giant shrimp

well, hon, baltimore is different world, isn't it? but when it comes to restaurant prices, it is often in the same neighborhood as dc. i am astounded that the amish chickens have now made it into the vicintity of the inner harbor.

this is a kitchen that really likes to dice, and there are some unusual ingredient combinations that are usually small enough to ignore if you don't like them. Both of our meals here in june were good, the steak and mussels excellent. the cooking seems to be regionally authentic, down to the small crustaceans in mayonnaise, and the frites were outstanding, even though they don't fry them in horse fat, do they?

maybe they're just not interested in messing around with avocados.

tonight we are having pasta with thawed tomato sauce. in the summer, i invariably buy too many tomatoes at the farmers market. basically, collect as many as will fit snugly in a pyrex dish, cored and peeled, bottoms up, salted and peppered, with plenty of good olive oil. they can sit on a bed of basil, or add garlic and herbs, whatever sounds good. then roast in a 350-degree oven for an hour and a half or so, until they are carmelized. i first saw a recipe like this in alice waters, but there are many variations. she calls for the olive oil to come half way up the tomatoes, which is too high for me. also this tomato compote can get a bit soupy for a sauce, but i whisk it up if that happens. serve with some parmesan. you can also serve the sauce on rice, and there are many other ways of going to town with it. this is the best tasting way of cooking tomatoes i know.

i would third cafe atlantico. it has always been good and i have had it several times there, almost as delicious as in the yucatan, where they don't tend to mash it at the table. mexicans make this dish look easy, morning, noon and night, but there aren't any totally reliable mexican restaurants around here, are there? i believe we once had a good version at guajillo many moons ago, but we have stopped visiting following too many off nights this spring. my wife says the guacamole in her quesadilla at breadline was piping hot, and that is definitely not how you would want it. have never been to rosa mexicano. i need more than guacamole to get me there.

but she says she did get more than her money's worth of hot guacamole. i am still trying to figure this place out myself. if there is any better bread in town, i would like to know about it.

in what he sent to the table at trumpets, mr. hagedorn was one of the most generous chefs i know, and we miss this place, despite the fact that there were men in the ladies bathroom. i'm truly sorry he is suffering from overexposure to the public. however, as ms. richman points out, restaurants do occasionally pull things he wouldn't attempt. for instance, it has been awhile, but one of tom's favorite italian restaurants on p street played the price-on-specials game exactly as she describes it the last time we were there.

thanks for the suggestion. i doubt i would have discovered these peanut butter sandwiches on my own. they are the size of miniburgers. one of their secrets, i believe, is putting the sugar in the filling and holding back on sweetness in the batter, which works in some nice peanut chunks and a few oats. there's much more complexity of flavor and texture here than the traditional peanut butter cookie. this is some cookie.

the sign at marvelous market in georgetown says the cakes are from cake love, so i am assuming that our two-layer raspberry chocolate job was also. the cake is real nice to look at, plain in a way, but all dressed up in pink with nice traditional decoration, though not a raspberry in sight. the raspberry flavor comes on a bit strong and is confined to the butter cream icing and some chocolate shavings around the base. the cake itself is decent, delivering a reticent but honest taste of chocolate. however, this is basically a prop, and depending upon how hungry you are, you can eat it too. one drawback: it had sat in the display case long enough to pick up some off flavors, similar to those we encountered in a blueberry pie from the firehook at dupont circle the week before. all in all, it inspired neither love nor hate, but cake apathy.

pickle on everything.

it looks like they are more interested in getting a liquor license. isn't this the neighborhood that is obsessed with public intoxication? anyway, just mention dessert to your server for everyone to have a good laugh. sun hollow oysters are a transporting experience. i only got around to the lobster roll on my third visit. don't know what i was waiting for.

