Happy Eater

I haven't been The Sun's restaurant critic for a millennium exactly, just the past 26 years off and on. Restaurants have come and gone, but one thing has stayed the same: The people I meet are fascinated with my job. And it is a lark of a job, in spite of the fact that (as Happy Eater columnist Rob Kasper once said) you have to know 9,000 ways to say "mediocre." The good news is that you get to say "fabulous" every once in a while. And I seem to be saying it more and more with all the new restaurants that keep opening up -- with due respect to classics like the Woman's Industrial Exchange, which are fine just the way they are.In this, my last column of the millennium (unless you insist that the turn of the millennium is still a year away on Dec. 31, 2000)

IT WAS HOT, I was thirsty. Naturally, I thought of drinking beer. The question was, did I stick with my usual brews, Clipper City Pale Ale and DeGroen's Pils, or did I dare to change my drinking habits to cope with rising temperatures by downing a different style of suds? Once I got out of my easy chair and headed to a beer dinner, the decision was made. I was prodded into drinking daring summer beers by Garrett Oliver. Oliver, the brewmaster and a partner of New York's Brooklyn Brewery, came to Baltimore last week to promote his new book, The Brewmaster's Table (Ecco, $29.95)

International flags flew and violins played as Katie Peddy and Connie Pitcher, co-chairs of "A Tasting at the Station," greeted guests at a tasty benefit for the International Visitors Center of Maryland.Meanwhile, their husbands, Tom Peddy, president of Foxleigh Enterprises, and Bill Pitcher, chairman of the PDP Group, chatted with Congressman Ben Cardin and his wife, Myrna, who agreed to draw a few raffle ticket winners.However, it was WJZ-TV personality Denise Koch, who drew the names of Barbara and Alby Swartz, he's dean of students at McDonogh School, as the grand prize winners of two round-trip tickets to London.

It's been 11 years away from the NCAA tournament for Al McGuire, but, thanks to CBS, he's returning next week.McGuire, whose last tournament game was the 1981 final between Indiana and North Carolina, will be an analyst, paired with play-by-play man Dick Stockton, for first- and second-round games in Milwaukee, near his home.At NBC, he and Billy Packer formed an entertaining analyst team. Packer's proclivity for going heavy on the X's and O's was balanced by McGuire's attention to just about everything but. Packer moved on to CBS, got a little better and got a lot more exposure as that network took over college basketball.

Maryland's Waiter of the Year finds that excellence lives in the details.Those little forks, for example. Recently crowned Waiter of the Year Dana Dineen of Annapolis always remembers that one of his regulars, lawyer and lobbyist Ira Cooke, uses a salad fork and nothing but a salad fork.This greatly impresses Cooke."His great strength is his anticipation. He knows what people want," said Cooke, who stays at the Loews Annapolis Hotel during the 90-day legislative session and often entertains legislators in the Corinthian restaurant, where Dineen works.

After almost 30 years of writing this food column — first known as The Happy Eater, then later morphing into a feature topped with a photograph that showed my ever-receding hairline — I am switching genres. I am joining the ranks of the editorial department of The Sun. Sharp-eyed readers might have noticed that my weekly column in the Taste section was on vacation this summer. That is because I was pinch-hitting in editorial department, substituting for staff members who were away.

YOU KNOW YOU'RE from Baltimore if you hear the word "drape" and don't necessarily think of window treatments. . . . You hear the Temptations sing "My Girl" and think of Bob Turk. . . . You know you're from Baltimore if you always make a beeline for the tube socks table at discount stores. . . . If you remember Aloma's Ruler, "one hell of a horse." . . . If the phrase "going to watch the submarine races at Loch Raven Reservoir" has a romantic connotation. . . . If you know that, despite its bucolic sound, Sparrows Point isn't necessarily a great place for a picnic.

No two columnists at The Sun are alike.Some of us are tall and some of us are short. Some of us are fat and some of us are thin.Some of us are talented and some of us are extremely talented.But in evaluating each columnist, one cannot ignore the likability factor.Some of us are simply more likable than others. This manifests itself in several ways.The typical letter I get from my readers, for instance, goes something like this:"You make me sick. I would like to pluck out your eyeballs and feed them to my hogs.

Most of us believe that on the fourth Thursday in November, everybody in the United States sits down to the same dinner.It isn't true -- and nobody knows this better than Ian Dengler, a food historian who has devoted much of his life to asking people what they eat on Thanksgiving."

One of the few kind things that can be said about August in Maryland is that it is excellent beer-drinking weather.This summer a growing number of Maryland brewers have been turning out small batches of full-flavored, locally made beers. This is good news for area quaffers. While many wines get better with age, most beers don't. Like a good baker, a small brewer uses fresh ingredients to make his product, sells it quickly while its flavors are at their peak, then goes to work on the next batch.