A Little Bit About a Lot of Things

Just over the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border is Mason, NH and Parker’s Maple Barn. A little over an hour to get to this place from Boston, there’s no way to get here without taking some back roads. We go on a Saturday afternoon and enjoy the fall foliage on the way up. You wonder if you are in the right place because all you see are trees on the road leading up to the Maple Barn, until you see a small wooden sign tacked onto a tree pointing you in the right direction. We pull up to a clearing, a dirt parking lot packed with cars and motorcycles. There are no formal parking spots, so park anywhere you can fit your car in. It’s around 11:45 and we wait for about 10 minutes-this place is popular.

Located in an old sugar house, Parkers has a rustic feel to it: from the nostalgia on the walls to the wood burning stoves placed strategically around the room.  When you come here, come to eat. I order the mini Parker special which is one egg any style, 1 pancake or french toast, one bacon, one sausage, one ham (or ham hash instead of all meats), potatoes and toast ($9.99) For $11.99 you can have the Parker special which is double everything in the mini Parker special. My dining companion gets the maple baby back ribs and eggs ($14.99)  which is a half rack of pork ribs, two eggs any style, toast and potatoes.

(all the meats are under the pancake)

This is a stick to your ribs, or in the bottom of your stomach kind of meal-the one where after you’ve eaten it you immediately regret all the calories you have consumed. I had the blueberry pancake, which is the size of a salad plate, it was good, but came cold. The syrup was tasty, but was it worth the hour drive? Probably not. The eggs were good but there isn’t anything special about them, the bacon is so thin you can see through it, I don’t eat the sausage, but the bite of ham I had was good. The potatoes have a bit of spice to them, like a bbq flavor. I think that here they are focused on portion not quality, you can get a diner breakfast closer to home, or buy some syrup and bring it home to make your own breakfast. The food was good but not amazing enough to want to drive back up to NH for it.

The ribs were tasty, the meat fell off the bone, but there wasn’t a strong maple taste to them-I was expecting a little more.

The service was decent, could have been better. The place was fairly clean, but when the coffee came it was stained with coffee on the outside like they didn’t wash it since the last person who used it. While we were at breakfast, Paul Hodes, who is running for the senate came over to shake our hands-only to leave quickly when he finds out we aren’t from New Hampshire.

This is a cute place to go if you’re in the area, you can see the sugar making process from March-mid April, you can stop over at the corn crib gift shop for any of your maple product needs, or walk the grounds. Good place to go if you have kids-because the price is definitely right.

Parkers Maple Barn

1316 Brookline Rd.
Mason, NH 03048
(800) 832-2308
www.parkersmaplebarn.net

Open February to December

Mon-Fri 8am-2pm, Sat-Sun 7am-4pm

Tags: breakfast, restaurant