SACRAMENTO -- A year ago, a California reporter of remarkable diligence said he had never been to New Hampshire and eagerly inquired about its restaurants. I told the poor chap that by the final week of preprimary hysteria, when meals are missed or bolted suicidally, he would not likely see silverware nor grip it in his mitts.
Since 1952, reporters have tried to find out what's eating New Hampshire. But what is New Hampshire eating? America has changed, but would-be presidents still obsess over a state that ranks 41st in population, still obey an audience as monochromatic (98 percent white) as the average presidential fund-raiser. Will this tourist trap of presidential politics survive in the 21st century? A weighty question, but where do we eat?
Voters have a choice of 30 presidential and four vice presidential candidates, but diners face no such bounty. Portsmouth offers respectable eateries, but from the Merrimack Valley, it's easier to reach Boston than the seacoast. Besides, Portsmouth is more like Maine than New Hampshire, just as Keene behaves as though it were in Vermont.
In campaigns elsewhere, hungry candidates and their accomplices may enjoy a jolly time and decent food at the Rotary, Kiwanis, or the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. But cagey New Hampshire clubbers, anticipating thin fare, must put away a hearty breakfast on meeting day. The search goes on.
Jack Germond once found a Mexican restaurant in Merrimack, where the Dos Equis, in the shadow of a Budweiser plant, was cold and delicious. This coup was as impressive as H.L. Mencken's legendary discovery of a stray jug of potable Sauterne in Rahway, N.J.
A memorable meal served at the old New Hampshire Highway Hotel near Concord years ago was a dish called Chicken Daniel Webster. We speculated then about how this hunk of poultry might be rechristened as the state traveled down the food chain of statesmanship, from Chicken Styles Bridges to Chicken Gordon Humphrey to Chicken Bob Smith, an oddly flavorless entree encrusted in granite.
Hotels are just as important to the Fourth Estate than restaurants. Bedford, with only 11,000 voters to Manchester's 44,000, is home to the Wayfarer, a political rialto since its founding in 1962 by the Dunfey family. Its one-floor arrangement replicates New Hampshire's aesthetic goal: Sprawl Free or Die. Reporters favor the Wayfarer because its design reduces the chance of being trapped in an elevator with Gary Bauer or Alan Keyes.
CBS, challenged by ethics experts for injecting its trademark into the news, has used the Wayfarer waterfall as its quaintly rustic backdrop for decades, seldom pulling back for a long shot of adjacent malls and parking lots.
Every four years, New Hampshire's chief political export has been ''momentum,'' an elusive concept that may vanish in an avalanche of votes March 7, when primaries will be held in 13 states, including the largest, California.
Statistics show that the state has 52 congressional districts, 50 more than New Hampshire, and its capital here has almost as many good restaurants. At Frank Fat's, a fancy Chinese restaurant long favored by lobbyists, I see no one using chopsticks; at the bar, I count a half-dozen single-malt scotches.
When the foremost diarist of New Hampshire politics answered her cell phone last week, she sat in her car in a parking lot munching a sandwich between assignments. By now, media dreams of white tablecloths are gone, replaced by a hold-the-cutlery protocol of preprimary dining: donuts for breakfast, whatever for lunch, and a pizza supper.
The dominant franchise in New Hampshire cuisine symbolizes the Granite State's attitude toward its quadrennial visitors. This omnipresent logo also describes New Hampshire's economics, aesthetics, and tax philosophy. Every four years the world worships at its neon shrine: Drive Thru.
Martin F. Nolan's column appears regularly in the Globe.
