giant shrimp

Ordinarily, broccoli is no big deal, but the charred lancaster broccoli appetizer ($8) served here along with shaved parmesan and pecans shows that blue ridge is still not living up to its potential. Considering its pedigree, one i am clueless about except that I suppose it is meant to indicate the product was harvested from local fields, it was an unpleasant surprise that the vegetable hadnt been treated much better in this kitchen than it would have at a cafeteria. Several strides ahead of an absolute disaster, the broccoli was nevertheless flaccid and tasteless, buried in a flurry of fresh fallen, fluffy parmesan clinging to the spears like mountain crags. I didnt see any charring, but did smell smoke. The entire wintry scene could have been reduced to mush with a fork. In a way, this was just another ordinary broccoli story, and the shortcomings wouldnt have been quite as apparent if ordered as a side, but I was insanely expecting a signature dish that would go straight to the roots of the philosophy this restaurant has been clinging onto. Why glorify broccoli when you arent even willing to cook it properly? The kitchen says it was cooked to order, but assembled was probably more like it. Drinks and service here remain inept. A martini ordered extra dry with olives tastes of splashed olive juice. No one ever seems to know who gets what even at a table for two. And there remain some lapses in judgment. Whats so exciting about the made-in-house, dark, almost burned, greasy potato chips accompanying the green tomato blt ($10)? The restaurant would be much better off allowing customers to carry in a bag of route 11 chips from the whole foods across the street . The sandwich I had read so much about in the city paper was okay, perhaps made by different hands, at its best in the bacon department, with some fishy notes and a little dry, and not as good as the traditional blt. Uptight and snarly just below its icy surface, blue ridge has yet to become a welcoming or relaxing destination, although it appears to be attracting a fuller dining room, up from almost empty some nights. To its credit, it continues to make improvements. Finally it is printing out a traditional menu that reads sequentially down the page instead of appearing to be running all over the place like a delirious breakfast spot. burgers now come with fries, an inevitable concession made a while back. But I dont know if it will ever succeed in entirely getting its act together, and Ive just about run out of patience.

could not find walnuts yesterday, and it seems like they only arrived the week before. maybe it wasn't a good year for walnuts. maybe it's not too late to go into the forest and scrounge up a sack of wild black walnuts, but they are more work shucking than i can afford right now, plus when you bring them into your home the little white worms escape from the bag and fan out along the wall, whistling, if you listen hard enough. this is the time to load up on quince. we use them as a kitchen perfume.

what a coincidence. i was just talking about brussel sprouts on the phone, about how i don't really feel the need to do anything with them but cook (steam and saute) and butter them up, although i can see how restaurants might feel compelled to do more. considering they are not everybody's raving favorite vegetable, it is a bit surprising to see their popularity around town. (as a young child i would sneak them off the dinner plate and hide them in my pockets, a secret that came out in the wash, i guess, though i was never confronted with the discovery.) anyway,i have recently run into good versions at blue ridge (nutty and singed) and radius pizza (sauced with a lemony almost brown butter).

what happened to buck's? i miss carole greenwood, but buck's has really been coming into its own lately.

it sits in an odd pocket of downtown that still seems lonely and used to be sketchy when the greyhound bus station was across the street. when you departed the city late at night, walking to the station from this direction seemed risky, but by the time you purchased your ticket you realized that it didn't matter, because standing within the station was just as bad. we once saw a tall homeless man keel over right in front of us. i don't know what bus he was on but he was rigid as a door and landed flat on his face, and he didn't feel a thing despite his nose. familiarity with downtown started with visits to the raleigh hotel, from which wttg broadcasted. i remember captain tugg. ninth street was a boundary of sorts because it was a red light district, but there was a place on the corner of f street that sold lava lamps and keene big eye paintings, although i'm not sure they were originals. for good food, you had to edge a bit further away from downtown, to chinatown. i remember eating at the golden palace one weekday night before heading off to charlottesville, and it couldn't have been earlier than midnight, so they must have kept late hours. then i headed over to the bus depot, and i didn't really feel i was headed for downtown, though not exactly walking away from it either. if i had been look for men desperately dressed up as women i believe i would have headed up to mass. ave., close to where corduroy is today.

