Portland, Maine

I am just back from my not-long-enough trip to Maine. Of course, food was a central part of my trip. I started out by planning my itinerary and looking for recommended restaurants in my trusty Fodor's Maine Coast travel guide. One thing I have to say about Fodors is that by and large, the restaurants that get the best reviews are usually the expensive ones. So for all of you traveling food lovers out there, it pays to look at blogs or ask locals for recommendations. Our flight was delayed several hours (boo!), so we didn't arrive in Portland until about 10. I did a quick search for late-night dining in Portland, and saw that Vignola, located in the Old Port, was open until midnight. The only reason we went there was because we were in a pinch, but I'm glad we went! I love restaurants like Vignola, which specialized in cheese and charcuterie. Sadly, both unpasteurized cheese and charcuterie are off limits for me right now, so I had to pick two pasteurized cheeses, one of which was a Cabot clothbound. It wasn't that special (almost like a standard cheddar). However, the other cheese, whose name now escapes me was great. The menu had a choice of several different accompaniments for the cheese. We chose fig bread and truffle honey, which was nice and raw with a detectable truffle flavor. The cheese came with greens topped with what appeared to be stewed cinnamon apples. I thought at first blush that the apples were weird, but they ended up being fabulous! We also ordered a simple pasta dish with red meat sauce, which had a great texture -- not watery, and was flavorful because of the ample amount of meat. We stayed at the Inn at St. John, which for the most part only offered pre-packaged food for breakfast. We forewent the free breakfast and went to the Porthole for breakfast, which got really good reviews. I was sorely disappointed. Don't order the creme brulee french toast. It's sour tasting and boring and can only be saved by a generous portion of syrup. The other standard breakfast items were blah, and the balls of sausage were dry and tough. The decaf was watery and weak. The standouts, though, were the whole wheat toast, which tasted homemade, and the fact that breakfast was served outside by the water. Before leaving town, we went to the Standard Baking Company, because of all of the hype. I am happy to report that it lived up to the hype. We bought molasses cookies, a brownie, and a brioche roll. All were excellent, and kept exceptionally well. The molasses cookies were nice and chewy with a perfect balance of molasses and spices and a thoughtful dusting of granulated sugar. They were just as chewy and moist almost a week later, even though I had been carrying them in my purse in a plastic sleeve closed with a twisty ties. The brioche roll had nice pieces of big, opaque sugar on top and a light texture and buttery flavor, and the brownie, was well, your good standard brownie. I'm glad we stopped here to get our road snacks!

New in the Hood: Changes in the Crofton Asian Food Landscape

So, Kwong's Hunan in Crofton Center unfortunately changed ownership and is now "Fusia." As you can probably guess from its name, Fusia is a pan-Asian restaurant. Generally, I'm not into pan-Asian restaurants because they lack authenticity. It's all about breadth instead of depth, and the food is usually ok, but nothing special. Sadly, Fusia is no different. Wasn't impressed and was depressed that my favorite Chinese restaurant has been taken over by the misguided fusion craze. Of note, there is a new Vietnamese restaurant in the Gambrills/Crofton area -- VN Noodle House, located at 2299 Johns Hopkins Road in Gambrills. Much better than Saigon Noodle House. We ordered spring rolls, fresh rolls, pho, and beef clay pot rice. The pho can actually compete with the pho from Viet-Thai Paradise in Annapolis, which has amazing broth; I still say that the spring rolls are better at Viet-Thai, though. My only beef with VN Noodle was the beef in the clay pot beef. It just tasted a little bit off -- like the beef wasn't high quality or something. It might have just been a little off that night, though. I'd definitely go back, and would love not having to go to Annapolis to get decent Vietnamese food. I'll keep you posted!

Fried Rice

I have been fighting a battle with fried rice for at least 10 years. I have tried numerous recipes and messed with numerous ingredients but have never been able to achieve the flavor of fried rice that is served up in Chinese restaurants. I think that I am finally coming close! I know that the big secret is having a super-hot wok, but I have a crappy electric range. This time, I preheated the wok and then added oil to the hot wok and let it heat up for awhile. The rice didn't stick and the flavor was almost right. The only thing missing was that the rice was a little too fresh and clumped.

