It's been very nearly a year since I've written here, and I have been twitching about it. We'll see if I pick it back up regularly again, but here is at least something to get this bug out of my system. We just took a trip to, as you likely guessed, Ocean City, Maryland. I took a trip there when I was 12, as pictured over there. We brought Beth there when she would have been around seven months old. And now we took Norah there was just just short of a year. It was the first time all three of us saw the ocean. On the same trip we took Beth, I'm also pretty confident it was the first time my brother- and sister-in-law saw the ocean, too. None of that really directly relates to the rest of this article, but it at least gives an idea of why this place. If my Aunt Helen hadn't run off to Maryland long before I was born, probably none of this would have happened. Today, I thought I would revisit one of my last pieces of writing a do a bit of culinary review of our latest trip. You can click all the pictures to zoom. THE CRAB BAG This was our first night in Maryland. I guess this is as good a place as any to air my frustrations with crab. I like crab. I like it quite a bit. But it is such a labor-intensive food. So often, it's just so much effort for so little meat. And it is not uncommon to find yourself stabbed or pinched while trying to work out all the shell. I like crab, but it isn't really what I would call enjoyable to eat. Still, you're in Maryland, you're supposed to eat at least some crab. Now, back to this place in particular. When you're in a tourist spot, you expect to pay tourist prices. That wasn't a surprise. But this place did seem particularly proud of their stuff, even beyond the normal inflation you'd expect. It took me a minute to deal with the sticker shock here. I ordered a crab cake, because, again, Maryland. It was very good, though a bit more breaded than the menu would have lead me to believe. The cornbread I got as a side was very good, but the potato salad they had as a special was not. I definitely was not expecting it to be warm, and it wasn't a good surprise. Beth got crab mac and cheese, which she liked the mac and cheese but not her crab. She did, however, really like Kristine's crab. This is where the labor intensive part comes back in. Kristine ordered some version of their steam pot, and I think she liked the taste of what she got quite a bit, but she got pretty tired and frustrated of cracking and bashing all her food just to get little bits of crab. It reminded me a little bit of when they would serve steak and crab legs at Wabash on Friday nights (because hardly anybody stayed around for that dinner service), but they didn't give us anything to deal with the crab legs. They did give Kristine a cracker and a mallet, but I think she still was just over the effort it took to actually eat something. I guess I should also note that this was the first time I tried Natty Boh. I liked it quite a bit. I really reminded me strongly of Old Style, and I am a fan of Old Style. BULL ON THE BEACH This place (at least the one we went to) was right by our hotel, and was almost the only reason we decided to check it out. I think we both came into this one expecting to be underwhelmed. Instead, I think this ended up being our favorite place of the whole trip. We liked it well enough that we actually went back to it as our last meal in Ocean City before we headed back into the airport and the whole mess that Philadelphia ended up becoming.* *A story for another time. Other than location, the big reason we chose this place was it supposed to have good oysters. When we went to Crab Bag, we were told their one guy that does oysters was off that day, to which Kristine just about cried over. What Kristine really wanted was some specialty-topped cooked oysters like we get in Panama City Beach at Shuckums and not really coming up with any places that do that. Bull on the Beach, though, had some clams done in that style, and their oysters were well-rated on Google, so we gave it a try. They were very good, and Beth was a big fan of them, too. Norah liked playing with the shells, so that was nice, too. All of that said, these were clams, not oysters. So, we had to order some oysters as well. We decided to do steamed rather than raw. And, well, they were the single best thing I ate the whole trip. You can see we had both drawn butter and cocktail sauce. The cocktail sauce was good, but these really did not need anything more than a dunk in the butter. I could have very easily eaten a few dozen of these and been perfectly happy. I'm actually making myself hungry typing this right now. Beth was not a fan of these at all, but that was just fine. I wasn't too keen on sharing these anyway. Kristine must have been pretty impressed with the oysters, because she ordered the fried oysters as her entree both trips. I tried one during the first trip, and it was very good. Very juicy, very meaty. It definitely seemed as if they held back their biggest oysters to fry up, and came out to very good effect. I don't remember a lot of commentary about the sides here, just about how good the oysters were. Which I suppose is a success, but it does make it a little more difficult to write about here. I think I tried the coleslaw and thought it was pretty good, which is rare. I've found I'm pickier than I realized about restaurant coleslaw, but this one passed. I had blackened rockfish per the recommendation of the waitress. Broiled was option as well, and I probably should have taken it. In fact, I know I should have taken it, because that's what I ordered during the second trip, and I was a much bigger fan of that. There was nothing really wrong with the blackened fish necessarily, but I'm not typically a big fan of blackened anything. I get a bitter, burned taste to it that I'm not a fan of, which happened here. I don't think that's the restaurant's fault, though. I knew that about myself and I ordered it anyway, so that's on me. And, again, it was still good. But the broiled was more to my liking. As far as sides were concerned, the Old Bay corn was pretty good. The mashed potatoes were really not. Very gluey tasting. That one is on the restaurant. Something we also noticed on just about every menu we looked at was Maryland Crab Soup. This was the first place we tried it, and and I think both Kristine and I thought was okay. It tasted a lot like vegetable beef soup, just with crab instead of beef. Good, but nothing to really write home about. Beth thought it was one of the best things she had ever eaten, though, which was just fine with us. She has always loved soup of any kind, as soon as she could eat table food. So that streak remains. She also had a fried shrimp basket for her meal, and she was very happy with that as well. LIZZIE'S CAFE & BISTRO Unfortunately, we forgot to get pictures of this one, but we ordered lobster rolls to go from here and ate them back at the hotel room. This turned into a bit of an ordeal. We made our order online, and