Seafood

A fresh round of developments has reopened a favorite subject of speculation, chatter and argument in Annapolis: the future of Market House, all fixed up with a new roof but still a blank, boarded-up space on the bustling City Dock this summer. City officials confirmed last week that Dean & DeLuca, the New York gourmet grocer that was signed up with much fanfare to run the 146-year-old landmark, had backed out of a deal to set up shop there. Annapolis Seafood reached an independent agreement with Dean & DeLuca to become the main Market House operator.

When I reviewed Towne Hall in Greenspring Station earlier this year, I said its food was good but it was noisier than any new restaurant I had ever complained about. I would have bet my firstborn it couldn't get any louder. Then I heard the restaurant was going to start serving hard-shell crabs. The name changed to the City Crab & Seafood Company, and I assumed it was now a crab house, filled with banging mallets. If so, they would have had to drag me back kicking and screaming. Well, I was wrong.

Sometimes being part of a chain is a good thing. I feel guilty saying that, given how much I like independent eating places, but it's nice to see a new restaurant hit the ground running. Six weeks or so after Pier 4 Kitchen + Bar opened next to the National Aquarium, things are going remarkably smoothly. I imagine it doesn't hurt that its parent company, the Chicago-based Restaurant Development Group, has opened 36 other restaurants nationwide, with various concepts. The concept of this one is pretty simple: seafood and bar food.

A fresh round of developments has reopened a favorite subject of speculation, chatter and argument in Annapolis: the future of Market House, all fixed up with a new roof but still a blank, boarded-up space on the bustling City Dock this summer. City officials confirmed last week that Dean & DeLuca, the New York gourmet grocer that was signed up with much fanfare to run the 146-year-old landmark, had backed out of a deal to set up shop there. Annapolis Seafood reached an independent agreement with Dean & DeLuca to become the main Market House operator.

Tiptoeing on eggshells, are you? In these dieting days of early January, total victory over vice still seems possible, but you're already wary of the R-word. (Hint: It rhymes with dissolution.) I won't eat this. ... I won't drink that. Fine. Flagellate away. But while you're at it, remember: You can resolve to eat differently, not only less. It's possible to add, not just subtract. With this in mind, here are a few tasty tips from chefs, culinary experts and other gourmands about foods that are brand-new, newly popular or that you'll be hearing more about in 2006.

Phillips, perhaps the most famous purveyor of Maryland crab cakes, has grand ambitions to hook millions of airport travelers across America on this culinary wonder. The company hopes to place as many as 500 fast crab cake restaurants in airports and other high- traffic locations over the next 10 years. If the expansion plan works, it would require significant growth at Phillips Foods Inc.'s South Baltimore plant, which currently employs 250 people. And city tourism officials are salivating at the possibility of the crab shops showcasing Baltimore and Maryland in an array of new locations that are currently, sadly crabless.

With only a few months until summer, employers and legislators in Maryland and elsewhere are scrambling to avert what they say could be a labor crisis for the seafood, landscaping and tourism industries. The problem stems from a limit on how many seasonal workers are allowed into the United States under a federal visa known as H2B. The program lets 66,000 workers into the country each year for temporary jobs in non-agricultural industries. Though many more foreign workers enter the country under different visa categories - including students, computer specialists, surgeons and fruit pickers - it is the H2B program that has left many East Coast businesses wondering whether they will survive the coming season.

Walk into any Maryland seafood restaurant this time of year and you're bound to hear a concert of crackers breaking and soup spoons clanging. This duet of culinary sounds means one thing: Chowder's on! From bustling Baltimore to quaint Smith Island and all shoreline towns and fishing communities in between, people here have relied on the Chesapeake Bay and its vast waterways to supply fresh fish and shellfish for hearty pots of old-fashioned chowder during the cold winter months. Recipes for rockfish, clam, oyster, blue-crab or a combination seafood chowder are plentiful in the bay region.

Let the bickering continue. As the storied Market House has remained closed over the summer, some Annapolis city council members have turned up the heat in criticizing Mayor Ellen O. Moyer over her handling of the bidding on the prized retail space. The frustration boiled over briefly Monday night at the city council meeting, but subsided long enough for members to unanimously vote to release Annapolis Seafood Co. from its deal to take control of the 146-year-old city-owned building by the City Dock.

If I had to characterize 1998 from a critic's point of view, it would be the Year of the Seafood Restaurant. Conventional wisdom has had it in the past that Baltimore, home of wonderful crab houses, didn't really have one great seafood restaurant. Maybe "great" is too strong a word to describe the new crop that opened in '98, but at least they're good and have lots of potential.Downtown Baltimore got its version of Boston's Legal Sea Foods in September. Earlier in the year, McCormick & Schmick's arrived in the Inner Harbor.