An Open Letter to Exeter’s Rogan’s Bakery and Restaurant From a Breakfast Glutton

Dear Rogan's,

I'm sorry to hear that you'll be closing your doors at the end of the month but I just have to get this off my chest.

I love you. There, I said it.

You probably don't remember the first time we met. I do. It was the summer of 2005. I feel like it was just yesterday that I made my way down Prospect Street one morning craving eggs benedict. I was staying at a friends apartment and you were right down the street.

I turned the corner and followed my nose to a heavenly spot filled with breakfast joy. No place had ever smelled as good as yours. I mean it's a bakery AND a restaurant for Pete's sake! I definitely experienced a little bit of "smell at first sight."

I remember exactly what I ordered that fateful day ten years ago: Irish Benedict. (I still have the hollandaise stains on my favorite college sweatshirt).

It wasn't an easy decision. I can remember thinking to myself, "is it possible to eat everything on the menu?" There were so many choices, and your specials, written with dry-erase markers hanging on the wall, were bursting with creativity and delicious wonders.

Nobody's poached eggs explode with yolky goodness quite like yours and I still to this day have not met another Irish Benedict as tasty as yours.

Fast forward to the winter of 2013. I'm a homeowner now in one of the coolest towns in New Hampshire. I'd like to think somewhere deep down, you were a deciding factor in where I wanted to live.

Sure, Exeter has one of the best school systems in the state, but it also had Rogan's. Any visitors to "Casa de DK" got the Rogan's treatment for breakfast. If a taste of where I lived is what my guests were looking for, literally a taste is what they got.

I'm going to miss you Rogan's. I'm going to miss your Irish Benedict with a side of sausage (links!) and a Short Stack of pancakes for the table. Till we meet again.

Breakfastly yours,

DK