New England Road-Trip 2026: Part One

With the exception of the peak pandemic years, my wife and I have taken a roughly week-long vacation that included a heavy dose of roadfood stops annually for as long as we’ve been married. The majority of those trips have been to the Midwest. But we’ve also mixed in other parts of the country, with New England being our next most frequent destination. And that’s where we headed this year.

As has been the case with many of my reports on these trips, this will be a three-part post with each covering two days of travel.

Our New England vacations always include visits with our friends, Rich and Tina, who now live in northern Connecticut, close to the Massachusetts border. And as usual, we made our first meal stop at Denmo’s in the southern Connecticut town of Southbury.

I’ve expressed my love for Connecticut’s roadfood scene in past posts. They excel at everything from burgers and hot dogs to pizza and ice cream; not to mention great seafood, including warm lobster rolls and fried whole-belly clams.

With the exception of pizza, Denmo’s normally offers all of those items on its menu. 

Sides of fried clams and scallops are my usual order. But as you can see on the above menu photo, they were out of whole-belly clams. Rather than getting just scallops, I changed course and went for my other favorite Connecticut seafood delicacy – a warm lobster roll. I had also been tempted to try Denmo’s hot dogs for years and ordered one of those as well. My wife and I shared an order of sweet potato fries. She had packed a sandwich from home.

I believe this was the first time since my initial visit to Denmo’s a couple decades ago that I ordered one of their warm lobster rolls. I don’t recall being blown away by the first one, so my expectations weren’t extremely high. Thankfully, they were exceeded. 

It wasn’t a huge lobster roll by New England standards, but there was a good amount of buttered meat stuffed onto the toasted split-top bun. Although it wasn’t the best I’ve had, it had been a fairly long time since my last lobster roll of any style and this one more than hit the spot. 

The hot dog, which I ordered with mustard and onions, was also extremely enjoyable, as were the sweet potato fries. 

We arrived at our friends’ home later that Saturday afternoon. After spending some time catching up with them, the four of us headed out to dinner. Our destination was a change of pace from what we typically eat on our travels, including the remainder of this trip. 

My wife is wonderful for many reasons, including her willingness to endure my eating agendas on our vacations. Our diets are very different, but she generally goes along with where I want to dine as long as they have something for her on the menu. But our dinner spot that evening featured a wide array of choices that were to her liking.

While looking for a place to eat close to where our friends live during my pre-trip research, Royal Spice in the nearby town of Longmeadow, Massachusetts, caught my eye in large part based on their menu. It features most of the classics one normally finds at Indian restaurants in the U.S., but also some additions I had never seen before, but which sounded enticing.

Rich and Tina had been there a couple times previously and were happy to return.

To say we over-ordered would probably be an under-statement. The first two arrivals at our table were the pineapple-mint and mango salads, each of which was extremely colorful and tasty according to my three companions. I skipped the salads as I had my own first course on the way.

Mulligatawny is a soup I had only heard of previously by way of the Seinfeld Soup Nazi episode. That was enough enticement for me to order it.

It was extremely flavorful and contained a heavy dose of curry. My only issue was the large portion. It was a heavy soup and would have been enough to satisfy my appetite on its own, but we still had much more food to come.

We also shared an order of garlic naan with our first courses

The next course to come out was a very large Masala Dosa; that being a crispy crepe made of rice and urad dal and stuffed with spiced potatoes. It was served with three condiments – coconut chutney, tomato chutney and sambar – a spiced lentil and vegetable stew.

The crepe was huge in terms of hanging well off the plate at both ends, but it was also extremely light. We broke off small pieces and topped those with the spiced potatoes.

There appeared to be a paltry amount of the potatoes compared to the size of the crispy crepe, but it turned out to be plenty to satisfy the four of us. This was an extremely enjoyable dish.

We would have been satisfied with our meal at that point. But there was still another course to come. 

Rich and Tina shared orders of tandoori chicken and very spicy Lamb Vindaloo. My wife and I both chose appetizers for our main courses. She went for samosa chaat, a dish she’s ordered many times during our outings to Indian restaurants over the years.

I had to try an item that jumped out at me more than any other when first perusing Royal Spice’s menu online. I’m referring to fried mussels. While I’ve had mussels on numerous occasions, I had never heard of them being served fried before.

They turned out to be extremely enjoyable; both in terms of flavor and texture. The fried coating was heavily seasoned and not thick enough to overshadow the mussels within. They came with a condiment that didn’t interest me, so I ordered a side of tamarind chutney and that worked well for dipping.

The chicken, lamb and samosa chaat also earned high marks.