have never run across anything like this one before, probably the most affordable on the list. you could serve it to your guests and tell them it was a light grappa and they would believe you. if you told them it was whiskey, they might not. and not because of the color, clear as water; blindfolding would get the same results. it's fruity and i picked up some licorice and you can read other flavors like that into it, but not the wisconsin wheat from which it comes. as young as it is, i didn't catch that much lightning, and it is smooth, considering.

there were also maitake mushrooms the other night, accompanying a cafe menu blini, foraged from prince george's county.

They are also beautiful, variations on a theme with tahini, lemon and garlic, and a reliable way to start your meal. The hummus ($5.95) is almost pale as white, with the contrasting low brown of chickpeas in the center. Baba ghanouj ($6.50) is a creamy beige, dotted with three black olives and slick with olive oil. Both are garnished with a few pink slivers of radish. The flavors are subdued but right, though the eggplant was missing the sweetness and jewel red of pomegranate arils that would sometimes appear in the old days, and it was light on smokiness. The pita was good for spooning, sturdy but not crispy, fused at one end but eventually revealing a pocket. Warak inib mahshi ($15) isn’t exactly the same as it used to be; the grape leaves are rolled tighter into small torpedoes. There’s not a hint of grass or bitterness that can sometimes pop up at other places, just olive oil, lemon and salt, a dollop of thick house-made yogurt and a textural assertiveness against the soft, delicately flavored rice and ground lamb mixture within. these don’t seem like they were sitting around, though I suppose they must have been, and they are sufficiently satisfying enough to keep you from having to explore the rest of the menu – for decades on end. Mama’s talks up her secret spices all over the menu, but when it comes to cooking with them the kitchen is more restrained. That’s not a bad thing, just don’t expect the spicing to send you off on the kind of quest for knowledge that the palena chicken inspires. Recollections come not exactly roaring back in a combination platter of shish kabab, kifta kabab, couscous, grape leaves, kibbeh, rice and vegetables ($21) – but reconfirm the strengths and weaknesses I’ve found here over the years. A crusty cube of grilled lamb starts with a hint of toughness but quickly turns tender and juicy. Two come on the plate, and with the exception of the grape leaves, I would have happily traded in everything else for more of them. The ground beef kebab and the kibbeh (ground lamb with cracked wheat) are good enough, but they need something to bring them to life, more than lemon or yogurt, maybe some fat or tomato sauce. A slice of grilled tomato shows how well mama ayesha’s can cook vegetables, while a carrot shows how badly; it’s soft enough to mash with a fork and provides about as much flavor as water. A grilled onion was burnt in spots, just under its skin, but still raw. Two glasses of arak on ice ($6.50) each carried us pleasantly through our meal. The taste of licorice goes well with this food, if that’s what you like. The trappings seem to grow more opulent each time we visit, but you can still get in and out in roughly an hour if you don’t slow down your server, decline dessert (namoura made fresh that day) and choose not to linger over a demitasse of turkish coffee that’s bracing down to its dregs and can also be laced.

maybe not exactly for this restaurant? even so, a recent meal at blue ridge showed that it has been making some progress. the hamburger, for one, was quite improved, not consumed by smokiness and hard, as i previously found it, the cheese melted, and served with fries. it's not what i would order here first, or second or even third, but the herbal gunk has been scraped off the broiled rappahannock oysters, making the main ingredient at least identifiable, and not bad. charrred green beans with chopped pecans show off the virtues of cooking vegetables within an inch of their lives. marcella hazan would approve of the blistering, and it's saying something that these are so good you can finish off the entire small plate before tiring of them. there is still room for improvement, though. i would start by hosing the generous mound of root vegetable mash off of the plate before serving the hanger steak. i finally made it out onto the patio, and agree it's a much better alternative to the oppressive indoor dining room. i'm apparently not the only one who feels that way. the dining room was totally empty. the menu could also use some scaling back; it's still running too much all over the place.

