Ned! WTF?!?!?

So last night, I was on the way home with my GF who helped me and my siblings take a picture together to give to my mom as a mother’s day gift, and then picking up a new rug for the living room at Building 19 3/4 – yes, it was actually a spur of the moment stop and impulse buy, but it looks really good in the living room, I will post a picture in another blog or in my pictures at some point.

So prior to that stop we were cruising homeward bound and we were hungry, so we were trying to figure out where to go…

First, we ruled out fast food and pizza places for the obvious reason, then we ruled out a chain because that just wasn’t worth it and she wasn’t in the mood for chinese or japanese etc, so those were ruled out, however we had one last resort option if we couldn’t find someplace, and that was Chipotle, which is both a chain and sorta fast food, but it gets an exemption, tough to explain but it is just different so it gets one.

So we were cruising up RT 1 and seeing what is around and we finally get to RT1/128/95 and realize we have 2 options, Joe’s American Bar and Grill(technically a chain but not a big one so it is exempt) or Finz which is a semi local seafood sorta chain place, there are more than one of them anyway.

So we decide on Finz and make our way over there, it was only about 5:30 so we were pretty much still in old person time which is fine by me since it meant easy to get in and get a table and not too much noise, and yes, there were many an old person in there at the time.

I started off with a sour apple martini which was really good, we got some fresh rolls which were really warm and just plain awesome. Then we had the crispy calamari for an appetizer. WOW, that was the most tender and well made calamari I have ever had, it was crisp on the outside with a light flaky batter which had flavor but not so much as to overwhelm the flavor of the calamari, and the inside was soft and the furthest thing from rubbery you can imagine, it was perfectly cooked. The marinara and garlic butter dipping sauces were great compliments to it as well.

I chose the pan seared scallops with a cider reduction, with bacon whipped potatoes on the side. I was supposed to get a roasted corn and mushroom ragout, but I swapped it out for the much simpler asparagus spears. This dish was FANTASTIC, the scallops were fresh, perfectly cooked and the cider reduction complimented it perfectly. The potatoes were great and while there were no chunks of bacon, you could really taste the bacon in them, I am guessing they had bacon fat added to them for the flavor.

She had the pan seared shrimp wrapped in prosciutto, with pesto Israeli cous cous, and those were delicious as well, nicely cooked and the flavors mixed really well together.

THEN, we had dessert too to make it a perfectly decadent night, we got a square of chocolate marshmallow cheesecake which was absolutely divine, the layer of fudge-like chocolate on the top could have been sliced to about half thickness since it was a bit over powering, but man, even with that, the marshmallow flavored cheesecake center with the graham cracker crust was to die for, and glad we split it because I never would have been able to eat it myself, just too big.

I have eaten up at the one in Salem before, and I know at least one of you has as well, although you may just drink there, not sure exactly. While this one is not on the ocean, the atmosphere is great and the food just plain awesome. Definitely will be back at some point, but not too often since it can be a bit pricey, but definitely worth it if you want a nice, quiet, quality meal to treat yourself with your $$.