House Salad

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

You know someone has a thing for France when the length of his tie is festooned with one large, loud Eiffel Tower.Chan Tsin and his family are not just casual Francophiles. The walls of their French bakery cum Vietnamese restaurant bear certificates and plaques from prestigious Parisian cooking academies designating Tsin a proficient baker of French pastries. And his daughter, Aina, returns soon from French culinary training to don her chef's hat and begin serving French dinners at Moulin de Paris.

The unassuming Neapolitan is a restaurant with a lot of history behind it. Joe Pizza's grandparents opened it in the late '20s, a few months after Little Italy's first restaurant, the Roma, opened.Later his mother and two uncles each started their own restaurants, one of which was Chiapparelli's. In the '40s, Mr. Pizza says, he could stand on the Neapolitan's steps, look down the street and see the four restaurants his family owned. (There were seven then in little Italy.)In recent years the Neapolitan has fallen on hard times.

It's tough being a vegetarian restaurant these days.On the one hand, consumption of beef, butter, bacon and eggs is on the rise. My guess is that people are a little less into self-denial than they have been, especially when they're eating out.On the other hand, if you are a vegetarian, you can find wonderful non-meat dishes at any number of ethnic restaurants. And just about any chef at any type of restaurant these days is happy to make a vegetable platter for his customers.So I feel sorry for Sprouts, the relatively new natural foods cafe in Owings Mills.

It's not quite a trend, but there certainly seem to be more bookstore cafes in Baltimore than there used to be. Louie's, of course, is the granddaddy. I think of it as a restaurant with the books being a nice little extra. Borders is a bookstore first and foremost, then a place to have a cappuccino after some serious browsing. Adrian's Book Cafe in Fells Point falls somewhere in between.Adrian's consists of a small but well-laid-out bookstore in front and a counter and a few tables in back.

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.

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)...

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.

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.