It was a successful and extremely filling meal. We had discussed stopping for ice cream on the way back to Rich and Tina’s home but were far too full for that.

Our itinerary the following day, Sunday, began with the four of us heading a little south to East Windsor, Connecticut, to check out their branch of the Connecticut Trolley Museum – there is another in East Haven. 

It was a rainy day, so we quickly made our way inside with just a momentary stop for me to snap an exterior photo.

The museum’s main hall was a large one with a nice array of trolleys and informative posters. 

The price of admission at the Trolley Museum includes a ride of 20-30 minutes on a classic trolley car. The two conductors had a lot of expertise on the subject and answered questions along the way. 

Our next destination after leaving the museum was Manchester, Connecticut. There are a pair of restaurants there that we would be revisiting. The first was the town’s Frank Pepe Pizza Nepoletana outlet – or Pepe’s.

It was our third visit to this particular Pepe’s. We’ve also been to the original New Haven location a couple times.

The menu is a simple one, with only pizza, a few salad options and beverages. 

We opted for a large Italian salad to share and a pair of pizzas – or apizza in New Haven lingo. It had been a long time since my last Pepe’s white clam pizza, so we ordered a small one in addition to a large basic pie with sausage on one half and mushrooms on the other.

My regular readers know I don’t eat a lot of salad, but this one looked and tasted good. The house dressing was delicious. 

To wash down our meal, a couple of us went for an obligatory Foxon Park soda. They are served at all of the major New Haven-style pizzerias.

The pizza we had during our two previous visits to the Manchester Pepe’s was outstanding. In fact, there wasn’t any significant difference between it and what I had eaten at the original Pepe’s. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case this time around. 

The biggest issue was with the white clam pie. While the crust, which was not topped with mozzarella, as is customary for new Haven-style white clam pizza, was wonderfully thin and crispy along the outer rim, closer to the middle, where most of the clams were, the pizza was overly damp. It didn’t seem done enough in the center. I think I’d have liked it more with just the garlic, olive oil and grated cheese and without the clams.

I’m overdue to return to the original New Haven Pepe’s and hope to do that the next time we’re in the area. I’d like to think that they’re still serving great clam pies there. 

The basic pizza with sausage and mushrooms was more successful, but even that wasn’t quite up there with the best Connecticut pizza I’ve tried, including previous pies from this and the original Pepe’s.

The crust was perfectly done with a nice bit of char all the way around. But the sauce and cheese weren’t spread as close to the edges as is typically the case with New Haven-style pizza. The overall flavor was certainly good, but not quite at the level that I anticipated.

On the positive side, their Italian sausage was some of the best I’ve had on a pizza. 

Our next stop, also in Manchester, was the Shady Glen Restaurant and Ice Cream Parlor. We had also been there during a previous visit to the area, but the place is such a classic that I couldn’t resist the urge to return.

It’s another of the many spots – and not the first or last on this trip –  that I first became familiar with through the roadfood website, which still exists, albeit in a revised form. 

Although it opened in 1948, Shady Glen is the picture of a circa 1950s burger and ice cream restaurant. I can’t imagine its appearance has changed a whole lot in the past three-quarters of a century.

While the rest of us were thinking in terms of ice cream, Rich had his heart set on Shady Glen’s other claim to fame. That would be their burgers with cheese that stretches well beyond the burger patty on the grill, where it takes on a texture that allows it to be molded so that it stands up and surrounds the burger and bun.

We shared one during that previous visit and Rich cut off a piece for me on this occasion. The gimmick aside, it was a very tasty burger that radiated the strong taste of fresh beef. 

My wife loves Grape-Nut ice cream, a flavor found primarily in parts of New England that is essentially vanilla ice cream with Grape-Nuts cereal mixed in. Shady Glen includes it among their house-made flavors and she ordered a scoop of it and another of pumpkin ice cream.

Tina opted for a scoop of chocolate Almond Joy ice cream topped with caramel sauce and seemed very pleased with it.

Maple-Walnut is another flavor that is most prevalent in New England and also happens to be a big favorite of mine. One of my dining goals for this trip was to have a maple flavored milkshake. I knocked that one off the list at Shady Glen. 

A portion of it was served in a glass with the leftover in the tall metal cup in which it was mixed. There were bits of walnut and an unchopped chunk of ice cream at the bottom that I greedily scooped up with a long spoon between sips of the delicious and moderately thick shake.

As always, we had a wonderful time visiting with Rich and Tina. We go up there every two or three years, so you can look forward to more reports on Connecticut dining in the future.

We hit the road for northern New England the following morning. I’ll return with what we did, saw and ate while up there in part two of this report next week.