Hell Point Seafood

Food always tastes better outside, whether it's under a baseball awning or a lunch only separated by a bay with a small pane of glass. I've found too, that foods taste a bit better when its consumer is sunburned. Maybe more encompassing of an assessment, more robustly founded in fact, is that food eaten on a three-day Memorial Day weekend inherently tastes better when the hope of summer is right behind it.

As an al fresco preface to yesterday's top 100 foray, I had my first two hot dogs of summer at my first Nationals game ever yesterday. The food/love nexus is no more evident than at a baseball stadium where America's sports and culinary past times are on full display: baseball, beer, and dogs (and bellies).


And in all seriousness, few things taste as good as a shrivelled up hot dog with char marks, a fresh, cool bun, and excessive amounts of yellow mustard. I'm getting my mini season tickets soon (really).


So, it was a bit of a change to not unwrap yesterday's lunch or use my drink as an ad hoc air conditioner (I may have wiped beer cup/bottle condensation on my arms to keep them cool at the stadium). My friend Dotti and I made the trip up to Annapolis, Maryland to sample Hell Point Seafood and inquire into how it would also be possible to own waterfront property and acquire a boat. Before investigating the glories of yacht and wraparound porch ownership, we settled in for a glass of wine on their enclosed dining room overlooking the marina.

And what a pretty dining room it was: natural light, partially reflecting off of sailboat masts, bathes the white tablecloths and cruising boats (on the water) and families/couples (in the parking lot below) made for exceptional people watching. The restaurant is set back a bit from the throng of seemingly touristy crab places nestled among made-in-China Naval Academy trinket sellers. Also, despite the focus on shellfish in Annapolis, Hell Point ventured into fish dishes with Asian and British styles of preparation (that's right, fish and chips).

I hit the mainstays though: the shellfish sampler with clams, oysters and shrimp cocktail with summer-refreshing lemon and Tabasco and then a cup of New England seafood chowder with clams, white fish, and bacon (with of course little bits of diced potatoes).


It's easy to order at places when they are purveyors of culinary tradition, so I ordered the inescapable crab cake with fries and coleslaw. It deserved high marks for beauty, ideally toasted bun, proportional correctness, and crab consistency, but it wasn't remarkably flavorful like other crab cake iterations I have had.


Also, the coleslaw--ramen-like in its chopped-ness--was missing its dressing (the impressive camera phone close up).


After lunch, we couldn't help but follow summer tradition and have a fruity cocktail while watching the boats. That was soon followed by ice cream scooping from rowdy parlor summer employees, postcard buying on Main Street, and identifying age-appropriate military men. Not a bad way to celebrate love of country and hit #59.