L & N Seafood Grill, Arlington, VA

While we were at the mall (Fashion Centre at Pentagon City) today, we had a late lunch at L & N Seafood Grill, up on the third retail level. It's surprisingly good for a chain restaurant, and the prices were reasonable for a seafood place. Leo started with the mussels and then had shrimp creole for his main course. The bowl of mussels was huge! It must have been one of those appetizers designed to serve two. His shrimp creole was also an ample serving, and he said it was good, even though he's never been to New Orleans and had no basis of comparison.

I had some Maryland crab soup, a dinner salad, some crab-stuffed mushrooms, and a Boston cream cheesecake. The crab soup was excellent, though I thought it odd that when it arrived, it had a little "skin" on the top. The mushrooms were ok—I think I would have given the filling a bit more cayenne pepper to zip it up a bit. I really really liked the dessert. The Boston cream cheesecake is based on the concept of Boston cream pie, which you probably know isn't a pie but a yellow layer cake with vanilla pudding between the layers and chocolate frosting all around the outside. Here, the middle layer between thin layers of yellow cake was a tasty cheesecake, and they still had the vanilla pudding and chocolate frosting, and a couple of big squirts of whipped cream.

Too bad we were lunching and not dining.....they had green, fish-shaped bottles of Pescevino (that's Italian for fish-wine) white wine all over the bar, and we were curious about trying it. Maybe some time for dinner.