Have been traveling with a two-year-old this week, whose patience typically lasts about 15 minutes at the dining table. It's not exactly my idea of a good time, but it is possible, with a bit of a strain. 2 amy's worked out great, the best of the places we have visited so far. When you walk in the door, you can direct your toddler's attention to the oven and the fire inside. This is almost as exciting as riding on the metro. Ours knew what pizza and ice cream are, so actually was able to key in on the food, and he was astute at assessing that even his disproportionately large voice box was probably too weak to penetrate far above the noise level at this restaurant (although that didn't stop him from shouting at a nearby toddler to "sit down" when he was trying to climb out of his highchair.) He also liked the muscles on a stick, which were removed for him first. Surfside -- where informality rules -- was another success. Chips and dips kept him busy until we were well into our blackened fish tacos and ceviche. The tacos were loaded up and the best we have ever had here over several visits. There can be a bit of inconsistency when it comes to the cooking, but usually within a good range. I only recently tried the quesadillas, which were okay. Toscana café -- despite the picnic tables -- turned out to be the diciest bet for a toddler so far, although there are three or four concrete stairs with a railing leading down to the patio where those who are done can content themselves with scaling them up and down, as long as they are accompanied by a steadying hand, and despite the fact that there were at least two mothers marching or carrying their toddlers in circles around the restaurant's exterior. Our toddler was finished almost from the start. Too bad we hadn't been able to get him to take a nap after a four-hour trudge along the towpath and the b section of the billygoat trail, with lots of pick-me-ups. We crossed paths with several creatures, but he was out for the most intriguing -- a slow and defenseless mole cowering along a fallen log that put me in the mood for a good piece of soft, pudgy meat. I have never seen a mole on a menu and wonder what a good chef would do with one. anyway, bread and olive oil and whipped potatoes from an unconventional saltinbocca dish were the only things on the table that calmed him down, temporarily. I suppose I still believe what I have read about this being a good lunch spot, but the food ingredients at dinner seemed to be badly out of proportion. There's an overabundance of sauce for the relatively scant amount of pasta and cheese served in the lasagna. The veal seemed to be okay, tending toward underseasoning, but it was covered up with sliced porcini. Though well cooked, without a trace of grit, they reminded me of a flurry of dead autumn leaves falling all over the plate, brown on brown in the evening light, and annoying to have to chomp through. A thick slice of prosciutto was the only sharp flavor in a recipe that was otherwise bland. A peach-flavored vinaigrette provided a change of pace on the salads, the Toscana a refreshing mix of arugula, fennel and oranges. Roasted baby peppers, on the other hand -- overstuffed with goat cheese filling, accompanied by similar dressed greens and sitting in mashed fig and hazelnut -- became cloying long before they were finished. Two would have been more than enough, three were served. the caprese turns favorable attention to good buffalo mozzarella, but the dish is shortchanged by slices of unripe cellophane tomatoes no better than what can be purchased at the grocery store. A pitcher of sangria was icy cold but diluted and tasteless. you can’t complain about the prices or hefty portions here, and I can see how this could be a reliably safe destination for toddlers who are well rested. However, the service is short, so don’t expect to be able to make a quick retreat when there is a toddler meltdown.

