Breakfast, Coffee and Italian

"Good food coming soon." OK, there is your update on Fresh Start. I walked by this morning and they had an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper in the window telling the neighborhood what's to come. We'll see what kind of time line they are on. Not much has changed in the place in the 2 1/2 weeks since we've returned. But I will keep my eyes on them.

Coffee. Before I left at the end of June, I predicted Zed's Cafe would be no more on my return. Well, they are still around. Passed by them on my morning dog walk too, but no customers were in the place. I assume at some point in the day they do have customers, but I have yet to see that for myself. I typically walk by early or late, and so they are just opening or are closed. The place is fully of comfy chairs and looks inviting, so who knows. Long live Zed's.

Finally - Italian. I have lived in this neighborhood almost nine years now, and I can't tell you the last time I ventured over to the Blair shopping center. When we previously lived a bit north of here (near the YMCA off Colesville), we were at Blair fairly often. I remember many annoyed experiences at what I called the Geriatric Giant - not sure if that still applies however.

Anyway, the missus and I walked over and literally crossed the tracks to Blair the other day for a meal at Mama Lucia. I was a bit hesitant, but the friends we met wanted some place 'kid friendly.' As a non-procreator and food lover, this made me a shudder a bit. But, we didn't want to be complete food snobs. I do love almost all Italian food.

As we entered, it was clear Mama Lucia was kid-friendly (and very well lit too). Now I won't say the food my food was lousy, but I can't say it was any more than mediocre, that is for sure. I could have given my simple dish of penne in arrabbiata sauce a little more than mediocre if perhaps it had some heat to it (I mean the dish is supposed to be spicy, that is why I ordered it), but at $13.50, I just cannot do it.

They advertise they use De Cecco pasta - which by the way they also sell in dry form at Mama Lucia and promote it as 'Imported Italian Pasta'! That seemed kinda odd to me, since it's sold in pretty much every grocery store. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against De Cecco pasta, I buy it too. However my problem lies in the fact that the dish contains a pretty inexpensive dry pasta and a very simple tomato sauce - no meat, no seafood, no cheese - and the price of the dish doesn't seem to fit. Yes, I was disappointed.

The missus did find her eggplant parmigiana pleasant enough. And I admit, I had some of her leftovers the next day and reheated, it was OK. But our starter of fried calamari was some of the worst I have ever eaten. I don't know if the squid had been sitting in the freezer too long or fried too long or what, but it had so little taste. Even when dunked in the marinara sauce, the taste was still MIA. And again, $12.50 for not such a big plate of not-fresh squid, breaded and fried. In my mind, this was a $9.95 dish at most!

We did appreciate a salad that accompanies each entree, but beyond that, the best apart about the meal was certainly the company. In my opinion, I would choose Olazzo over Mama Lucia any day of the week. The prices are competitive, salad comes with each entree, and they both serve traditional Italian-American dishes. But for me, the atmosphere, quality and service at Olazzo trumps Mama Lucia by a decent margin.

One final update - the covering is off the windows at Society Lounge. It looks like it's almost ready to open. And maybe it is open already? Looking at their web site, it has their hours, menu and a link to reserve. Anyone have any news on this??

Back in the 'hood

Hey, hey, hey. Happy new year. SoCo blogboy is back in town and ready to eat. The missus and I got back late on Friday and for lunch on Saturday we hit the SS restaurant where we first at back in the mid-1990s. It was called Kim Than then and it is now known as Lotus Cafe. And they did not disappoint.

But before I talk about the lunch, I did want to mention a couple changes I noticed after being in Maine for the last 6 months. First off, Fresh Starts is no more. What happened? I don't see anything about it closing on-line. But when I walked the dogs by there about 8am on Saturday morning, the doors were closed and all the old timers were nowhere to be seen. Kinda sad. While I was not a customer of Fresh Starts, I was glad they were still around. But I'll keep my fingers crossed that a new restaurant will take over and not another braiding establishment!

Another item also caught my eye right across the street from Fresh Starts in the County parking lot. It was a food truck called Krazy Klaws. It claims to sell lobster, crab and shrimp. Their Facebook page says they have the "best" seafood on the east coast! Their web site says they are, "proudly to serve executive lunches starting at $6.00." Hmmm? I think a web site editor may be in need. Also, as a non-executive might they still serve me an executive lunch? I will have to inquire. Has anyone tried them out? They are selling Maine lobster rolls and shrimp rolls too. They better bring their 'A' game if they want to impress this lobster aficionado. I certainly ate my fair share of lobsters over the last few months, so let's see what they got.

Now back to Lotus. We didn't recognize any of the staff from our last visit in June. I assume since it was early on Saturday, maybe the regular servers were not working till the evening. However, the food was very familiar. We started with some veggie spring rolls. Crispy, not too greasy and quite tasty. What a deal for $3.00.

And as you can see I had a Fischer to accompany the meal. Yummy. For our lunches, the missus order the vermicelli salad with fried tofu and I had the soft egg noodles with bean curd and peanut. The preparation was a bit different than I remember. I never recalled in the past that string beans were an ingredient. But that's OK, it was still quite good. The vermicelli salad was also a winner, with the missus saying it was the best one she'd had in a long time.

It's a little odd, even though we did not eat meat or poultry for almost 20 years, now that since we're fully back on the carnivorous diet (as long as the animal was humanely raised) we rarely eat a vegetarian meal out. The meal may not always include meat or poultry, but if it doesn't then there's probably some kind of fish in the mix. But we have no problem at all skipping meat at Lotus or many other Asian establishments. Tofu fills the void quite well, especially if it's been deep fried.

I think this was our first Vietnamese meal in over six months and it definitely hit the spot! Now, what's next??