catherine deneuve in a movie by jacques demi never fiddled over any food more beautiful than the blackberry semifreddo we shared last night. the ceiling-fan air conditioning system here, which can provide a dubious reminder that it is sweltering outside, was perfect for displaying this voluptuous dessert -- a cool and silken mound melting into a pool of deep pink, tears of golden caramel sauce and three small ginger brown cookies standing as sentinels. the attack came from two sides, and our reverie was over in a flash. (i keep thinking things are running in honey this summer, when they are not.)

decided to ditch work and head over for a leisurely lunch today. spaghetti pomodoro registers the fruitiness of tomato with a somber garlic undertone and a fleeting powdering of cheese and is drizzled at the table with olive oil -- a split serving in two small white bowls of simple perfection. you could start and end your meal with this and leave in a state of total fulfillment. however, tuscan chicken (bye-bye to your amish cousin) accompanied by vinegary kale flecked with panchetta and rice cake; a chocolate hazelnut torta and a gelato trio all provide compelling reasons to linger. in the afternoon, at least, this place remains a relative secret -- although maybe not for long. there are some square plates that are a bit awkward, and i would replace them with round dishes as they are broken, but that's just me. the dining room boasts some nice appointments, including deep orange-amber floral upholstery and light fixtures that if you use your imagination resemble space-age gooney birds with eyes far apart sitting below wide brows. i would guess they are either glass or plastic.

dessert was mentioned in the capsule review in the city paper this week. were they referring to the chocolate chunk, or have desserts come in?

we will be returning soon for the amish chicken and spaghetti. i have never had any problem with this space, although i do have a problem with what's left of foggy bottom.

ivy used to be pretty good -- about a million years ago.

that's the one. the food was okay, as i recall, but for whatever the reason we have never been back. so they have managed to stay in business for several years now.

we went to the new mexico restaurant twice this late spring and early summer and found the food edible but suffering from some basic problems (oversalting) suggesting that there was nobody at home in the kitchen. we did shy away from anything that sounded too complicated. the service, on the other hand, was the dopiest on earth. for our second meal we had two servers, one breaking the other in, but both were clueless. if you don't want to bother running two restaurants, why bother opening a third? this place is just sitting back and raking it in.

though there aren't as many of them, the regular summer locusts that are out now are just about as good. i wouldn't want to eat one of them. however. in fact, if i found a live one on my plate i would rescue it.

our son, who was once a waiter at cafe deluxe, tells a story of serving salads on an early sunday to a large table only to discover they were garnished with grasshoppers that were popping up faster than he could whisk them away and that the whole place was jumping. over the years i have encountered all sorts of insects in my food, though they usually have been cooked, most memorably a big yellow- and black-striped beetle that had been stir fried by washington's recently departed oldest thai spot. when the bugs are alive, especially when they are cockroaches, i have found a range of reactions. several years ago at city lights of china, when we called our server over to check out the baby roach swimming for its life in a mai tai she was all ooh's and aah's and seemed resigned to letting nature take its course until we asked for a replacement. at the other extreme, at a new orleans-type cooking place in the block of connecticut at calvert (i forget the name and don't know if it is still there; many of the restaurants in that area become invisible fairly quickly) one of those basement jobs about the size of a flying cigar precipitated shrieks and tumbling chairs when it started dive bombing tables. we decided to stick it out, and just when it looked like it was heading for the bar, the creepy crawler turned around and attacked our table and our knee-jerk reactions were similar to those of the diners who had recently departed. the roach was soon taken out by napkin-swatting waiters, and the manager came over to explain that the invasion had originated from another restaurant on the block; theirs was the cleanest. our reward was free dessert. foreign objects intruding into a meal have included a three-inch metal "shaving" from a can all covered in cheese in a chile relleno, bottle caps, rubber bands and hard pieces of plastic (broken in the dish washer?). i haven't found any coins, but isn't including a foil-wrapped quarter randomly in a batch of cupcakes still a tradition for pta's and church socials? the caspian tea room out mass. ave always had delicious desserts into which there invariably was baked an impressively long, thick, black strand of hair. i don't know who she was, but she was really losing it.

