This and That

A few lucky customers had a very special sauce on their fish this week: the rainbow trout featured the above oyster mushrooms. Truly wild oyster mushrooms, foraged by a local fellow who brought them around to make money to pay his electric bill...Kevin took one look at these beauties and took all he had. And were they ever delicious. The picture holds a link for more information about this fungi delicacy.

The oyster fritter's comeback has been very welcome, although it doesn't look as though it will be appearing on the lunch menu right away. And the new ice cream sandwich, with a gingersnap cookie and pumpkin ice cream in between, has also been made very welcome, as only such a seasonal flavor combination can be.

One of our kitchen employees is moving on - his last day will be next Saturday. Matt has taken a position with another restaurant in the area, being offered a bit more money and a schedule he prefers to the one he has with us. This is not such an unusual event - people move on all the time, for a variety of reasons, and better pay is certainly a good one. The only reason I find this newsworthy is because he was "poached". Generally, in our local restaurant community, poaching is just not ever done. Even if someone else's employee comes to you looking for work, if you have any respect for the other employer you will make a point to find out what is going on. If you want to maintain a working relationship with your peers in this restaurant world, you don't offer jobs to the people who work for them. In this case, the poacher is young and obviously inexperienced in the nuances of business etiquette within a small town, so no hard feelings. Matt is a good guy and we wish him well in his new post.

Speaking of not poaching, one of our more recent employees is our second alumna of Andy's. Angie Griffin started here with us a month or so ago, after a long and very successful career at our much missed hangout, and we think everyone is very happy with the arrangement. Especially Kevin, since Angie has taken over much of the dessert making!

We may have solved - for the short term anyway - the garlic problem. As many of you know, there is very little other than Chinese garlic in the supermarket today. Kevin's various purveyors can never seem to find any domestic garlic - although Jeff got us a gallon this fall from one of his - until now. Colchester Farm has planted acres of the pungent stuff, and we are getting fifty pounds from them. This is wonderful news; the garlic is spicy and fresh and flavorful. We will enjoy it while it lasts, and then maybe the rows we planted in our garden at home will be ready!

Our plans for the weekend include a visit to Annapolis to check out Hell Point Seafood, a new place opened by veteran restaurateur Bob Kinkaid. Elizabeth Large, the Baltimore Sun food critic, gave them a mixed review last week, but we have to see for ourselves. One of his signature dishes, the fried Ipswich clams, happens to be one of my favorite. Funny story: I read somewhere that there is a reason the restaurant does not yet have a Web Page - when you Google the name you get the page for the previous occupants of the address, Philips Seafood. It seems that an Annapolis competitor bought the domain name of hellpointseafood.com to prevent Kincaid from having it! Not that they couldn't use another name, but the obvious one has been made unavailable...Talk about welcoming a newcomer to the neighborhood, eh? HPS does have a FaceBook page though, and in this social networking day and age, perhaps that all the internet advertising a business needs!