Maybe out of desperation to drum up some business, there was finally something to gnaw on at heritage this weekend in a curry of stewed goat in a fairly peppery though not blazing cashew sauce ($19.95). we were advised that we would have to pick up the bones to get at the meat, but most of it had dropped off in tender hunks into the sauce, which was smooth and married well with the sweetish flesh, a fair substitute for lamb. there were enough knobs on the knuckles of bone that were spooned clean and white to the surface that grasping them wasnt nearly as messy as tangling with hot chicken wings, though you still wouldnt feel confident about handling them without a napkin on your lap. If its the meat you are looking for, there are only a few strands left, but there is some satisfying sinew and fat to chew on, which opens wider the faintly mysterious flavor of the goat. There were also some indications of marrow, but getting at any that might have been in there would have been difficult even with a small knife, and I had to quit before getting too carried away, like in a George romero movie, and scraping off the surfaces of expensive dental work (which I know enough to avoid, having accomplished this before with duck and ruining the entire meal). Osso bucco this is not. We have been coming here regularly now for several years, and even with more competition moving into the neighborhood, most of it disappointing to various degrees, heritage remains one of the best restaurants in the few blocks mounting the hill up to calvert street, tied in my mind with sushi-ko across wisconsin avenue. Specials are something new here, and I have no idea when, if ever, goat will pop up again, but in a clinch, if you are looking for excitement, you can always fall back on the lamb vindaloo. Just let your server know that your mouth is coated in asbestos and you are ready to handle the anguish, which lasts as it travels.

I hear, fairly reliably, that he has been snapped up by the jefferson hotel, where he will be the executive sous chef at plume.

Cold avocado and cucumber soup with boiled shrimp Cantaloupe with mint and chamomile syrup Both recipes are from last weeks new York times food section, and they worked out well, taking me to places I dont usually go in the kitchen. The liquids in the soup are buttermilk (which I hate to buy because I am always left with more than I can use; the recipe calls for a quarter of a cup), water and orange juice (up to a cup and a half; you are advised to start with half that amount and then keep adding until it suits your taste, and for me that was one cup). Garlic, dill, cayenne and salt are the remaining ingredients. The shrimp, medium-sized, purchased from black salt, were remarkably fresh and clean, dressed with olive oil and lime juice, which balanced their mild sweetness. Two of us ate a pound of the shrimp, which was going significantly overboard with the recipe. The dessert recipe instructs you to remove the syrup from the heat once the water comes to a boil and the sugar is dissolved. If I did it again, i would give it a bit more time on the stove for a heavier syrup. Also, the recipe has you add the chamomile to the boiling solution, and then strain it out once the syrup has cooled. I brewed the tea and added that as the water to avoid the bother of straining it; I doubt it made much difference in the flavor, which was assertive enough. Three tablespoons of chopped mint are specified in the recipe, I took it down a bit. The correct mix of ingredients here can be quite subjective. If there is any argument I would have with this dish it is the sweetness, though you only add three tablespoons of the syrup, so it is mostly natural. It provided an interesting twist on a farmers market melon that would have been just about as good on its own. Tonight I am looking into callaloo and sweet potato vines, hoping for a serious rush in the kitchen, assuming that is something you can actually get from nutrients. I have read that nutmeg will do it, when incarcerated, but that is something I have never tried (the former, not the latter).

Deep in a white bowl, there's a refreshing summer shrimp salad on the menu. Its base is avocado, perfectly ripe, with a hint of tang or effervescence that you find when the fruit is at its best. As you dig in, the avocado becomes a dressing of sorts. It's salad on a small scale, with several ingredients, all in proportion, a few of this and that, alternating between crisp and soft textures: pale frisee leaves, peas, diced cucumber and mango and round slices of radish. I am probably leaving something out. There is the flavor of celery, too. It would be hard to be disappointed with this, unless you are expecting a big ovation from the shrimp, which you won't get. They are quietly there, playing their part, echoing the restraint of this dish. the salad leaves you with a feeling of light contentment, which won't last long if you follow it up with almost anything else on the menu, such as a delicious sautéed skate speckled with capers in a portion that's generous enough for two.

i had these at palena. they were on the dessert menu, but not anymore.

van ness will need more than an infusion of one new promising place to turn things around. although there are some who have hung on here for ages, there are a lot of businesses and restaurants that come and go, most recently trattoria liliana, which might have been able to develop into something at a different location, one that wasn't jinxed. it's no small consolation, however, that you can walk 15 minutes back toward town to palena or 10 or 15 minutes in the opposite direction to buck's.

