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WHEELIES
96 Main Street
Newmarket, NH
(603) 659-6300

The less we eat meat, the more attention we pay to the meat we eat. That’s hard to do with fast food these days, which is why beef has almost disappeared from our menu – except here. Wheelies does roast beef like nobody on the Seacoast.

A roast beef sandwich from Wheelies is as different from one at Arby’s as food is different from the container it comes in. We’re told that is because the Newmarket eatery cooks all its meats in-house following a long, loving, family recipe. The roast beef is tender, flavorful and, dare we say it – healthy tasting. It is not disguised in sauces like the chain-store stuff. Drop that beef into a fresh grinder with veggies and "hots", toss in great fries and a Greek salad, and you’ve got a serious pleasure-thing going on.

Any time we pass through Newmarket, we stop. It’s that simple. And it took more than a dozen stops for us over three or four years to stretch out and try something different here. The pizza, we can now report, is great. The chicken is great. The onion rings are great. We hear the same is true of their pitas, Friday’s fish special and Wheelies pork. But it’s difficult to skip our roast beef fix when passing through old Newmarket town.

The prices are solid "house of pizza" level, $6.25 at this writing for a large roast beef sub. It’s a pizza place ambiance, which is to say, not much, although the scent of cooking from the back kitchen is many notches up the aroma-zone from your average pizzeria.

Counter service is friendly, but not as warm as the food. It feels a bit like ordering from your Greek neighbor’s kitchen, and your neighbor is distracted by the game on TV. But the food is so good, you just cannot stop knocking on that door. We were the only ones in the place not greeted by name, so this is clearly a spot for Newmarket regulars. That means it is a New England "in" spot for tourists and out-of0towners.