Tag Archives: food

On Southern Living’s advice….

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After our walking tour of Charleston we realized we’d skipped lunch and were starving. As it was too early for dinner, I did a little phone research and found a seafood place highly recommended by Southern Living magazine. They said the food was superb and to ignore the fact that the restaurant itself was a “dive”.

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Clearly their idea of “dive” and mine differ greatly because while admittedly this place wasn’t the Ritz Carlton, I’ve been in a helluva lot worse.

😉

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Naturally my husband wanted to sit at the bar.

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I’ve never had a strawberry daiquiri served in a mason jar before, but maybe that’s part of their dive-y charm.

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The hushpuppies? Meh.

Not great, not awful.

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My she crab soup?

Mama mia! It may not have photographed well but it was thickest, richest, creamiest crab filled thing I’ve ever had.

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To be honest I was pretty full after just that, but I was on vacation in the low country and couldn’t pass up an opportunity for shrimp and grits.

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I couldn’t…. but I should have, because it was awful. Yes, the shrimp were large and flavorful but the rest was simply a big bowl of slop. Too much pasty gravy, too soupy a consistency… blech.

I ate the shrimp and left the rest.

The husband? He had some type of inferior fish which was dry as a bone.

So much for taking Southern Living’s advice.

Aside from the soup the only thing that made me smile at this place was the poster in the rest room.

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😉

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Mini hurricane? Go antique shopping…

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After showering off the sand from our beach walk and spraying my second hairdo of the day in place, I planned on spending the day at the resort since no one in their right mind goes out during a bad storm.

No one but my husband who refuses to waste a vacation day that is.

Here’s a little glimpse of the neighborhood right beyond our door. In the rain…

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As we headed over the bridge from Edisto, the sky did not look promising.

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But my husband was determined in his quest.

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Antiquing for my man is like the U.S. postal service…. Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night will keep him from shopping for crap.

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I told him he could only buy what would fit in his suitcase. Thankfully this did not.

As usual I saw some ridiculous things…

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Fur trimmed sleigh?

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Ah, the vomit clock.

A time honored treasure.

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Its little demon hand beckoned…

But I ran for my life.

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The husband has a weird obsession with vintage wooden advertising yard sticks and was bound and determined to come home with these… even though I assured him they wouldn’t fit in his bag.

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Southern self help book.

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7 sticks of butter? This makes a wonderful last meal before your arteries snap shut and your heart gives out.

We wandered around the store until the storm got bad enough that the owner wanted to close. Husband bought his yardsticks and a few other small items including this….

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No, he doesn’t cook. But it definitely qualified as quirky.

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In particular this recipe – which was so wrong, it was right.

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My only purchase requires a bit of explanation.

Last Christmas our state lottery ran a commercial about the joys of regifting. (Don’t roll your eyes, we’ve all done it.) The ad was a huge hit… funny and heartwarming and everyone loved it.

Take a look.

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So when I turned the final corner of the store and saw this sitting on a shelf?

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I knew it was $8 well spent and couldn’t wait to see my girlfriend’s face when she opened her gift.

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Store closing around us and bad weather moving in, my husband wanted to go out to lunch. Not surprisingly everything was closed because, ya know… mini hurricane.

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Lunch was at Hardees. And I use the word lunch loosely because whatever that sandwich was it didn’t resemble food as I know it. 🤢

When I finally dragged the other half back to the resort, the pelicans were turned to the wind ready to ride out the storm.

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It’s hard to tell, but the wind was really howling. Watch the palm tree in between the buildings on the upper left.

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The afternoon and evening of Vacation Day 4 was spent playing gin rummy (with a deck that had all 4 jacks)…

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And eating a box of this…

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Which I’d never seen before… but heartily enjoyed. Beer + cheese + pasta = happiness.

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Winds were 65 mph.

It was a long noisy night….

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If you’ve never been gobsmacked when you walked into a restaurant, then you’ve never been to Johnson Creek Tavern.

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After our horse drawn carriage tour of Beaufort…(did you say Byoo-fert like I taught you?)

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We strolled along the harbor for a spell.

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Then headed over the bridge to explore the Sea Islands.

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Since the husband was hungry we stopped for a late lunch. Not much was open this time of year but we found a spot on the marsh called Johnson Creek Tavern.

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It was an unassuming little place, and while I don’t know exactly what I was expecting…

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It definitely wasn’t this.

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Every square inch of the place was covered in money.

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Yes, as in real U.S. currency. Ones, fives and tens. Most had names or funny sayings written on the face.

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One bad margarita….

