Those of you who have read my past trip reports know that my wife and I have been visiting state capitol buildings during our travels for many years – even longer than we’ve been married. A pair in New England that we hadn’t yet hit before this trip were those in New Hampshire and Vermont. After leaving our friends’ home in northern Connecticut Monday morning, we headed north toward our next destination, Concord, the capital of New Hampshire.
Another trend from our vacations is that we tend to eat two big meals a day and they’re usually an early lunch and dinner. But we went against that grain with this trip. My restaurant research led to the planning of several breakfast stops, with the first one being Monday in Worcester, Massachusetts.
The Miss Worcester Diner has an exterior and is in a setting that is about as classic as one can imagine for a diner. Their interior is beyond wild. I’ll let the photos do the work rather than trying to describe it.
They had all of the usual diner fare on their menu with the addition of an extended selection of stuffed French toast. Neither of us went in that direction.
Instead, I opted for Eggs Benedict, while my wife surprised me by ordering the Island Special, which included grilled spam, something I never thought I’d see her eat.
The slice of grilled ham with my Eggs Benedict was probably the thickest I’ve ever had in that dish. It went well with the heavy Hollandaise sauce.
My wife ate everything on her plate. I still don’t expect to see her order Spam again, but there were no complaints from her this time around.
We continued north after breakfast until reaching Concord and headed right over to the capitol after checking into our hotel, which was only a couple blocks away.
There have been a number of occasions when our visits to state capitols consisted of just taking photos of the exterior. That was not the case in Concord. Although we did begin by circling the building and checking out the various statues and historical markers on the grounds. I’m only including a partial selection of those below.
Then we went inside. The building is open to the public to explore on their own, but we were informed by a helpful staff member in the lobby gift shop that private tours were also available. As luck would have it, the tour guide, Jonathan, stepped into the shop just then and we headed off to see the building’s interior with him.
Jonathan did a great job and shared a lot of interesting and, at times, funny history on the building. The tour’s highlight was our stop in the House chamber. We viewed it from the floor looking out toward where the House members and gallery sit. I also took a shot of the large portraits of Washington and Lincoln on the wall behind the Speaker’s chair. There has been some sort of nod to either or both at just about every state house we’ve visited.
It was time for dinner by the end of our capitol tour. As luck would have it, there was an old-school Chinese restaurant – one of my favorite food genres – next to our hotel.
Tea Garden has the kind of classic look and menu that I love when going out for Chinese food. It would have fit in well during the 70s and 80s.
We started out with our respective favorite appetizers; a scallion pancake for my wife and an order of egg rolls for me.
The scallion pancake was flakey and had a pleasant texture, while the egg rolls featured a perfectly fried crust and filling that included ample pieces of roast pork – just the way I like it.
I would wager that few people on earth have consumed more duck sauce than I have over the course of my life.
I wasn’t paying close attention when my wife ordered Scholar’s Chicken for her main course; nor did I notice that it was listed under the Sizzling Platters header on the menu. That resulted in me not having my camera ready for the show that occurred when this dish was brought out to our table.
When I was young, the presentation of a sizzling platter by a server at the Imperial Inn, our longtime favorite – but now defunct – restaurant in Philadelphia’s Chinatown, was something I always looked forward to during our meals there.
The dish was brought out on a regular plate and poured onto a hot metal plate, which resulted in a loud sizzling sound and a cloud of smoke rising to the ceiling. Everyone in the restaurant would turn and watch. It was part of the experience of eating there.
That’s basically what happened with my wife’s Scholar’s Chicken at Tea Garden. The below photo was taken after the sizzling noise and smoke show had ended.
On the bright side, she enjoyed it – both the show and food.
As usual, I ordered one of my favorite Americanized Chinese food dishes for a main course – shrimp with lobster sauce this time.
I’ve complained many times here about today’s Chinese restaurants not including ground pork in their shrimp with lobster sauce. It was standard when I was growing up.
So I was extremely happy to see lots of it mixed in with my entrée. Unfortunately, that’s about the only good thing I have to say about the shrimp with lobster sauce. It was watered down in the extreme and lacked flavor as a result in addition to some of the shrimp being overcooked.
The disappointment with my main course notwithstanding, I was still happy to have dinner in a legitimately old-school Chinese restaurant so close to our hotel that we were in our room within five minutes of leaving the restaurant.
The following morning we set out for Montpelier, Vermont by way of New Hampshire’s beautiful White Mountains region. Our reason for the detour was to eat breakfast at a restaurant I was going to knock off my list after many years of wanting to eat there – Polly’s Pancake Parlor of Sugar Hill, New Hampshire.
The scenery heading north on I-93 along with the views from the hill on which Polly’s is perched were gorgeous. And the restaurant itself had the sort of classic look that always excites me. There was a gift shop near the entrance that was filled with lots of merchandise and food items, including maple syrup, and the interior looked a bit like the inside of a giant log cabin.
As its name indicates, Polly’s claim to fame is its pancakes. They come in orders of three or six and are available in sampler plates that allow the customer to order a different batter and topping for each flapjack.