the email I got confirmed it had me get there about fifteen minutes later. We put it in as a curbside order, and I pulled in right on time and called the number they gave me. A lady (who sounded slightly older) answered the phone and seemed completely baffled at everything that was going on. She eventually put the phone down to go find somebody, and I never heard from her again. A while later, I heard a man yell out in the background "Is somebody on the phone?" After which he picked up and started talking to me, and I started over with him. His response was "What a family-owned nightmare" and off he went to find our ticket. He was able to find it, but it turned out nobody had actually done anything with it. He was super apologetic about it, and I told him I had nowhere else to be and to go ahead and a make the order. When it came out, he wouldn't even let me bring the bags in through the window, he put them in the passenger seat himself after I gave him the okay to open the door. It was very good service, probably more than they needed to do for a pretty easily fixed mistake, but I appreciated it. As far as the food was concerned, they they three different types of rolls, so we tried all of them. There was a New England roll, which had a little extra dressing on it with some celery, herbs, and mayo. The Connecticut roll had nothing but lobster and butter. And then there was a crab roll, because Maryland. I think Kristine and I were in agreement that the New England was the weakest of the three. The lobster was good enough that it just didn't need all the extra. It was very hard to pick between the other two. They were both excellent. I may give the nod to the crab roll just for the creativity, but I could have eaten quite a few of the Connecticut rolls. We also tried the crab soup here, and we all thought it was pretty eh. Even Beth. It didn't really affect the meal, though. The rolls were all the star this place needed. I do still think the lobster rolls we got in Utah were a little better than this,* but I came away with absolutely no complaints. *Somehow. I still don't know how they made those lobster rolls so damned good up there in the mountains. BLUE FISH The next day for lunch, Kristine decided she wanted some sushi. As luck would have it, this place was right across the street from Bull on the Beach. So we walked over, and immediately had some confusion. Google told us the place opened at 11, which is when we went over. The door told us it opened at 1. We started to try to make some other plans, but then somebody came out and waved us in, letting us know they were, indeed, open. This place had both a sushi menu and a Chinese menu. We got Beth beef and broccoli, which was actually pretty good. I don't think we got a picture of it. We ordered three rolls and several pieces of nigiri. The nigiri and mega lobster roll were all very good, though I don't actually have a lot to say about them. They were about what you would expect from good sushi. The other two rolls, the Long Island and Alec rolls, if I remember right, I thought were a bit bland. I was a bit let down with those. The Alec roll was apparently thought up by a former chef at the place and incorporated some crab. I was expecting more out of that one. The Long Island had mango in it, which I'm not the biggest mango fan. I knew it could work in sushi, though, thanks to our trip to the Bahamas. All that said, I really didn't even taste the mango, which was disappointing, because I didn't really taste anything else, either. Since I don't have much more to say about these, I'll just give you the pictures below instead of interspersing them. MARINA DECK On our last night here, we decided to check out this place down on the water. The service here wasn't great, our waiter just seemed to disappear for long stretches. And the Sprite had no syrup in it, and it took a very long time to get that replaced, or for us to even be told it would be replaced. He also talked very low, and Kristine had a hard time hearing him at all. But, enough about the negatives. The view here was very nice, which can see here of our picture of Norah, which is all we actually got of this place. They also had a play-set set up for kid right about Beth's age, so that was a big hit while we waited on our food. While Beth mostly got her wiggles out in the water on this trip, this was a good chance for her to get tired out before bed and a bit of a break for us. She also ordered a hot dog for her meal, and we couldn't talk her out of it, so that's about all there is to say about that. It was, at least, a big, substantial hot dog and not a skinny little Oscar Mayer thing. We ordered some more steamed oysters for our appetizer, and they were good. Not as good as Bull on the Beach, but they were perfectly find and a bit cheaper. For entrees, Kristine got crab legs, which again were very good, but about what you would expect. I ordered some soft-shell crab, which was the first time I had ever had them. Remember all the complaints I had about crab earlier? I learned that soft-shell crab was exactly what I had been looking for. No worrying about cracking anything, no feeling like there was meat you were just never going to get to. Just go for it and eat the whole damn thing. And they were delicious. Now, Norah had decided she was getting very tired at this point, so I was holding her while trying to figure out exactly how to attack these crabs. I'm not sure I got it quite right, but I ended up quartering them and then eating them, and that seemed to work well enough. I don't remember what Kristine got as her sides, but I got garlic mashed potatoes (which were much better than Bull on the Beach's potatoes) and some green beans, which were surprisingly good. One other item I almost forgot! We also ordered a bowl of the "Award Winning" cream of crab soup. And let me tell you, I believe that one won an award. I can't believe I almost let it slip my mind, because I think it was the best thing we ate at Marina Deck, even as good as the soft-shell crab was. It was a great trip for several reasons. Getting the girls in the water so much, a couple trips to the boardwalk (where Beth cleaned up on arcade games), just getting a chance to relax for a bit. As a bit of an end note, we ended up staying at the Princess Royale almost solely because all the hotels on the boardwalk were sold out. I was a bit bummed out about this at first, but it ended up being a great place for us. Almost all the rooms were suites, and the extra room was very nice with Norah. Having the kitchenette was nice for keeping a few snacks and drinks on hand, and Beth absolutely loved the balcony overlooking the pool. It was a little bit of a drive to get down to the boardwalk, but Beth liked being in the rental car, so that was all right. And, as you saw, one of the biggest things for me on any trip is finding some interesting food and restaurants to try, and OCMD came through for us very nicely. |
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