If it didnt have such a darkly nice bar and dining room, I would be tempted to scratch fork off my list. A round brown roll glazed in sesame seed was nearly hard as a stone. I could have probably bent my tines on it, but tearing it open found tender and flavorful bread within. I derived a surprising amount of pleasure from picking it apart over the next half an hour or so it took a half portion of fettuccine to arrive, feeding it to myself the way I would have fed it to the pigeons prowling around nearby independence hall. The pasta when it finally did come, perfectly cooked and supple, was good but unexciting, dressed in olive oil, a judicious amount of garlic and slivered basil and relying perhaps too heavily on "heirloom tomatoes" to set things off. They turned out to be a half dozen peeled cherry tomatoes, one or two of which were transcendent and the remainder rather ordinary, proving the unpredictability of crops even when they come from the finest pedigree. A grating of parmesan might have helped and I can only assume was withheld because it would have clouded the purity of the simple flavors and textures that were the aim of this ambitious exercise, a mild failure. Less successful was the thick hunk of halibut that also took its time in coming to the table. Reminiscent of the restaurants bread basket, it was hard, almost armored outside, but thick enough to contain some moist and clean-tasting flesh within, though disagreeably fishy on the surface. A stew of baby squid, sliced beans, roasted pepper and preserved lemon would have done better on its own. The sea scallops served to my wife had cooled down in their wait for the over-roasted halibut and were otherwise good despite being brutally seared. Tucked underneath, surviving a bath of wan broth, a large summer vegetable raviolo with mascarpone and basil nage deserved the starring role, and my wife said if she had just been able to order a few of these she would have left raving about the place. Fork's wine list gathers a number of inexpensive but nice wines, including the Canaletto rose we ordered for $32. I would have had to lean too far back in my chair to see what was going on in the open kitchen, but I left with the impression that the cooks had fallen behind and had a hard time catching up. It's old news by now, but erin o'shea is leaving marigold kitchen to open a texas barbecue restaurant on south street in the fall and the restaurant is temporarily closing at the end of this month to give a new chef time to get established. In hindsight, we should have eaten dinner here and brunch at fork. I allowed one hour to walk to this university city destination from around 11th and market, and had underestimated the distance by a good 10 minutes and probably not taken the most direct route since my map ran out only blocks beyond the Schuylkill River so that we were arriving late, breathless and sweaty for our 10:00 reservation (which, as it turns out, we didn't need). By the time we reached the 500 block of south 45th street, we were walking so fast, in such a hurry, that we passed right by the place and stopped two blocks beyond, where my wife insisted we were lost and tried to hail a cab and I decided to ask the first person on the street if she knew the whereabouts of larchwood avenue, the cross street we were looking for. Not only did she know, but she was also heading to the same place, and she turned out to be our server. Along the short distance back from where we had come, to the restaurant, which is hidden away in a house that she said even some of the neighbors don't know about, we got to talking about fork, and she said that she had been there a few times and always ended up feeling disappointed. The small meal that followed was bliss, just the pick-me-up I needed when I was starting to feel I had become entirely jaded and unable to recognize good cooking. I had been blaming myself for the experience the night before. we shouldn't have eaten so close before dinner, which was a wallop of a breakfast at the dutch eating place in the reading terminal market of the eggiest apple and cinnamon French toast imaginable, sopping in butter, sitting by thick slices of turkey bacon. If I had come to fork famished, I would have loved it. I would have licked its plates. (and there is some truth to this: one of the most gratifying meals I have had in my entire life was at a gloppy Eskimo Chinese restaurant beyond Whitehorse after subsisting for a week along the dempster highway on pudding pops, apple sauce and caribou jerky.) it doesn't sound like much, but marigold kitchen's maple glazed hot smoked salmon with poached egg and potato roti was well worth the hike, simply perfect any way you look at it. silken in texture, anointed with egg and rounded out with the potato cake, this was some of the best fish ever, so plain and so easy it seemed, yet quietly exalted, accompanied by a small mound of lightly dressed arugula, beet greens, baby lettuce and lemony purslane. I've been running into a lot of places these days that want to cook this way, but few have the ability to carry it off. Here, at least for several more days, they do it assuredly and with a whisper. Osteria shouldn't be just an afterthought. A well-seasoned plate of fennel, beets, potatoes, beans and other roasted vegetables served at room temperature, ethereal mushroom ravioli with beef marrow, a plate of different roasted parts of baby pig, some licorice-scented, and a polenta budino, or pudding, made for a satisfying meal. Veal Milanese, in my opinion but not in the opinion of my wife, who ate most of it, was a bit dry. Otherwise, the cooking was just about faultless. Considering the rusticity of the food, I had not expected to find the well-oiled machine that keeps this place humming at full throttle. Its on the expensive side (Hendricks martinis are $15), and located in a half-way abandoned neighborhood, about one mile from city hall, down broad street heading out.

