Seafood

With generous portions of the freshest seafood this side of the Atlantic Ocean, it is no wonder Johnny Mott's is popular; open nine years, the restaurant in the Cedarbrook Hill Apartments in Wyncote is a welcome haven for pleasant dining. But you have to pay close attention, for the immense menu is supplemented by perhaps a dozen daily specials, each sounding more delectable than the preceding offering. A sampling of the daily fresh seafood is brought to the table for inspection.

Even on Long Beach Island with its plethora of informal vacation restaurants, the Chandelier Shell Shack is in a class by itself. Despite lack of decor, unsophisticated service and absolutely no social graces, the restaurant nonetheless offers excellent, beautifully prepared seafood dishes that few other places can match. Chandelier, at Beach Haven Terrace, offers a frolicsome dining experience that appeals to youngsters who seem to have never before visited a real restaurant.

Here are four festivals you can chomp your way through: On Oct. 10, there's the Chincoteague Annual Oyster Festival, held at the Maddox Family Campground on Chincoteague Island, Va. Oysters, of course, head the menu (raw, steamed and fried and in fritters), but there is a host of other goodies, too. A ticket costs $17, which entitles you to eat to your heart's content. For information, tickets and directions, contact the Chincoteague Chamber of Commerce, Box 258, Chincoteague, Va. 23336; 804-336-6161.

Despite its ordinary cuisine, the new Sea Grill in Avalon is one of the shore's most attractive restaurants. Open since early June, the Sea Grill is in a startlingly beautiful new building just around the corner from the venerable Princeton Grill. The expensive decor alone is worth a visit. The airy, beautifully landscaped place is an interesting marriage of contemporary and traditional decor. A brick walk leads to heavy wood doors with leaded-glass panes, topped by a big Palladian window; inside is a high, unfinished pine ceiling with exposed beams and duct work painted forest green.

The food cops have struck again. But after attracting the national spotlight by slamming your Chinese, Mexican and Italian eateries - and your movie popcorn - they've finally found something good for you: seafood restaurants. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nutrition watchdog group, studied 14 popular seafood dishes and platters at restaurants around the country and concluded that seafood restaurants offer abundant choices for health-conscious diners. "There are a few catches, of course, but overall, we found a lot to like at America's seafood restaurants," said Michael Jacobson, the center's executive director.

Tips for plant care as summer comes on: Feed houseplants and hanging baskets with a mild solution of fish emulsion or seaweed fertilizer. Alternatively, use an all-purpose plant food prepared at the mildest rate instructed on the container. Hanging baskets should be fed this way monthly through August. In the garden: Fertilize plants regularly, writing down the date on the container so you will remember to feed flower beds, lawns and shrubs at the correct times.

There is no pretense at Nanny's, no glittery decorative touches, no fancy table settings or elaborate treatment of guests - just some of the best seafood dishes in the region. The Huntingdon Valley restaurant has been around for about eight years, quietly dishing out high-quality cuisine made with excellent ingredients bathed in gentle sauces. An appetizer of stuffed artichoke hearts ($5.25), a harbinger of good things to come, was a generous portion of three firm artichokes crowned with creamy crab imperial studded with giant lumps of shell-free backfin crabmeat; beautifully golden-topped and touched with a garlicky butter sauce, it was a dish fit for a king.

Although the Lobster Pot and Steak House in Wawa has been around a long time, this popular restaurant has never been known for culinary excellence. Still, it you choose carefully, you can discover modest delights: The salad bar is a safe bet and some of the two dozen seafood dishes on the menu seem promising; despite its name, the restaurant serves mostly seafood. Although it is unlikely you will find anything unfamiliar on the salad bar, the ingredients are nicely fresh and crisp, and it is easy to fashion a decent salad from among iceberg lettuce, fresh spinach, plump cherry tomatoes, sliced cucumber, pickled beets, chopped egg, wonderfully fresh mushrooms, chick peas, Bermuda onions, alfalfa sprouts, black olives and store-bought croutons and bacon bits, to name most of the offerings.

From the moment it opened three weeks ago, the Hardshell Cafe has been a smashing success. Indeed, the crowds at this brightly lighted Marlton restaurant were so enormous the first night that the kitchen was unable to cope with the demand and the place had to close an hour early. Part of the reason may be the "Cherry Hill Syndrome," in which people race to become the first on their block to visit the newest restaurant. But part of the reason also may be that word got out that the Hardshell was serving very good food.

