Fried Dough

Leave your iPod s and BlackBerrys at home. It's time to go to the fair. From the fresh-baked to the famous to the small-fry, from "The Big E" in West Springfield and the Fryeburg Fair in Maine to Little Rhody's Washington County Fair, there is one that will strike a chord with you. For locals, the annual fair is a chance to see friends, enter the pie baking contest, or just kick back. For the person "from away," the rewards are more serendipitous. A good fair will put a smile on your face and give you plenty to talk about when you go home . The winning formula...

The family that brought the Viet-Cajun food craze to Boston has opened a branch in Randolph. Mike Le, a brother in the family that owns Brother’s Crawfish in Dorchester, runs Orleans Crawfish with his wife, Trang, and another couple. The cozy spot, located in a hidden corner in the Sudbury Farms Plaza, offers Cajun-style seafood served with a Vietnamese twist. It opened in December and retains the Hearth Stone name because the liquor license is held by the building’s owner.

Route 102 may not be the state’s longest road (it’s fourth), but it is one of the prettiest. Besides some of the most picturesque landscape, it has rural Americana dining at its hilly northern end, a sleepy seaside village at its southern terminus, and in between some of the quirkiest history Rhode Island has to offer. The 42-mile country road curves down from the state’s head in North Smithfield, winding south through bucolic Glocester, Burrillville, Scituate, Foster and then cutting across Coventry, West Greenwich, and Exeter, before bending east to the ocean through North Kingstown,...

Route 102 may not be the state’s longest road (it’s fourth), but it is one of the prettiest. Besides some of the most picturesque landscape, it has rural Americana dining at its hilly northern end, a sleepy seaside village at its southern terminus, and in between some of the quirkiest history Rhode Island has to offer. The 42-mile country road curves down from the state’s head in North Smithfield, winding south through bucolic Glocester, Burrillville, Scituate, Foster and then cutting across Coventry, West Greenwich, and Exeter, before bending east to the ocean through North Kingstown,...

The family that brought the Viet-Cajun food craze to Boston has opened a branch in Randolph. Mike Le, a brother in the family that owns Brother’s Crawfish in Dorchester, runs Orleans Crawfish with his wife, Trang, and another couple. The cozy spot, located in a hidden corner in the Sudbury Farms Plaza, offers Cajun-style seafood served with a Vietnamese twist. It opened in December and retains the Hearth Stone name because the liquor license is held by the building’s owner.

Today, I’m writing about a pair of places, one catering to my son’s tastes, the other to mine. Nick, whose diet consists of hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza, has been dragged along by me to plenty of cheap eateries over the years. This time, he took me to a place he discovered. ‘‘Mom, you have to write about this,’’ he said. He was right. Henry’s Root Beer Stand is faux retro, a throwback to the old burger joints that offered bottomless root beers ($1.49) and lime rickeys (24 oz. for $2.49)

They are havens for cotton candy and sticky taffy, home to Skee-Ball and temporary tattoos. Here, one can buy a T-shirt that says, "FBI, Female Body Inspector" and wear it in public, unashamed. They are New England's honky-tonk beaches, and they are endangered. "We're all getting pretty sophisticated," said Pierre Janelle, third-generation owner of the Edgewater, a hotel at Old Orchard Beach, Maine, referring to the more clean-cut and upscale folks enjoying his hometown. Slowly, seaside amusement parks and boardwalk beaches that...

Courtesy photo Danvers-based Brandi Foods is participating in the first ever Suffolk Downs Food Truck Festival from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday. From left to right, the Brandi Foods team includes Ali Cleary, Suzanne Brandi-Reed, Chris Mulvany, Timm Rogers and Steve Brandi By Justin A. Rice, Town Correspondent Even though Steve Brandi and his sister Suzanne Brandi-Reed have never worked a major food truck festival, they are no strangers to cooking out of the back of a truck.

FALMOUTH — “What time is it?’’ Melaine Hines asks Christopher Blackwood. She is cafe manager at Coonamessett Farm and he is the chef. In a tiny kitchen below the farm’s store, she’s kneading dough for dumplings and he’s chopping a mountain of onions, garlic, and cabbage for a stir-fry. “Twenty of,’’ he replies. It’s 5:40 p.m. on a Wednesday evening recently. In less than half an hour, 300 people will descend on the farm for the weekly Jamaican Buffet and Grill.

Expensive hamburgers are nothing new. Daniel Boulud famously broke the $20 mark with his foie gras and truffle-stuffed behemoth at New York’s DB Bistro Moderne in 2001, and chefs have come up with countless high-ticket iterations since. Boston has seen its share of pricy patties over the years — Bristol Lounge’s $21 burger, Radius’s $19 version. But of late the species has begun to proliferate. Back Bay Social Club and Towne Stove and Spirits, both of which opened this summer, serve $21 burgers.

Today, I’m writing about a pair of places, one catering to my son’s tastes, the other to mine. Nick, whose diet consists of hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza, has been dragged along by me to plenty of cheap eateries over the years. This time, he took me to a place he discovered. ‘‘Mom, you have to write about this,’’ he said. He was right. Henry’s Root Beer Stand is faux retro, a throwback to the old burger joints that offered bottomless root beers ($1.49) and lime rickeys (24 oz. for $2.49)

Leave your iPod s and BlackBerrys at home. It's time to go to the fair. From the fresh-baked to the famous to the small-fry, from "The Big E" in West Springfield and the Fryeburg Fair in Maine to Little Rhody's Washington County Fair, there is one that will strike a chord with you. For locals, the annual fair is a chance to see friends, enter the pie baking contest, or just kick back. For the person "from away," the rewards are more serendipitous. A good fair will put a smile on your face and give you plenty to talk about when...

They are havens for cotton candy and sticky taffy, home to Skee-Ball and temporary tattoos. Here, one can buy a T-shirt that says, "FBI, Female Body Inspector" and wear it in public, unashamed. They are New England's honky-tonk beaches, and they are endangered. "We're all getting pretty sophisticated," said Pierre Janelle, third-generation owner of the Edgewater, a hotel at Old Orchard Beach, Maine, referring to the more clean-cut and upscale folks enjoying his hometown. Slowly, seaside amusement parks and boardwalk beaches that...

BEST FOR WALKING Nauset Beach stretches 10 miles from Orleans -- where there's a snack bar near the beach entrance and plenty of parking -- to Chatham. Taking a long walk on the ocean side of the Cape is especially nice if you wake early enough to catch the sunrise. On Maine's southern coast, the walk from below Ogunquit Beach to Wells Beach can be a vigorous 5-or-so-mile workout, part of it in soft sand. Get dropped off at Oarweed restaurant and walk along Marginal Way, a cliffside footpath in Ogunquit with dramatic views and fragrant sea roses, and head north toward the 2.5-mile-.long expanse of Ogunquit...

The lure of the beach is irresistible when summer arrives, and New Englanders can consider themselves lucky that they don't have far to go to get to the ocean. (Consider the plight of landlocked European cities, which import sand and dump it along rivers; or Midwesterners who have to drive days to glimpse the sea.) New England sun seekers are lucky in another way, too: They don't necessarily need a car -- or even a friend with a car -- to reach the beach. A variety of options, including train, ferry, bus, and rapid transit, can get you there.