July 15 & 16, 2009 Red Bank to Newport, RI to Hyannis, MA

After a really nice stay in Red Bank, we took off for New England. It’s almost anniversary time! Before getting to Boston on Friday to celebrate, we drove to Newport, RI. This picture is from the Rockefeller Overlook along the Palisades Parkway.

For lunch we stopped in New Canaan, CT. I don’t want to appear to be a complainer so I am not going to write about it. But it was dangerously bad.

John writing now. (I do not complain, I just review things.)

We get off the beautiful Merritt Parkway and head into New Canaan CT.  We find a nice looking restaurant called Aloi (turns out to be the name of the chef/owner).  I order a grilled calamari salad, Mary orders linguine with clams.  Favorite foods, yay.  Out comes some toasted bread and foccaccia along with a delicious cannellini bean concoction.  Our hopes rise.

The grilled calamari salad is cooked perfectly and tastes delicious.

The linguine vongole is a different story.   The clams are served in the shell (fine, that’s the way we ate them in Italy), but many of these appear to have broken during cooking.  Well, OK, Mary removes a many large chunks of shell and proceeds.  She also avoids an unopened clam curiously nestled in an opened one– aargh!  But the final straw is a smaller fragment of shell, that if not caught, could have caused some pretty serious trouble.  Rather than continue to fight with the dish, Mary wisely stops.

The waitstaff are unconcerned when we mention this issue.  Needing to get on the road, and thankfully both still alive, we pay and leave.  Too bad, because the flavors were wonderful.  Whoever was at the pass in the kitchen that day was either asleep at the switch or dangerously negligent.  DINE HERE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

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