I had a bit of a difficult time deciding on whether to get a large or small order. The pancakes are small in circumference, but I expected them to be thick. And since I wanted a side of sausage patties and my wife requested that we share an order of baked beans, I opted for three pancakes, choosing one with plain batter and no toppings, another with whole wheat batter and blueberries and a third with plain batter and chocolate chips and walnuts.
Our server gave the impression of being slightly distracted while taking our order, and sure enough, the pancake that was supposed to have chocolate chips and walnuts came with coconut instead of the chocolate chips. Rather than sending it back or requesting another cake, I decided to eat it as is and wound up enjoying it very much.
The pancakes naturally came with real maple syrup, a bit of which also went well on my sausage. Our side of baked beans was very good, in part because it included numerous large pieces of bacon.
My wife had her own sampler of three different kinds of pancakes and seemed extremely pleased with them. Although we both felt afterward that we could have easily handled the full sized order of six pancakes. They were thinner and lighter than I expected.
She also ordered a maple syrup steamer and kindly let me sample it. We agreed that it was one of the best hot drinks we’ve ever had. They did not skimp on the maple syrup when making it.
After finishing breakfast, we took advantage of the nature path behind Polly’s for a bit of exercise and more great views.
Following our walk, it was time to get back in the car and head west, toward the Vermont capital, Montpelier. As we approached the town, we came across a sign with an arrow pointing toward one of our intended stops while in Montpellier and followed it.
Vermont’s most famous product is, of course, maple syrup. There are a number of sugarworks facilities in the state that make and sell it. Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks is in Montpelier and just a five minute drive from downtown, where we would be staying. So it was our natural choice for stocking up on maple syrup and related products for ourselves as well as picking up gifts for loved ones.
They also sell one of the food items I was most interested in trying on this vacation – maple flavored soft-serve ice cream. They are called creamies in Vermont and they’re very popular during the summer months.
Next up was downtown Montpelier for two intended nights. The plan was to check into our hotel before walking around the small downtown and perhaps stopping by the capitol, although we were open to leaving that until the following day.
As it turned out, after seeing our room and walking around downtown Montpelier, we decided to take our photos of the capitol’s exterior that evening and leave town the following morning. The building had closed to the public at 4 p.m. and it was at least an hour later than that when we stopped by to take our photographs.
I’m not going to mention the hotel by name because they were gracious enough to refund the cost of the planned second night for which we didn’t stay. In spite of being unhappy with our room, I think we may have stayed both nights if we had liked what we saw while strolling around downtown Montpelier. But that wasn’t the case, and we just wanted to get out of Dodge as soon as possible.
We had been warned by our Connecticut friends that people they know who used to live in Montpelier said the town has a problem with street people and a lot of drug use by those same people. I was skeptical that such a small town – the nation’s smallest state capital – could have a serious issue with such things. But I was wrong. It was almost shockingly bad.
After already seeing abundant signs of it during our stroll along the town’s main shopping and restaurant strip, we decided to walk down a public path that led to the capitol area. While nobody bothered us, it was frankly an extremely unpleasant experience. I’m guessing the locals know to avoid that area. We didn’t.
In any event, we still had to eat dinner that night and decided to make the short drive to the one eatery in Montpelier that I was excited about trying – the Wayside Restaurant, Bakery and Creamery.
While the Wayside, which serves all three meals and can fairly be called a diner, has expanded in size over the years, it’s existed in the same spot since 1918, beneath a big house on a hill that belonged to the original owner.
Although breakfast is available all day at the Wayside, we both opted for dinner platters, which were preceded by a basket of the most gorgeous Parker-house rolls I’ve ever laid eyes on. The tops glistened with butter. They also tasted fantastic and were soft enough to satisfy Mr. Whipple.
My wife chose one of the evening’s specials, a chicken pie; which she described as being like a chicken pot pie without the crust. She also went for kale and peas and carrots for her two sides.
An item that I always try to get at least once while in New England but hadn’t yet was fried whole-belly clams. They were on the menu along with an array of other fried seafood options. I was skeptical that they’d be any good so far inland at a diner. But I wasn’t sure I’d get another opportunity to get them before heading home and threw caution to the wind. In addition to fries, I also went for peas and carrots as my other side.
While the fried clams certainly weren’t the best I’ve had, they were good enough for me to say my fears were unfounded. In fact, they were about as good as the fried clams I usually get at Denmo’s and better than those I had at a central Connecticut restaurant the last time we visited New England.
The next morning we checked out and headed south. As we had an extra day on our hands now, we arranged to check in 24 hours earlier than planned at our hotel outside of New Haven, Connecticut. We go to that area on most of our New England trips for one reason in particular. It’s arguably the pizza capital of the United States.
I had been to several of the best known and most highly regarded pizzerias in and around New Haven over the years. But we intended to make first visits to a pair of pizzerias that had been on my radar for over a quarter century.
That and two more great breakfast spots will be the focus of the third and final part of this trip report next week.
