Cold Point Pub, in the Whole Foods at Plymouth Meeting, recently added many items to their previously small menu. I had a chance to preview it this week to try out some of their new offerings.  For those of you that don’t know, within the Whole Foods, Cold Point Pub serves six local rotating beers on tap, wine, and has over 300 bottled beers for take-out. And of course, you can eat there too. And now, there’s much more to choose from.

I love me some sweet potato fries so I definitely had to try those. But I also wanted to order the fish and chips. Instead of getting additional chips, I asked them to hold the extra chips. These sweet potato fries are great! There’s actually a mix of regular ones and salted ones, so with the sweet potatoes, you get some that are a little salty, and some that are just sweet. It’s a nice mix. The fish came out nice and hot! It’s a nice quality turbot fish but the batter was a bit too greasy for me. It comes with a nice homemade remoulade for dipping. There’s also some zesty slaw that I absolutely loved and devoured.
I’m a bit of a mac and cheese addict, so I had to try that! As with their takeout stuff, this mac and cheese was great. It was rich but a nice and mild dish, without a sharp taste, which is what I prefer. It’s a nice and creamy mac. It was supposed to have a breadcrumb topping, but for whatever it did not. With that, it would have been even better, but it was already pretty great.
I got the apple pie a la mode for dessert. Look at this presentation! It’s gorgeous! It’s a little mini individual pie, that’s placed on top of a slathering of what I think is dulce de leche. It’s sprinkled with cinnamon, topped with vanilla bean ice cream, and has an almond cookie thing on top (I have no idea what those things are called). This was a rather decadent apple pie! It tasted great, and the dulce de leche was a nice and luxurious touch, but I would have loved having some more apples in the pie. It was a little shy on the apple side! The variety on the new menu is great, for young and old. This mini pub is a nice and casual option, and you get plenty of food for the buck. And don’t forget, you could always go on the roof for the tacos!

I’d never gotten to try little fish at their old location, but have been wanting to go to the new one for awhile. So finally, I went! Oh, this was right after my camera met a wet death, so unfortunately, all these photos are going to be a terribly lit and grainy cell phone camera mess. Trust me, all the food looks tremendous in person. But the place does have incredibly low “romantic” style lighting, so it’s not all the cell phone’s fault! As you can guess by the name, it’s all about fish and seafood here. The menu is small and changing.
The place is teeny tiny. You must make a reservation. Those of you who’ve been to salt & pepper in their original location know how tiny it is. It was also ungodly hot out, and they don’t exactly have what I’d call ideal climate control. And we were sat at the table furthest back and closest to the kitchen. It all made for a warm evening. The old couple next to us, they had one of those fake ice gel packs that you put in coolers and lunch boxes and what not, and they were using it to cool their laps and handing it back and forth to each other during their meal. What a brilliant freakin idea! I wasn’t being super nosy or anything, it’s just that the tables are close, I couldn’t help but notice! Ok, onto the food. I was pretty starving so I was so happy when they brought the bread around. The bread itself is delicious, nice and crusty, but I absolutely fell for their herby pesto vinaigrette type thing they give you for dipping. It was super zesty and perfect for soaking up with the bread.
Here’s the beet salad! It had both red and golden beets plus fennel, sliced radish, creme fraiche, and pistachio. This thing was excellent! Especially because I love me some beets. And even if you don’t like beets, you should try it anyway! The most surprising bit of this was that the crushed pistachio nuts were in the creme fraiche, so that it was smooth and crunchy at the same time. I was facing the kitchen, so I had some extra fun watching the chefs prepare the food. As I’ve said in the past, I love open kitchens because it’s like dinner and a show!
Here is the skate. It’s a pretty enormous helping of pan fried skate with polenta cakes, corn, chanterelles, pancetta, cherry tomatoes, and what I think is some cucumber thing at the top. This was definitely a winner. Now listen up. If you don’t like a fish that is actually fishy, then don’t get this skate. It definitely has a “I’m from the ocean” taste and smell to it, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, and it’s cooked perfectly. And everything else on the plate was also delicious.
Here is my striped bass dish. There are two honkin pieces of perfectly cooked striped bass, topped onto potato zucchini hash, all sitting in a giant bowl of coconut curry broth swimming with mussels. It was also topped with some kind of tomato based relish stuff on top, which was amazing. Everything was so good! And may I repeat, the fish was perfectly cooked. There’s certainly no undoneness at all, but there’s absolutely nothing overcooked here either. It’s just right. I loved the hash, which was a mix of extremely thinly sliced potato and zucchini. It looked like that fancy ratatouille from that Ratatouille movie. And I don’t even like stuff made with coconut milk most of the time, but I loved this thick broth, which was rich and creamy. These entree portions were nothing to scoff at, there was plenty! This place totally lived up to my expectations, and then some. Service was quite good. I can’t wait to go back, especially for their sunday prix fixe!

What was supposed to be a nice and leisurely camping trip to the beaches of delaware ended up becoming death-defying and the most expensive camping trip I’ve ever had. You see, one should not walk on slippery jetty rocks with $2 old navy flip-flops. If one does that, they are sure to fall into the ocean and almost lose their life. I left alive, but badly dinged and scratched up. What did not live were my camera (bye bye canon sd1000) and my barely 8-month old android phone (bye bye htc aria). It certainly gave me an excuse to buy a new camera (hello canon s95) and go back to my old phone (hello crappy blackberry curve) but really, this $30 camping trip did not have to end up costing me an arm and a leg for new gadgets. The whole point of the trip was to eat crabs, so after administering first aid to myself, we headed over to Ed’s Chicken & Crabs in Dewey Beach. It’s pretty much a shack with outdoor seating, so you go up to the window and order. Then you grab a table, some paper towels, and get to tearing some shit up.
I wasn’t necessarily up for cracking open a whole bunch of blue crab, so we cheated and just got a mixed seafood platter and a couple of the crabs. It takes a lot of effort to eat blue crabs, and I was a bit sore and dejected from defying death, so I thought I could handle just one. The platter had steamed shrimp, scallops, different crab legs, and lobster tail. This platter wasn’t anything particularly exciting, but I enjoyed it. You also get some cole slaw and a roll and easily, some of the best corn-on-the-cob you’ve ever had. I absolutely love the corn from Ed’s. I don’t know what they do to it, sprinkle it with meth dust or whatever, but it’s just the damn best. The whole blue crab were good too, even though they’re manually intensive to eat. Sometimes, you gotta do some work for your food! Gosh I love crab season!