our server thought it was strange, the person who brought them to our table said it made them more flavorful. i'm not sure how much difference it makes to leave the pits in, but these were really succulent pies and the pits were no problem. i'm hoping for some peach pies next and assume the fruit will be stoned.

wedge salad not what it once was, but still okay. hamburger good, but not in the same league as what's down the street. fish taco good, continuing in the taco tradition now going back several months here. but the best thing on the menu a week or two ago were cherries: cherry pudding pie and just plain cherry pie. michigan cherry pie was also available. the pies came with a warning that the cherries weren't pitted, so these maybe weren't the best desserts if you had been drinking heavily, and it was exciting to find them here. not surprisingly, this place appears to be loosening up nicely, although it's a shock to see some of the big art that anchored the dining room gone, replaced by jokes.

Early report: this place tends to be gloomy, bare and brown, though in the dark, when all the exposed bulbs are glaring in their jars from the ceiling, it has a down-and-out edginess. It’s too clean by far to feel genuinely like you’re in the vicinity of Virginia mountains. Hanging quilts look like they were taken from home and maybe want to go back. They are disconsolate. Right now, the food is a plain, easier version of what they are cooking at woodberry kitchen in Baltimore about a 10 minute walk downhill from the hon village, and not as accomplished. The menu starts with a few snacks, such as radishes and butter, but a rolled-down paper bag of popcorn, slightly sweet with brown sugar and trace amounts of paprika, is served for free, in place of bread, I guess. What look like bread plates on the table are apparently intended for something else, sharing perhaps. This is a good way to occupy the kids, but not my idea of the best way to start out a meal, and if it doesn’t come to your table, and sometimes it doesn’t, then you need to ask for it. The lemon dressed leaves in a mounded arugula salad are just about perfect, hand-picked, lightly seasoned with clinging mint and shaved apple. Frisee accompanies many of the entrees, too many, but ordered as a salad it carries the barbecue flavor of chorizo. There is smokiness swirling through the menu, and a grass-fed beef burger tastes a bit overwhelmed by it. cheddar and bacon added to the cooked patty help cut through the smoke, but the meat is dense and packed. However, you’ve almost got something as good as a saint-x burger within your grasp. Fish of the day has been arctic char, served on a bed of thinly sliced green squash, one of the best things I have found here. the family-style meals offered nightly are not as reliable, judging from maple-glazed pork shoulder, served as wan gray fatty cutlets, not tough, not stringy, in the oven just long enough, providing some intriguing flavors, resembling something you might find at home on nights when the children are forced to eat their dinner. The pork is propped up by mashed potatoes, but the portion seems stingy because you could eat more of them. Sides of beets and turnips and a sliced cucumber salad show that vegetables are the one thing the kitchen seems to have under its belt. a postcard advertising the Saturday morning farmers market down the hill at hardy middle school is presented with the check, and it’s a reminder that you could actually easily replicate a lot of what you are eating here at home. Splitting a piece of pie is the way to end the meal – strawberry rhubarb and blueberry are what I’ve tasted, I lean to the former though both are decent. A scoop of vanilla ice cream (from the local countryside?) sounds good with them, but embraces sweetness that the pies wisely do not. Mixed drinks don’t always measure up, and the cocktail list, a salute to the tried and true, is boring. If you like your martini dry, ask for it to be very, very dry. The wine list is more interesting, with glasses available from local vineyards – a warm black ankle passegiata (syrah), a festive albermarle rose and church creek chardonnay. On the Maryland side of the Potomac, vineyards have now moved in as close as Frederick and sugar loaf mountain/Dickerson. I haven’t had a problem with the serving sizes at blue ridge, but it’s expensive enough that I won’t be eating here every day, with a full dinner for two, tax and tip included, rising into the $130 to $140 range.