in case anybody's interested, my wife reports that she got back to the office today with her quesadilla and there was no cheese on it. sounded like a healthy choice to me, but she seems to think it should have been there.

thanks for the recommendations. they were just what the doctor ordered to perk up a couple of old winos. i especially enjoyed the jo pithon anjou, my wife was partial to the verdejo. it looked like there were four bottles of the moccagatta on the shelf at whole foods yesterday. thanks also for the opportunity to discover a great wine and cheese shop in virginia, which is off our beaten path. hope you can make some more wine picks soon.

we were on the big island last month, and in the right place at the right time to experience the two biggest quakes they have had there in 30 years -- nothing destructive but enough to get you up in the morning. i would head for waimea, which isn't that far from kona, maybe a half an hour drive, depending on exactly where you are staying. across the street from each other, the two restaurants worth the trip in waimea are merrimann's and daniel thiebaut. their menus look similar, but the cooking is quite different. merrimann's is more like the kind of modern american cooking you might find in the pacific northwest; thiebaut springs from french, his sauces can be brooding, a bit mysterious, which goes well with the mist that usually envelops the town by dark. we had great meals at both. my wife was especially fond of locally raised lamb at merrimann's and i had sushi-style fish (don't remember what kind, maybe opah) that was as good as it gets. we started with an appetizer platter that included a local goat cheese quesadilla. steak, i believe from the nearby parker ranch, is a standout at thibault. an appetizer of crab cakes was superlative there (as it is at cafe pesto, which is more informal and also has an outpost in hilo. there's a whole lot of fusion going on, but it provides reliable nourishment for the body and soul. we prefer the wetter side of the island, although you probably also have some rain in your future, which is nothing to worry about). i started at thibault with a seafood mousse purse, and it was supremely good. at least in july, they were selling local strawberries from a stand outside the restaurant and they made their way into some fine desserts. these two restaurants probably are not perfect, but i don't think we hit one bad note at either. go with whatever you like, and you probably can't go too far astray. big dinners for two with wine and drinks is in the $150 range. look for coupons for a free dessert at thibault, which is also open for lunch; not sure about merrimann's. merrimann's dining room is open and brighter, one big room, somewhat more formal, with some beautiful people hanging out; thibault is a dark collection of rooms in an old house, a better bet for finding a no-nonsense, supremely happy hawaiian waitress. you don't often stumble upon places this good on vacation. there is also a good wine shop about half a mile further on the left on the main drag through waimea, the best we found on the island, with bottles you don't regularly see around here. if you get over to hilo, which is about a half hour drive from the volcanic park, a visit to the farmers market is worthwhile. i think it is open on wednesdays and saturdays and you will see a lot of asian ingredients. they even grow tomatoes on the big island, and this is the perfect spot for fragrant flowers. actually, just thinking about these restaurants makes me want to return next month, and i can use the excuse of going to contest my speeding ticket.

whole foods has a problem with pricing. this summer i have encountered coffee that rings up at $1 a pound more than the price on the shelf, and italian pasta (different types at different stores) ringing up a couple of dollars more. it took at least six weeks for the coffee problem to be corrected at the p street store, even though i pointed it out to them every time at the cash register (once i had become aware that i was being overcharged). getting management involved in this doesn't necessarily work either; correcting the pasta price problem at the wisconsin and calvert store required an okay from the corporation, i was told. you also have to watch out for items that don't have a price, and they are all over the place. these typically will cost more than other brands of the same items around them. several years ago, this problem was worse than it is today, and in many cases it was obvious that shoppers were being scammed. i thought they had cleaned up their act, but now i am beginning to wonder and beginning to see some of the same sorts of things reappearing. these stores are a good example to me of why grocers should be required to go back to putting prices on individual items. it's clear that it's too easy to get away with this in a store where money really isn't the object. i don't have much experience at other chain stores to know if this is a problem there as well. i would love to bring this to the attention of a consumer office in dc, but somehow i think this would turn out to be a big waste of time.