A Shout-out to San Diego:

I recently went to San Diego, so thought I would share my stand-out eating experiences: Burned into my memory was Swadee Thai, in Coronado. So often, I have gone to restaurants where extra spicy disappointingly turns out to be mildly spicy. I want my food to make me cry, and Swadee Thai did that. The servers ask about the level of spice you prefer on a scale of 1 to 10. Based on my past experience, I requested a 10, but was warned off of it. And I am glad that I was. We ordered a papaya salad, which was an 8 and it had some real fire that required me to take a break while eating and made me gulp a lot of water. For my entree, I ordered a whole fried fish with fabulous chili sauce. A definite winner. I also visited the Mission for breakfast. It had a nice vibe, delicious, freshly squeezed orange juice, and a decaf capuccino that was so good that it made me wonder whether it was decaf at all. Finally, I wish I could have spent more time in Kearny Mesa. We found our way out there because we were trolling for a late night meal, and consulted an awesome late night dining guide, available here. There was a ramen shop open until 2 am, so we went. We jumped at the chance because of the dearth of noodle houses in the DC area. Surrounding the noodle shop, we noticed a lot of other promising looking Asian restaurants, including a tea house that I'd like to hit up if I'm ever back in the area.

Weary O'Leary's

My husband and I were cheese-olicious this Valentine's Day and decided to treat ourselves to a nice dinner out. We went to O'Leary's Seafood Restaurant in Annapolis (Eastport). I can't say that this was an inspired pick. It had V-Day reservations available the evening before the big day, and didn't have an outrageously expensive "special" Valentine's Day menu. I have no idea why restaurants think that people think that it is romantic to pay more money for less menu selection, but whatever. In keeping with the winter Olympic season, I would have to say that O'Leary's would not win a medal for best restaurant; if it were competing in a discipline where it would have to qualify to make the finals, it would be one of the bottom qualifying competitors, if it qualified at all. It simply made too many mistakes. I could have overlooked the fact that we had to wait at least 10 minutes to be seated despite having a reservation if the rest of the dining experience had turned out well. It wasn't terrible; it just wasn't good. It started out well, but like many athletes, couldn't sustain, and got tired toward the end of the meal. I liked the fresh lemonade, and the black bean soup with crab had a really nice flavor without being too heavy like some black bean soups can be. It needed a trifle more salt, though. My husband ordered the crab and lobster cake, which had a nice fresh flavor that let the crab and lobster meat stand out. On one hand, the server gets props for noticing (even though we didn't) that the cake was a lot smaller than it should have been; on the other hand, she said that she would bring a basket of bread, which never came. Main courses were disappointing. They took a long time to arrive after the appetizers. I ordered mahi-mahi, served with a Thai bbq glaze, rice, a pineapple salsa, and three jumbo cornmeal battered shrimp. The highlight of the entree were the shrimp, which weren't really anything to write home about. The fish, while fresh, was bland, and not even the salsa and the glaze could save it. The rice was inappropriate. It should have been stickier and of a finer grain to match the rest of the entree theme. It also tasted like the rice in rice pilaf that you would get at, say, Denny's. My husband said that the tuna was good, but that the soy-based sauce was too salty. His fish also came with shrimp, which appeared to be tempura battered. They were really good -- better than the cornmeal battered shrimp. O'Leary's dessert menu is uninsipred. Bread pudding, creme brulee, cheesecake, carrot cake, mousse, and coconut cake. Sometimes I wonder if there is a secret restaurant code of conduct that requires that there be creme brulee and cheesecake on every menu. It just gets old after awhile. I picked the coconut cake because the menu said that it came with blackberries, which I love. I was looking forward to the blackberry-coconut combo. Sadly, the cake came sans blackberries, and while good, was again, nothing special -- your standard coconut cake. Would I go back? No, but it's not a terrible place and has a nice atmosphere, so don't be dissuaded from checking it out. I think that our dining experience suffered somewhat from the fact that the restaurant was overwhelmed on Valentine's Day, and because we had a reservation on the later side. But, any gold medal restaurant would be at its best for any time that it accepted reservations.