there was also a fat-rimmed stuffed suckling pig on a recent monday night, though not as elaborate as something you would roast with a bicycle chain contraption. the monday night cafe-only menu is more interesting and heartier than you might expect, with soups and pastas carried over from the regular menu and a page of entrees, including the pig and fish. and you can get house-made bacon on the burger. you are also free to wander into the back room.

While the food was still good, there was a heavy hand in the kitchen last night. The crust on the abruzzese pizza was sturdier than lately and not curling up at the end, but the pie was salty enough that we were wondering if it would make our feet swell. We ordered it, though, mostly to roll around the meatballs. A plank of tender room temperature eggplant at first resembled something fished out of the ocean, but it had a hard time swimming free of an oversaucing of syrupy vincotto. Sweeter yet was the eggplant marmalade overwhelming roast lamb on an open-faced panino. Slathered on thick, its flavor was drenched in sugar and it would have been better in a hazelnut butter and jelly sandwich. Crostini painted with brilliant green pureed fava beans and shaved pecorino was the most successful of the small dishes that came to our table. Simplicity had a hard time shining as hard as it usually does here, and it was maybe not the best time for a visit from one of the city’s cap-wearing, youngest star chefs.

it's not going to be the same and it will be difficult to replace carole greenwood. it will be interesting to see what buck's turns into, but over the years i think many people have greatly underestimated the cooking here. it was quirky, but also one of our favorite restaurants.

farmers market prices zoomed over the last couple of years, and they don't seem to have come down this year despite the bad economy. two weeks ago, i paid $8 for one quart container of strawberries, which were still just starting to come in, and the priced dropped to $6 the following week. i know one stand where i customarily walk away with half a pound of salad mix and a couple of pints of vegetables, and it costs $20. two small containers of cherry tomatoes last week cost $8. yesterday, two bunches of asparagus, two crab cakes, cherries, a loaf of bread and a container of butter cost about $60 at the market. these prices add up quickly. looking above i can see that i was paying $80 a week at the market in 2005. that price has now risen to at least $120, and i am buying less food, though more flowers. ortiz tuna is now back on the shelves at whole foods, after maybe a year's hiatus, but it is more expensive than fresh tuna. what was previously in the neighborhood of $10 for 10 ounces, roughly, is now maybe $15 or $16; i have driven the price partially out of my mind because i'm not going to pay it (meaning eventually i might, but haven't so far). good cheeses can easily exceed $20 a pound these days. good bottles of champagne from smaller vineyards have moved into the $40-$50 range, from $30 a few years ago. dry italian pasta has gone from about $5 to $7 a pound. even today, i have seen prices rising at whole foods, and they aren't always just creeping. i don't know what they would charge if they actually had a good loaf of bread in the store. if you work for the government, i suppose you are better insulated from the high prices. but even around here, which is faring relatively better than most of the rest of the country, i am seeing pay cuts, furlows, layoffs and downsizing. food is one of the only things cheering us up.

maybe that's why buck's was closed this sunday, and comet was a bit of a mess. i suspect that comet has been carrying buck's a bit lately.