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Some run of the mill hushpuppies with, oh the horror, margarine …

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And a terrible bowl of gumbo later, we decided we wouldn’t be eating lunch here… but we did marvel at the decor and inquire about its origins.

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It started at the bar decades ago as these things do. The first dollar spent, a big tip, a foreign bill brought back from faraway lands. But then it grew…

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And grew and grew.

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Now… they harvest the bounty every so often and donate it all to charity. Last year a veterans group was the happy recipient of over $11,000.

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And that’s money well spent.

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The flamingo agrees.

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Beaufort… the old fashioned way.

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As we headed down the road for our tour of Beaufort ( say it with me now… Byoo-fert. Byoo as in beautiful, fert as in fertile. Byoo-fert. ) SC, the husband wanted a second breakfast and chose this quaint little place in Port Royal.

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Cozy, and small …

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The Old Schoolhouse didn’t take themselves too seriously.

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I’m not a big breakfast person, but since it looked like this might be lunch as well, I looked forward to some true southern biscuits and gravy. Finding that dish in Maine is a rare occurrence so I was fully prepared to splurge.

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To say I was disappointed with this (yellow… WTH?) measly batch of gravy with very little sausage (not to mention flavor) is an understatement. I was in the south…

Y’all are supposed to do this right!

Unsatisfying breakfast/lunch over, we made it to Beaufort. (Did you say Byoo-fert in your head? Good. Let’s continue. )

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Where we had tickets for a horse drawn carriage tour around the city. That white horse was in training…

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So we had Angus.

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My husband rolled his eyes when I said I wanted to do this, but after a few minutes into the historic tour? He was hooked.

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Our tour centered on The Point. The old section of Beaufort filled with beautiful Civil War era homes.

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And some quirky art.

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At the beginning of the war the savvy residents of Beaufort took part in what is now known as the Great Skedaddle.

In the panic of The Great Skedaddle of 1861—the hasty escape of white residents from Beaufort, South Carolina, six months after the start of the Civil War—anything that could not be buried or carried was abandoned. Enslaved people were left behind along with all the wealth accumulated from nearby cotton plantations: expensive furniture, horses, and clothing. When the Union Army arrived, there was only one white man left in town and he was dead drunk, or so the legend goes.

As history would have it, what drove white Beaufortonians from their homes was ultimately what saved the town they left behind. Unlike burned and battle-scarred Charleston, 50 miles to the north, the Union Army claimed Beaufort without a fight. Setting up operations in the town’s stately mansions rescued them from destruction. To this day, Beaufort has more surviving antebellum architecture than almost anywhere else in the South.

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It’s a lovely area, literally lost in time and lovingly preserved.

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That stone out front? A step for women to board carriages without displaying their ankles. Only shameless hussies flashed those.

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This wall is called pigeon hole brick and is completely original.

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The grand old homes…

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The live oaks, the moss…

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The clomp of Angus’s hooves.

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It was like being transported back 160 years.

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Because furniture shopping drives my husband to drink.

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After a full day of furniture shopping my husband cried uncle.

Or more accurately, Sicilian Table in Falmouth.

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It’s the new sister restaurant to our favorite and we’ve been a few times. Remember the fabulous fish?

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We snagged a spot at the busy bar…

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And commenced cocktailing.

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Okay, maybe that was me.

First up? A rosemary lemondrop.

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Sheer herby perfection.

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Enough so that I had two, with a beautifully rich chicken Marsala.

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Moving on to the winter Cosmo I watched my husband devour the Devils Tower of beef.

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My name not theirs. It was a fabulous but ridiculously expensive filet mignon, no sides included. I don’t mind paying for a great meal, but geesh… don’t make me pay extra for potatoes and veg.

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I don’t care how full you are you can’t pass on their desserts.

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I took half home, but the hazelnut tiramisu was divine.

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And according to my fussy husband, their cheesecake is the best in the state. Caramel bourbon pear sauce…

How could it not delight?

😉

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Hushpuppie-ing my way through the south.

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After our trip to Parris Island we were hungry and headed for a delightful little town called Port Royal.

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It’s quintessentially southern with brightly colored cottages…

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And marvelous moss draped live oaks.

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It also has a seriously good waterfront restaurant called Fishshack on 11th Street.

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The views were lovely…

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And though we had planned to eat inside,

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When we saw there was an outdoor bar we changed our minds.

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A freshly muddled pineapple mojito served in a pineapple shaped glass?

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Don’t mind if I do.

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Jalapeño hushpuppies? Yes please.

Husband opted for tomato basil bisque. At this point the live music started and damn it, they were playing my song.

