Branch Market Seafood and Soul Food, Temple Hills, Md.

Friday evening I met Ian downtown by his office near the White House, thinking we were going to go to the mall to do a little shopping. He wasn't in the mood for shopping, though, so he led us on to one of the 30-series buses with the goal of riding it all the way to its southern terminus, and then wandering around there to explore. The south end of the bus route turned out to the be Naylor Road Metro Station.

We walked quite a distance from the station area to the nearest big road where we found several restaurants, a motel, and several liquor stores. Interestingly, all of the restaurants were "seafood and soul food" places. I was excited, thinking we could get some good soul food cooking for dinner, but then we started looking at the places with greater scrutiny. They were all owned and operated by Asians! I guess all the Asians have left Chinatown and moved to the suburbs to cook soul food. That wasn't quite the authenticity I was hoping to get. All of the restaurants seemed to feature foods put out on a buffet steam table, though the items were accessible only by restaurant staff. After walking back and forth between the various places, I eventually selected the one I thought looked cleanest and most hygenic and with food that looked fresh.

We landed at Branch Market Seafood and Soul Food. It's a clean, bright, and well-scrubbed place that has a soul food counter on one side of the restaurant and a large seafood counter on another side. A row of three folding tables and some folding chairs ran down the center of the space. Apparently, restaurants in this part of town specialize in carry-out business, and customers are not encouraged to dine in. I chose to order from the seafood counter, since all that food was cooked to order and hadn't been setting out on a buffet table. Then, it was just a matter of making up my mind.... crab.... croaker.... crab..... croaker..... and I ended up ordering the deep fried Atlantic croaker.

Croaker is a common fish from the Chesapeake Bay, and it's most often seen in ethnic communities around D.C. and Baltimore, rather than in the high end fish restaurants, and I really don't know why that is, since croaker is a nicely flavored white fish. It's also amazingly inexpensive, too, since I got two whole, big fish plus two big servings of side dishes (dressing and macaroni and cheese) for just $9. I also ordered a side of cole slaw and a big slab of sweet potato pie. The fish was expertly fried, staying moist and tender inside and being non-greasy, cooking technique notwithstanding. I loved the densely cheesy macaroni and cheese, too. The other side dishes weren't quite to my taste, though, since they were all very sweet with added sugar. I thought the cole slaw dressing tasted like what I'm used to for potato salad. Even the sweet potato pie was too sweet for me, though I could see the place was doing a booming business in these overly-sweet side items. Oh, well, the fish was great, so that made up for it.




We were rebels and sat at the "waiting tables" to eat our food. Patrons and staff looked at us, but nobody said anything, probably figuring we just didn't know any better.