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??