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Since we were in the south…

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Chicken and waffles for the husband,

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And an absolutely scrumptious shrimp burger for moi.

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In Maine a shrimp burger is just fried shrimp on a roll, this was more like a crab cake and I swear I could eat one every day.

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Any place that allows cuties like this to join you for lunch is alright with me.

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After our meal we took a walk on the pier.

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Hoping our travels would bring us back this way for another nice meal.

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😊

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Giving him a little taste of the frustration.

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My husband rolled his eyes and scoffed at the idea of me not being able to choose a fabric for the sofa he liked among a hundred and fifty choices so I decided to let him experience the joy of fabric selection first hand.

Since we needed to find a different brand of furniture, shopping began anew.

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Can you tell how thrilled he was?

He didn’t mind that couch, but vetoed the square arms.

The salesperson said it could be ordered in a rolled arm style….

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And we were off.

Standing in front of that brand’s wall of fabric, I started pulling patterns.

The following comments are his.

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Too swirly.

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Too wavy.

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Too blotchy.

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Too hippie dippie.

45 minutes later, he started wandering around and picked these.

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Too bad they belonged to a brand that didn’t sell a couch he liked.

The designer in residence took up our cause at that point and pulled this.

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The husband?

He said it looked like television static.

Almost an hour and a half in, he was done…. and pointed at this.

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“That one.

Get that one.”

I thought it an odd choice, but the salesman plugged it into the creation app and the husband was so sick of the process he approved.

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I argued that it would be too light a pattern for an ottoman not to mention our white walls and opted to take the swatch home.

The husband? He opted for a bar because the whole thing had driven him to drink.

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Cranberry gin fizz for me.

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Two beers and a disappointing French onion soup for him.

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My crab cakes with spicy remoulade were wonderful.

Fortified with lunch and alcohol… we kept shopping.

😉

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Random rambling…

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In case anyone was wondering I didn’t buy one of those pooping animal calendars I blogged about earlier, no…

I went with hedgehogs instead.

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Life is good.

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And if you’re Lord Dudley Mountcatten, it’s better in a box.

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Yes, the wicked witch of the west in the original Wizard of Oz movie, Margaret Hamilton, lived in Maine…. and now they’ve written a play about her.

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Another beautiful sunrise at Casa River.

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It almost makes waking up early worth it.

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No.

And again, no.

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Miscellaneous nonsense.

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If I was a dishonest person, I could get rich doing my husband’s laundry.

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He’s forever leaving things in his pockets.

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I think I need this book.

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I have long suspected my spider plant was in cahoots with my succulents. Maybe now I can prove it.

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Mr. Hawk is back.

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And currently driving His Lordship crazy.

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I’m not sure what makes this French…

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But Martha Stewart assures me it’s a good thing.

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As seen at a local convenience store.

Better than sour balls I assume.

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That sums it up quite nicely I think.

😉

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It’s nice to see good customer service still exists.

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Having nothing better to do last weekend we decided to take a drive down the coast and try another Batson River drinking establishment.

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Until a snow squall moved in out of nowhere and we opted for a late lunch closer to home.

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Tuscan Brick Oven Bistro has served us well in the past, so we headed there.

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As did everyone else because my husband’s beloved bar was full, as were all the tables.

Thankfully a young couple was vacating a bar adjacent high top and offered it to us… because clearly we looked thirsty and pathetic.

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I was thrilled to see the seasonal Apple of My Eye had returned ….

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And promptly drank two.

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My crab cakes were tiny but tasty but my husband complained his meatballs were “different”.

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I blacked out their faces, but here’s a modern family of three… every one of them on their phone and oblivious to the others presence. Ah, technology… thou art a heartless bitch.

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My chicken Marsala with homemade pasta and pancetta was flavorful if a bit thin on sauce.

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But my husband … who was already upset with his meatballs… said his shrimp scampi was “different” as well. When I asked him to clarify, all I got was “different”.

Since he clearly wasn’t interested in eating his meal, I called the waitress over who then brought the manager. He was a lovely young man who immediately removed the offending shrimp, promised to delete it from the bill and offered substitutions.

After talking with the guy for over a half an hour… sigh… husband chose a bowl of haddock chowder, which I thought was an odd choice for an Italian restaurant.

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But ooh la la! It was thick, creamy heaven in a bowl. Full of fish and fresh herbs and damn near perfect.

Too full for dessert we asked for the bill… and were pleased to see good customer service is alive and well in Freeport, Maine.

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The scampi charge was removed, and the chowder was free.

That’s one way to keep repeat customers happy.

👍

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