House Salad

Pumpkin. Cinnamon cranberry. Lemon wheat. No, these aren't suggestions for quick breads. They're some of the seasonal brews at Rocky Run Tap & Grill, a Columbia restaurant and microbrewery.Mike Donnelly, his father, Burt, and partner Jake Middel opened the first Rocky Run at Marley Station Mall in Glen Burnie five years ago. In December 1996, they branched out into Howard County and last summer added the microbrewery when their license came through.Brewing beer is a tricky art. You might come up with smooth, assertive beers, like Rocky Run's light and lemon wheat.

Though it opened just last year, Gunner's Grille in Taneytown feels like it's been around forever. That's both good and bad. On the good side, the restaurant's rustic atmosphere is downright charming, and its interpretations of classics, like chicken-fried steak, are capable and comforting. Unfortunately, at times, our dinner also recalled an era of fewer dining choices (and no dining critique websites), when restaurants could get away with spotty service and food that didn't quite live up to its description.

Babusci's, 413 S. High St., (410) 539-1531. Babusci's is th Little Italy restaurant with the "bubble" that protrudes onto Eastern Avenue. It's a charming, small place with an attractive dining room and good food. Inside the "bubble," a sort of greenhouse extension of the dining room, are several tables that give you a view of the street and the sky. Unfortunately, the service was sluggish and not very friendly, though this may have been an aberration on an unusually busy -- the waitress said -- weeknight.

Everyone wants to go reviewing with a restaurant critic, I'm not sure why. I guess it's partly to see how the process works and partly to get free food. And maybe partly to have a story to dine out on. The reality is, as you might expect, that the companion doesn't have quite so much fun as people think. Here are my Top 10 Things to Expect When Dining Out With a Restaurant Critic: 1 When you get to the restaurant, the critic will always get the seat that has the best view of the dining room.

Anna Mary "Nellie" Chiapparelli, who worked alongside her husband at their well-known Little Italy restaurant and created many of its signature pasta dishes, died Sunday of congestive heart failure at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium. She was 100. Until moving to the nursing home last year, Mrs. Chiapparelli had been a lifelong resident of the Baltimore neighborhood where she and her husband opened their High Street restaurant in the 1940s. Born Anna Mary Pizza, she attended St. Leo Parochial School and married Pasquale Chiapparelli in 1924.

Giovanni Desimone may look familiar to aficionados of spaghetti Westerns. He acted in a number, gunslinging with the best of them. He's hung up his holster, however, abandoning the world of spaghetti Westerns to focus on, well, spaghetti. Desimone and his partners, Carlo Morra and Antonio Massa, are turning out uncomplicated and strongly flavored Italian food at their nine-month-old eatery in Ellicott City.At the site of the former Olive Branch in the back of the Normandy Shopping Center, Giovanni's is an unfussy, family-style restaurant with a bustling carryout place next door.

When I first moved to Baltimore, Little Italy was the place to go if you wanted to eat downtown. (This was before Harborplace.) And Chiapparelli's was probably the restaurant in Little Italy. The amazing thing is that it hasn't changed that much in all these yearsm even if we have.Case in point: the salad. Perhaps the most famous house salad in Baltimore. But it no longer seems out of the ordinary, maybe because the night before I had eaten a house salad at another restaurant made of baby mixed greens and radicchio with a fresh pear-basil vinaigrette.

The Artful Gourmet Bistro 9433 Common Brook Road, Owings Mills, 410-356-0363. Open 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m. Friday, noon-10:30 p.m. Saturday, 4 p.m.-9 p.m. Sunday. The "build" of a good sandwich is an art. You start with the proper foundation of bread then adroitly layer ingredients, creating an item that is pleasing to both the eye and the palate. The Remington from the carryout section of the Artful Gourmet in Owings Mills is a prime example of sandwich art. This bistro, tucked in a corner of the Brookside Commons shops, has an extensive carryout menu and a counter at the rear of the restaurant to accommodate customers who grab their food and go. The sandwiches and entrees are named in honor of artists.

Hunt Ridge 12-14 W. Ridgely Road, Lutherville. Hours: 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily. Phone: (410) 252-2122.Carryout orders from Hunt Ridge are ready within 15 minutes and are available from a wide variety of carefully and generously prepared dishes on the menu.This is primarily a restaurant with a friendly bar, an elegant dining room and music three nights a week. It has been owned and operated for nine years by brothers Frank Tselepis and George Kougioulis.The carryout menu offers "overstuffed" sandwiches such as deluxe bacon and cheese for $4.95; chicken breast filet for $3.95; turkey club, $5.95; and a crab cake with french fries, $6.95; plus a host of others.

You might feel as if you're walking into your grandmother's house as you enter the one-story, white clapboard building. There is a casual, country feel to the Country Kettle Cafe in Poplar Springs, but the food is anything but ordinary. Owners and chefs Jim and Amy Crooks opened their cozy western Howard County restaurant a little more than a year ago after spending years looking for the right location. They have years of cooking experience at restaurants in Montgomery County, where they grew up. The couple had dreamed of owning a restaurant for some time.

