I just left logans myself and was searching the recipe. I think you are talking about the Grateful Dead drink. The waiter told me this much: Pineapple juice base, colored purplish with blue cointreau (i know I misspelled this) and red grenadine. There are 3 liquors, gin, rum and everclear. Also a little sweet and sour mix. He said there are several secret ingredients, but i don't know what they could be. I'm going to try to figure it out for New Years though! :)

My earliest restaurant memory is of having deviled crab at Gaido's Restaurant in Galveston back around 1956 or so. I make my own version of that dish today, and it is still one of my favorites. My first pizza was in Shreveport, LA, and it had shrimp on it and no cheese. I was 14 at the time and did not eat cheese, and so I loved it. I lived in San Francisco for 12 years, worked in a restaurant there, had friends who worked in restaurants there, but never had a memorable restaurant meal there - I think the restaurants in New Orleans are much better, for my taste. Almost every meal I've had in N.O. (or even in the state of Louisiana) was memorable. I also remember having great food at sidewalk cafes in Houston, like Ari's Grenouille and Maison des Crepes. I really like the Cajun/Creole influences that I found in SE Texas and southern Louisiana, and I am partial to alligator tail, although I love the sushi that I find in L.A. I liked street food in Mexico City, especially the quesadillas de huitlacoche. In Merida, I found a Lebanese/Mayan restaurant that had excellent cochinita pibil that I will never forget, and I've tried to replicate it myself with reasonable success. I had jumbo Gulf shrimp on the beach in Vera Cruz that was very memorable, although I like what I've made recently better. I think I have high expectations for restaurants, and I generally feel that there is something missing or something that could have been done better when I eat out. There are a few restaurants that I appreciate for their atmosphere/ambience, whether the food is excellent or not. That includes Nepenthe Restaurant in Big Sur, which has stunning views but mediocre food. Lars

I was a cheap date too. My mother told me to be 'kind' to a first date, who might not have a lot of money to spend. (This was during that part of ancient history where the fellow always picked up the tab.) I'd scan the prices, then order the chicken or fish that was next to the bottom in price -- then sometimes do a slow burn when the date ordered with abandon! Oh well, there was usually a second date. Jannie's comment about anchovies reminds me of one of the first times my DH asked me to dinner. We went to a restaurant in Chicago that was famous for a 'spinning salad bowl'. The waiter made a big production of preparing our salad, put it on plates and inquired if we wanted anchovies. Wanting to appear sophisticated, we both said we did. Guess what was left when they removed the salad course? (I hid mine under some lettuce.) If we are eating out I never order something I can easily make at home, or make better than most restaurants. I'm not a big eater, and I'm a slow eater. I sometimes order just a salad and an appetizer if the appetizers are substantial. Many restaurant portions are much larger than I can eat or *want* to eat. I order sauces or dressings on the side to avoid getting a whole gob of something too rich. I love dishes with just a few, quality ingredients. We seldom have a cocktail before dinner; prefer to order wine with dinner. We don't eat out often, and never at a chain restaurant unless that's the only option where we are.

I did a lot of quick research on Imperial Sauce. Just the sauce. There were far more variations of what to put in with the crab including mushrooms, which sounds foul to me. It seems from what I can gather that the recipe was invented for making palatable canned or pre-cleaned (rather than live a minute ago) lump crab. I didn't find a real origin story or recipe, but the ingredients I posted were common to almost all of them, and to the ones that didn't have any extras, like hot sauce or the celery. A couple outliers didn't have Worcestershire. All had Old Bay, other brand Old Bay, or "seafood seasoning" aka plain wrap Old Bay. OTOH, I won't ask how old you are, but Old Bay was created in 1939. I remember we had it at home in my youth, but apparently it wasn't really marketed much outside of the Chesapeake Bay area. Probably grocers who knew it from there, or whose customers requested it, brought it in. Therefore, while most of the recipes I've found seem to be from that area, it's highly likely that versions of it made outside of Maryland would have different seasoning. OTOH, being the curious type, I did a lookup (not really research) on Newberg. I found many mentions of Lobster Newberg at Delmonico's, as well as some other origin stories, but Delmonico's version of the dish seems most famous, whatever the truth of it is. One site has this recipe from the book by the chef there who tweaked it (in all likelihood, it was originally a French dish that got its name and its tweaks at Delmonico's): "Cook six lobsters each weighing about two pounds in boiling salted water for twenty-five minutes. Twelve pounds of live lobster when cooked yields from two to two and a half pounds of meat with three to four ounces of coral. When cold detach the bodies from the tails and cut the latter into slices, put them into a sautoir, each piece lying flat, and add hot clarified butter; season with salt and fry lightly on both sides without coloring; moisten to their height with good raw cream; reduce quickly to half; and then add two or three spoonfuls of Madeira wine; boil the liquid once more only, then remove and thicken with a thickening of egg yolks and raw cream. Cook without boiling, incorporating a little cayenne and butter; then arrange the pieces in a vegetable dish and pour the sauce over." It's likely that the pastry you remember was there because the patty shell itself was wildly popular back then. Thence to Julia's lobster shells. An advantage of the lobster shells is that they're free and disposable.