Dinner

Frank & Nic's West End Grille is offering something different for Valentine's Day - a beer dinner. Featuring Sam Adams brews, the four-course dinner will be served at 8 p.m. on Feb. 14. The menu begins with a carrot, ginger and crab soup followed by a scotch egg. The main course is veal scallopini with a Boston Lager demi-glace, and the dessert course is hard-cider baked apples with vanilla paired ice cream. A Samuel Adams representative will be on hand to guide the dinner and for beer chats.

On Sept. 27, Bryan Voltaggio will host the No Kid Hungry Dinner, a benefit for Share Our Strength. Voltaggio's guest chefs for the dinner, which will be held at Volt , are Cathal Armstrong ( Restaurant Eve , Alexandria, Va.), Spike Gjerde ( Woodberry Kitchen ), Matt Hill ( Charlie Palmer Steak , Washington, D.C.), and Charlie Palmer himself. Tickets range from $125 for the pre-dinner reception to $2,000 for seats at Table 21, where you can watch the chefs in action.

Meet your anglers. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources will host its second Bounty of the Bay event, a five-course dinner celebrating the state's seafood and watermen, on Feb. 28 at the Boatyard Bar & Grill in Annapolis. The event is designed in part to give the public a chance to bring watermen, the public and DNR staff to the same table. Here's a video from the first Bounty of the Bay dinner, which was held last March. "We want to remind people that even during the winter months the bay continues to provide us with ample fishing opportunities and plenty of amazing seafood options," said Steve Vilnit, the DNR's fisheries marketing director.

Victoria Gastro Pub in Columbia presents monthly tasting dinners, often featuring pairings of micro breweries. But the Aug. 22 dinner features fresh and pickled vegetables, jams, compotes, and even pollen from Howard County farms. The dinners are held in the pub's Seven Sisters private dining room for about 40 guests, and the five-course dinners feature a guest speaker from the featured brewery or winery or another field expert. The main course is stout-braised beef short rib with cheddar mac & cheese and a green bean and bacon salad.

Jack's Bistro is hosting a Stillwater Ales dinner on Thursday night. There's still room left. The dinner doesn't appear to be an official Baltimore Beer Week event, or at least it's not showing up on the BBW website. But it sounds like a can't-miss event for fans of Brian Strumke (the brewer), Ted Stelzenmuller (the chef), or just a good time. Strumke says he's bringing a Chardonnay-barrel Stateside , wine-barrel Our Side (Mikkeller collaboration), bourbon-barrel Existen , Import Series v4 Rule of Thirds and a wine-barrel Cellar Door . The $65 dinner will include five food-and-beer pairings.  The dinner begins at 6 p.m., and there is limited seating.

The Corner BYBO has announced the first dinner of its Gastronaut Society The winning Hampden bistro opened in late winter with a four-square Belgian-influenced menu by Chef Bernard Dehaene. From the start, exotic meats were part of the package. In the early days, you'd have to know to ask about them. Then, in August, Corner BYOB announced the details of an exotic meats club, the Gastronaut Society, with an annual subscription rate of $50. Dehaene and owner Cecile Fenix have now announced the first dinner of the Gastronaut Society.

When this event was first announced, it wasn't clear how anyone who wasn't a guest of the resort could subscribe, if at all. But now those details are in. Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay Resort 's two-week Crab Week celebration will feature a a visit by Bryan Voltaggio, on Saturday, Aug. 27.  Up to 18 guests will join Voltaggio for a five-course crab tasting dinner at the Cambridge resort's Water's Edge Grill. In addition to hosting the crab-tasting dinner, Voltaggio will also serve as a celebrity judge of an Iron Chef-style crab competion earlier in the day.  The menu created by Chef Voltaggio includes: •    Blue crab salad with Yellow Doll watermelon, radish, ginger, Cucamelon and avocado  •    Sheep's milk cavatelli pasta with country bacon, foraged Hherbs and flowers •    Soft-shell Crab with Silver Queen corn and “Old Bay” heirloom tomato •    Pineland Farms beef strip loin with fava beans, lobster mushrooms and crab gratin •    Textures of Chocolate: Ganache, chocolate caramel, milk chocolate ice cream, and raw ocrganic cocoa The price for the five-course dinner and wine pairings is $150 per person, plus 6% sales tax and 18% gratuity.

Dan Rodricks dropped by Phillips Harborplace on Sunday for a sweet good-bye to the Light Street Pavilion anchor restaurant. He wasn't the only one. Here's Rodricks' story about the people who showed up for the last day to reminisce about the celebrities that came through back in the go-go '80s, A-listers like Muhammad Ali, Queen Latifah andBrad Pitt. Later this fall, Phillips will open a new restaurant nearby in the Power Plant space forrmerly occupied by the ESPN Zone.

Washington -- God showed up last weekend on CBS television's ''Sunday Dinner.'' Not God, the creator of the universe, but god in the form of a syncretic, warm and fuzzy, everybody-can-know, impersonal spirit. Those who talk to this god really like him (or her) because this god requires nothing of them.Playing Moses (or John the Baptist, depending on your choice of prophets), is Norman Lear, who took some heavy hits from the religious right in the '80s when he was labeled ''the most dangerous man in America,'' but gave as good as he received by founding the leftist ''People for the American Way.''Mr.

Geisha is one of the few restaurants I can think of that looks better during the daytime than at night. Geisha's dining rooms are below ground level, down a flight of stairs from its entrance on Charles Street, and at night you can feel a little sad in them, as though you've been confined to the basement while adults are having a party upstairs. By day, though, the room's rusts, cherries and ambers resolve themselves handsomely along clean midcentury lines, and the ambience feels more intentional, like an executive dining room.