Situated on the Black Horse Pike in the hamlet of Cardiff, N.J., Tull's has been dispensing seafood to locals and travelers for eight years. But owner Harry Tull's experience goes much further back. "We've had other restaurants in Northfield, Brigantine, Margate and Vineland on and off over the past 21 years," he told me recently. Before that he was a commercial fisherman who trawled the Atlantic Coast from Nova Scotia to Cape Hatteras. Now he limits his fishing to shad and weakfish in season.

Anyone can take the road to fame and fortune. Anyone. Just ask Muhammad Shahid Nazir , a Pakistani-born fishmonger who became an overnight sensation while hawking frozen snapper and mackerel for one British pound ($1.61) at a London market. Following in the well-trodden footsteps of that adorable Canadian teen Justin Bieber , Nazir, 31, found a massive audience after a video showing him singing a catchy tune was posted on YouTube. Unlike Justin, Nazir performed not a love song, but a tune about selling fish.

As the heat of summer wears on and even the backyard grill has been abandoned, I find myself turning to an unexpected ally for nourishment and delight: my can opener. In recent years, good options for canned seafood have multiplied and a well-stocked pantry means a cool, omega-3-packed feast can be always close at hand. There was a time when canned salmon was packed with bones, skin, scales, and all. Separating the bits worth eating from the rest was, to say the least, an unappetizing chore.

MILFORD, Del. - The discovery of a military explosive prompted the evacuation of a Delaware seafood plant Friday morning, authorities said. The device was discovered at the Sea Watch International plant. Some employees were evaluated at a hospital as a precaution, but a Seawatch official said none was sickened. An explosive ordnance disposal unit from Dover Air Force Base responded to the scene, and military officials said the round tested positive for a chemical agent, which Army technical experts will work to identify.

DOES ANY foodstuff carry as much baggage for Americans as escargot or foie gras? When it comes to escargot, it can be hard to move beyond the old pop-cultural image of snail as "snob food. " Plus, for many newbies, there's a primal, knee-jerk repulsion to the animal itself or to the presentation that, when done badly, can look like boogers. And when it come to foie gras — the third rail of the food world — it's difficult to steer any discussion of fatty duck or goose liver away from the ethical or political and back toward the culinary.

Snockey's Oyster and Crab House — a Queen Village fish joint across Washington Avenue from the equally quirky Mummers Museum — turns 100 Thursday. Longevity like that is astonishing, given that a restaurant marking its 10th birthday is considered an odds-defying institution in this town. And, in this era of ever more polished menus, the fact that Snockey's is celebrating a century in business is even more improbable given its old-school menu of fish house classics like deep-fried filet of flounder, fish cakes, deviled clams, and broiled bluefish.

CAMBRIDGE, Md. - At sunset, storm clouds were gathering and a breeze blew ripples in the Choptank River as golfers finished up their rounds and a hand-in-hand couple walked out on a wildlife-viewing boardwalk. It was hard to picture this placid scene as the setting of high tension in the mid-1800s, when local heroine Harriett Tubman guided many slaves across the river on their way north to freedom. The Choptank, which empties into the Chesapeake Bay, extends north through land that at the time was populated by Quakers and other abolitionists, so it was important to the Underground Railroad.

OUR CITY sits only about 60 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, even closer to the Delaware Bay, and our river port is one of the busiest on the East Coast. While you wouldn't exactly call Philadelphia "maritime" (as one might call Baltimore), the sea certainly isn't a foreign concept. Yet, when it comes to dining, seafood is so often a struggle in this city. Why aren't there more, and better, seafood places here in Philadelphia, I often wonder? Many others seem to feel the same way, if I judge by how often I'm asked to recommend "a really good seafood place.

Fish 1234 Locust St. 215-545-9600 fishphilly.com Oyster House 1516 Sansom St. Philadelphia 215-567-7683 oysterhousephilly.com Route 6 600 N. Broad St. 215-391-4600 route6restaurant.com  

Here is an excerpt from Craig LaBan's online chat: Craig LaBan: I stopped by the Rittenhouse Market to visit the fresh seafood stand, Shore Catch, which I missed out on last weekend. They had some outstanding flounder - brought to the docks of Viking Village in Barnegat Light the day before. Fresh and meaty, I turned it into a plate of flounder francaise, with butter-roasted maitakes (from Davidson's mushrooms, next door) and creamed baby spinach from Rineer.

Inside the leaded glass windows, behind the polished walnut bar, above the original fireplace in Atlantic City's Knife & Fork is a plaque listing the establishment's founding members. When it opened in 1912, this was a private men's club, and one name on the plaque, The Commodore, would make any Boardwalk Empire fan squeal with delight. The Commodore was Louis Kuehnle, the early-20th-century powerhouse who pulled the strings of Atlantic City's shady political machine for years.