Early in the spring I would stop by the Sandy Springs Farmers Market in hopes of finding some large, red, juicy, local tomatoes. Because of last year’s bad weather in the south good tomatoes were very hard to come by. Heavy rains, freezing weather along with an early spring snow in south Florida prevented us from getting some great tomatoes. Yeah, sure local venders had tomatoes but they were not the tomatoes I am used to.   The tomatoes were never ripe and I refused to buy and sell them at the restaurant. We went weeks without them and I probabaly pissed off some servers and  customers but I...

In the spring, my wife and I love to drive to Maryland and stop at Cantlers Riverside Inn, http://www.cantlers.com/index.shtml for fresh blue crabs and soft shell crabs. Jimmy Cantler, the owner and founder, is a native Marylander and worked as a waterman on the Chesapeake bay and in 1974 he started a restaurant dedicated to serving fresh seafood. We sit out side on the picnic tables with brown paper tablecloths, buckets of ice cold beer, old bay steamed blue crabs and plates of crisp fried soft shell crabs. As crabs grow larger, their shells cannot expand, so they molt their exteriors and have a...

I started serving Onagao about a year ago and it has turned out to be one of our most popular dishes with our guests. The light, clear, pink flesh has a high oil content which gives it a rich taste. I have prepared this several ways but I am trying to find some lighter dishes for our guests and simplicity is important to me. When creating dishes I think that it is important to concentrate on the main ingredient first. Get the best product and then second, what goes well with it. I decided to give the Onaga a little more rich flavor by making a sort of Asian glaze consisting of soy sauce, brown sugar,...