Waitress

Looking for something fun to do with Mom on Mother's Day? Adrienne Shelly's Waitress, starring Keri Russell (of TV's Felicity) as a small-town Southern waitress who believes there's a pie for curing every ill society can dish up, will have a special Mother's Day screening today at 1:30 p.m. at The Rotunda Cinematheque, 711 W. 40th St. The film doesn't officially open in Baltimore until May 25, but those who take advantage of what Fox Searchlight Pictures...

HOLLYWOOD -- Keri Russell knows from typecasting. She's played a pregnant character in her last four films, including the romantic comedy Waitress, which opens this month. "I don't know what about me screams young pregnant mother," said Russell, 31, with amusement. Whatever it is, life has followed suit. The actress -- almost as famous for cutting her hair as for winning a Golden Globe for her breakthrough role on TV's Felicity -- is about to have her first child with husband Shane Deary, a carpenter she married three months ago. "I always knew I would have kids," said Russell from her apartment in New York.

I have a soft spot in my heart for wacky little restaurants, but only if the food is good. Ethel & Ramone's in Mount Washington is the example par excellence.Wackiness it has in abundance. What do I mean by wacky? I still remember years ago being brought creme fraiche in one of those plastic squeeze bottles that usually contain ketchup. At that point, the place was still a coffee bar/health-food cafe, but you could already tell that someone in the kitchen was a lover of good food.Given how Ethel & Ramone's looks, you might not believe it's a decent Cal-Ital restaurant.

"We'll Meet Again," by Mary Higgins Clark. Simon & Schuster. 314 pages. $25.Fans of Mary Higgins Clark's novels will be disappointed by her latest. "We'll Meet Again" isn't worth meeting the first time.The story is about the murder of Gary Lasch, a Connecticut physician and head of an HMO. Police find his wife Molly covered with blood, but she doesn't know how she got that way and has no memory of the events of the murder night.Molly goes to jail for the murder. When she is released five and a half years later, she remembers that someone else was in the house that night.

If you can't get downyocean this August, there's always Cafe Neon. It's the bar-restaurant that opened in Canton this spring where Portobella used to be. Even though it's on the edge of a shopping center parking lot, this pretty little cafe feels like a beach eatery. It has a fine view of the marina beyond, and potted palms wave fetchingly in the breeze.We had reserved an outdoor table, but a late-day summer thunderstorm forced us to move into the small, glassed-in dining room, which didn't have quite the same charm of the outdoor seating and was noisy besides.

When Enrique Ribadeneira opened the Latin Palace last winter, a restaurant was just part of the total package, which in-cluded a private club, game rooms, live music, salsa dancing and a tapas bar.The huge space had been a theater, a polka place and a cooking school at one time or another. Ribadeneira turned it into a Caribbean beach, as best he could in the middle of the city. The space is filled with live palms and graceful seaside murals painted by Maryland Institute, College of Art students.

Four people walking out of Noodles Corner were each carrying a takeout box, suggesting either they had ordered food to go or they could not finish all they had ordered.But, when the waitress brought us a heaping plate of Indonesian noodles -- a pile of fried rice in a silver tray full of seafood pasta -- it was clear that she would have to prepare another box for all the extra food at the end of the night.Seen from a glass atrium at the Lake View Shopping Center off Dobbin Road, Noodles Corner could be an Italian bistro or steakhouse without tablecloths.

A Denny's restaurant near Baltimore-Washington International Airport and its manager were accused in lawsuits yesterday of sexual harassment, the latest in a string of harassment and racial-discrimination allegations against restaurants in the chain.A former waitress and a former supervisor claim that the manager of the Denny's at 1365 Mellon Road in Hanover touched them in sexual ways.Each of the suits filed in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court seeks $200,000 in punitive damages and $200,000 in compensatory damages.

I was miserable over my coffee, listening to the bleached-blond waitress telling another customer about her waitress jobs and her kids and a former life or two. The other woman, in the booth beside us at the Denny's in Fallon, Nev., nodded knowingly.My head was swimming. I was overwhelmed by America.Three days out on our cross-country RV trip, and I was succumbing to the daunting vastness. I wanted to sit down with every gum-cracking waitress and ambling young gas jockey we met. I wanted to drive down all the Main Streets, smell the nuances in the air, and stare at the massive heavy skies and eat grits until I exploded.

My politically astute friend pointed out that while relations between the countries of Japan and Korea are strained at best, relations between their cuisines are booming. It is not uncommon in the Baltimore area to find Japanese sushi and sweet Korean barbecue on the same menu, as they are at Han Sung in Ellicott City.Owned by Choong Mo Kang, this spare, bright restaurant has the feeling of a luncheonette, with its tables topped in wood-grain Formica and cartons stacked in the hallway. There's little ornamentation outside of a few paper lanterns, sushi posters and a small sushi bar where Kang serves as chef.