The Artful Gourmet Bistro 9433 Common Brook Road, Owings Mills, 410-356-0363. Open 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m. Friday, noon-10:30 p.m. Saturday, 4 p.m.-9 p.m. Sunday. The "build" of a good sandwich is an art. You start with the proper foundation of bread then adroitly layer ingredients, creating an item that is pleasing to both the eye and the palate. The Remington from the carryout section of the Artful Gourmet in Owings Mills is a prime example of sandwich art. This bistro, tucked in a corner of the Brookside Commons shops, has an extensive carryout menu and a counter at the rear of the restaurant to accommodate customers who grab their food and go. The sandwiches and entrees are named in honor of artists.

Overheard at Spoons, a charming little coffee shop in Federal Hill: Customer: Could I buy a single slice of whole-grain bread? Server: Sorry, we don't have bread. Just toast. Customer: Well, can I get a slice of toast, but untoasted? Server: OK, but I'll have to charge you for toast. This conversation, certainly one for the "who's-on-first" hall of fame, made me giggle. But it also confirmed what I already knew: The server lacked a certain, shall we say, focus. Earlier, she had jotted down our coffee requests and simply failed to return to our table.

Greystone Grill has reinvented the concept of a mall restaurant. Now you can shop at Wal-Mart and then walk to this contemporary steak and seafood house for dinner. Your wine vault awaits. It will cost you a mere $1,500 and will house up to 24 bottles. Vaults are prominently on display with the owner's name in big letters. And yes, several have already been sold. At first glance, Greystone seems as pricey as upscale steakhouses like Ruth's Chris. The difference is that the food isn't a la carte.

Anna Mary "Nellie" Chiapparelli, who worked alongside her husband at their well-known Little Italy restaurant and created many of its signature pasta dishes, died Sunday of congestive heart failure at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium. She was 100. Until moving to the nursing home last year, Mrs. Chiapparelli had been a lifelong resident of the Baltimore neighborhood where she and her husband opened their High Street restaurant in the 1940s. Born Anna Mary Pizza, she attended St. Leo Parochial School and married Pasquale Chiapparelli in 1924.

You might feel as if you're walking into your grandmother's house as you enter the one-story, white clapboard building. There is a casual, country feel to the Country Kettle Cafe in Poplar Springs, but the food is anything but ordinary. Owners and chefs Jim and Amy Crooks opened their cozy western Howard County restaurant a little more than a year ago after spending years looking for the right location. They have years of cooking experience at restaurants in Montgomery County, where they grew up. The couple had dreamed of owning a restaurant for some time.

SO WHAT'S a chef trained at Hyde Park's ultra-prestigious Culinary Institute of America doing in a strip mall off Route 40? Cooking some of the best food around, luckily for us. Jerry Cerand, a CIA grad who once worked for Washington's late, great McPherson Grill, has turned a corner of Ellicott City's Lotte Plaza into a sublime respite for both palate and eye. He and his fellow chef, Eric Sollohub, prepare (and often personally deliver to the table)...

Most of the decor dates from before the end of World War II. Nine tables dressed in red and white checkerboard vinyl flank the long, narrow room. Fading Italian travel posters line the walls, and at the back of the restaurant a fully stocked vintage soda cooler hums quietly.The recipe for Matthew's pizza also dates from the same era, and it's probably not about to change. It seems that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" has been the philosophy behind Matthew's tomato pies for 53 years. That's fine with me because Matthew's -- across from the defunct Patterson Theater in Highlandtown -- turns out some of the best deep-dish pies in the Baltimore area.

Warning: Vegetarians should read this at their own risk.Likewise, animal lovers.We're going to talk about animals here, the kind best served medium rare -- and the specialty of Pasadena's newest restaurant, Texas Road House. It opened last week along Mountain Road at the site of the long-closed Berger's Colonial Inn.It's a brashly masculine place, with country-western music piped fTC through the dining area, discarded peanut shells on the floor and big-game trophy heads mounted on the walls -- along with one little "jackalope" (a rabbit with antlers)

Many people probably have driven by the Wild Orchid Cafe on Bay Ridge Avenue in Eastport without glancing twice at the inconspicuous, single-family house in which it's located, much less stopping in for a visit.I strongly urge stopping by -- for dinner, lunch, brunch, dessert or afternoon coffee.A dining companion and I ate there recently and had what probably was the best meal we've had in Annapolis. We arrived shortly after 8 p.m. on a weekday without reservations and had to wait briefly before a tiny table became available in the packed dining rooms.

It was some of the best pasta in recent memory. Fettuccine in a saffron-colored cream with nuggets of lobster, shrimp and crab. The sauce was a revelation -- so light that it didn't weigh down the noodles, so delicately flavored that it didn't mask the sweet essence of seafood nestled on top.The chef behind this beautiful dish is Aniello Scotto, who along with his wife, Christa, owns Scotto's Cafe. We sampled the seafood-laden fettuccine crostacei on a Wednesday night, when Scotto's offers its prix-fixe menu for $21.95.