Blu Seafood and the Mussel Thief

I've lamented in the past about the quality of the camera on the Treo 700p as compared to the Treo 650. Well, complaining is silly in this case, because I've finally played with my Canon SD500 camera enough to figure out how to get semi-great food shots in a restaurant setting, without flash. All I need is the macro setting and ISO 200.

I hadn't read any reviews of Blu Seafood and Bar, which opened on 9th Street about a week and a half ago, so I had to try it out. The decor is much brighter and cleaner looking than the recently departed Grasshopper was. The service was very friendly and excellent. I decided to order the fried calamari appetizer and a salad.

First we tried their bread, which was delicious. This was actually our second serving.

The calamari was good. It wasn't the best I've ever eaten, but it was pretty good. It was served with lemon mayo, but I liked it better plain. I'm actually quite fond of Rockfish's calamari, which is surprising given that it's a chain. I would be interested to know where local readers prefer to get calamari around here.

This was a great salad and it was much larger than it looks. It had tomatoes, shredded cucumbers, feta, onions, salad greens, small pieces of pita and a lemon-mint vinaigrette. I'm actually not a big fan of salads, but I enjoyed this tremendously and would happily order it again.

In fact, I would probably just order the salad. Since I erred on the side of ordering too much, I didn't have room for dessert. They had chocolate fondue for two, for $12. I love chocolate fondue.

Here's a picture of my father's order of paella. I was getting carried away taking high-resolution food photos and I thought the presentation was particularly nice. He would have preferred that it had more shrimp and fewer bivalves, but I would have liked it as-is and managed to steal a mussel.