We Ate Like Grown-Ups

Last night my wife and I slapped on some nice clothes and hit the town, sans kids, to celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary. When you have three kids, your choice of restaurants when dining out is usually limited to Pizza Hut, McDonalds, and maybe an occasional visit to Ruby Tuesday. So last night while we left the kids at home with Grandma, Jennifer and I headed into the big city of Baltimore and took in a very fancy meal at the Robert Oliver Seafood Restaurant. I had noticed the place a few weeks ago when I was downtown for a show and noticed the fancy bubble wall in their bar (as pictured on the right) I thought that would be a cool place to take Jennifer because it was fancier than anything in the little town we live in and it looked like someplace they would have hung out at in SEX & THE CITY.

Inside the restaurant is real swanky looking. When we arrived it wasn't crowded at all. There was a party of about 8 in the back of the room and shortly after we were seated, WJZ 13 news anchor Vic Carter and his son were seated a few tables away from us. A few more people strolled in throughout the night, but all-in-all it was a very quiet evening.

The meal started off with some pita triangles and a selection of spreads; a black olive topinade, apple butter, and an eggplant spread. We both ordered a bowl of their Robert Oliver Seafood Bisque which was a very thin soup with chunks of lobster, shrimp, and crab and a touch of cream. The bites of seafood were fantastic but the soup itself was a little light and weak on flavor. I had a similar thin soup on a cruise ship once, so I assume thin soup is actually fancier than the soup of the day at Friendly's. After the soup, we shared an appetizer of miniature crab cakes. They were the real deal as you would imagine, served on Naan crackers (?) and with a thick lemon caper tartar sauce. There were three little crab cakes on the plate, I could have probably eaten 20 - 30 of them had it been a buffet!

The main course was fantastic! Jennifer had a large beef kabob made up of Spanish Onion marinated beef that was grilled and served with Persian rice and vegetables. I had the pan-seared day scallops (pictured) served on a lemon parsley risotto and a brown butter sauce with truffle oil. Nice! We both savored every bite of our delicious meals. Even though we were both pretty full, we felt we needed to try a dessert so we shared a flourless chocolate cake that was served with Mango sorbet and some sort of cream on top of the cake to give it moisture. Not bad!

Good Eats! Check it out if you've got $100 to blow on dinner! Robert Oliver Seafood is located in Baltimore at 1225 Cathedral St. (Today I had lunch at my favorite Chili Dog place in Gettysburg!)