Lois E. Pannell, a longtime waitress and animal lover, died Monday of heart failure at Northwest Hospital Center. She was 71. Mrs. Pannell retired earlier this year from Sheraton Four Points at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, where she had worked for the last 15 years. Earlier, she had worked at the now-defunct Black Pearl in Harborplace, and Westview Lounge & Supper Club in Catonsville. Lois Ellen Schwartz was born in Baltimore and raised in Forest Park.

Annie L. "Jennie" Hinton, a retired waitress and longtime active church member, died of respiratory failure April 22 at Envoy Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Sudbrook Park where she had lived since 2002. She was 91. Annie Lucinda Meachman was born and spent her early years in Palmer Springs, Va. In the early 1930s, she moved to Baltimore, where she attended city public schools. In the late 1930s, she worked as a housekeeper, and with the outbreak of World War II, worked in a Curtis Bay munitions plant.

TMZ 6 p.m. [Ch. 24] Before he immerses himself in the pool again, you never know whether Michael Phelps (right) and his Vegas cocktail waitress girlfriend might pop up on tabloid shows such as this. Once he's back training, don't expect any juicy stuff for a while.

I've rarely felt more welcomed at a restaurant than during my recent experience at Island Quizine. Seeing that we were chilly, our charming waitress hurried to us as soon as we sat down and asked if we would like a bowl of seafood chowder to warm us up while we decided what to order. It arrived on our table in a matter of seconds. Then, when we asked which was better, the jerk chicken or the stewed chicken, she brought out steaming hot samples of both, so we could decide. (We wound up ordering both.

Catherine Zarbos, a retired waitress, died of pneumonia complications Saturday at the Bel Air Health and Rehabilitation Center. The former Edgemere resident was 93. Born Catherine Zarbs in Baltimore and raised in Highlandtown, she attended Baltimore City public schools and earned her GED diploma at the age of 60. She learned cooking while her father, a Greek immigrant, owned and operated a restaurant at Sandy Point near the Bay Bridge. Many years ago she worked at the Glenn L. Martin Co. in Middle River and later was a waitress at the Cork and Bottle restaurant on Fayette Street.

It's tough to figure what you'll be seeing Sunday night on the strike-challenged Golden Globes, what with all the reconstituting that's been going on. But one thing you definitely won't see is anyone from the cast and crew of Waitress winning anything. And so far, that's the greatest injustice of the 2007 awards season. Waitress, which the late Adrienne Shelly finished just before she was slain in her Greenwich Village apartment in November 2006, was one of the most delightful films of last year.

Anna M. Spoonire, a veteran waitress who during her nearly 30-year career at the Bel-Loc Diner dispensed plenty of good cheer while filling customers' coffee cups and delivering meals, died of cancer Sunday at her Glen Burnie home. She was 70. In a 2003 interview with The Sun, Mrs. Spoonire, whose waitressing career spanned 45 years, explained her recipe for success. "You really have to like people in this job. And I like people," Mrs. Spoonire told a reporter. "But it really helps to develop a sense of humor because you see all kinds, from the people out at night after clubbing to the grouches at 6 a.m.," added Mrs. Spoonire, who always dressed in a fresh, starched white uniform, which she wore with a comfortable pair of white soft-soled shoes.

Seafood fried diavolo? Scanning the chef's specials at the shiny new Silver Moon Diner on Pulaski Highway in Middle River, I got a chuckle out of that one. Of course, the menu writer meant fra diavolo, not that the calamari, clams, shrimp and scallops in this pasta dish would be fried. I was less amused by our waitress' double-take when we ordered spanakopita. She clearly had never heard the word before and asked to see it on the menu so she could figure out how to spell it. Like many diners, the Silver Moon has a distinctly Greek sensibility, and a section of the sprawling menu is devoted to "Hellenic treasures" such as gyros, moussaka and yes, spanakopita.

For newcomers who don't know better, Raffy's seems to promise culinary disappointment. First, you notice the smell of stale smoke in the air. Then you see televisions everywhere, even embedded in the floor. Fun seems more important than food at this enormous bar and restaurant, and your waitress doesn't convince you otherwise. She recites the drink specials, even though it's barely noon, and belatedly remembers you wanted "some kind of fruit" in your club soda (a lime wedge), then still fails to bring it. Poor:]

Andy Griffith, 81 a week from tomorrow, confides that "when my wife, Cindy, and I go someplace, and I don't want to be recognized, she says, `Don't talk!'" Hearing him boom across the phone lines from his hometown of Manteo, N.C., you know what she means. Griffith's weathered face has been part of America's pop-culture Mount Rushmore for half-a-century, whether as Mayberry's comic philosopher of a sheriff or the wily cornpone lawyer Matlock. But his rich and loamy voice can open up pockets of memory like a down-home audio version of Marcel Proust's madeleine.