closed indefinitely” for pandemic ..read more

El Merendero After concluding my business trip to Tucson, before heading north back to the Phoenix area to catch my flight home, I used this as an opportunity to indulge in another favorite, hitting up a good old-school Mexican cafe. Tucson is a particularly good town to accomplish this; while it has a handful of well-known places (including El Charro, who nominally claims to be the originator of the Mexican-American style deep-fried Chimichanga), if you’re really craving Mexican, head to 12th Avenue in South Tucson. In an approximate 3 mile stretch of 12th Avenue has an outstanding array of ..read more

Baja Cafe One of the shortcomings of rural New Hampshire living is that we don’t have a lot of a great breakfast options. There are some breakfast gems both locally (like Lou’s in Hanover) or regionally (like Polly’s in Sugar Hill), but when I’m really craving a good, solid breakfast, I’m generally craving something Southwestern, and we don’t have a lot of good options that way. But I travel a lot, and I recently found myself in Tucson, Arizona, craving some sort of Southwestern breakfast, and also wanting to have breakfast at 6:30 in the morning. And there was one place in Tucson I know woul ..read more

Blue Adobe Grille Back in mid-December, I had a brief work trip to Tucson, AZ. While I can nominally fly into Tucson, it always involves enough connecting flights that it’s pretty much just as easy to fly into Phoenix and drive. This also gives me a good opportunity to have a visit with my parents, and usually that involves a trip out for dinner. In this case, we opted to go for a long-time favorite of both myself and my parents, Blue Adobe Grille. Village Inn Pizza Reuse Architecture Blue Adobe Grille opened back in 2000 in a converted A-frame familiar to Arizonans as a former Village Inn P ..read more

Homestead. After our hike up Mount Greylock, we headed off to Northampton for after-hike beers and dinner. As I’ve mentioned in a few other reviews, I really like Northampton as a destination that’s not too far from our home (it’s around an hour and forty if there isn’t traffic), so while it was a slight detour getting home, it’s worth it, getting a chance to revisit one of our favorite breweries (Progression), and look for dinner. There are a lot of great restaurant in town (including favorite Hungry Ghost), but this time, we wanted to revisit a previous spot, Homestead. Homestead. Interior ..read more

Whetstone Station As mentioned in the previous post, a few weekends ago I was hiking with my friend Alex on Wantastiquet Mountain, located in Hinsdale across the river from Brattleboro. After a pleasant hike, we went back across the river to revisit a SE Vermont favorite of mine, Whetstone Station. Whetstone Station Brewery Whetstone Station is the restaurant part of Whetstone Beer Co’s site on Bridge Street, right next to the bridge to Vermont. Indeed, while legally in VT in its entirety (due to its location relative to the high water mark), it actually straddles the older USGS survey line ..read more