THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 23, 1995 TAG: 9511180340
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: On The Town
SOURCE: Sam Martinette
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
Although it's at least five weeks before I'll start my holiday shopping, those of you better organized than I might consider two potential gifts that involve food.
Hampton Roads is blessed with great seafood, from blue crabs to oysters, and a great variety of finned creatures swimming right off our shores, including tuna, cobia, flounder, spot, croaker, sea bass, even blow toad. Those not fortunate enough to live on our coast can have their own clambake at home with a Phillips Clam Bake for Two shipped overnight from Baltimore, the home of Phillips Harborplace - the company's flagship restaurant - to anywhere in the United States.
The canister it comes in serves as a stove-top pot for steaming two whole Maine lobsters (a pound to a pound-and-a-half each), a half-pound of spiced shrimp, 18 mussels, 10 clams, two ears of corn and six baby red potatoes. The package arrives packed in ice, with cooking instructions, mallets and lobster bibs. Punch some holes in the canister (take out the ice pack, mallets and bibs, of course), and you're in business. The Clam Bake costs $50 to $60, plus tax and shipping.
Phillips spokesperson Honey Konicoff explained the price variation.
``It all depends on time of year and the market price of seafood,'' she said by phone from Baltimore. ``During summer, seafood is more abundant and cheaper.''
Konicoff said the Clam Bake is one of the most popular items shipped by Phillips Seafood Across America, the restaurant's mail-order arm.
``We actually ship any kind of fresh seafood every day,'' she explained. ``But the Clam Bake is the most popular.''
Even folks on the West Coast order seafood from Baltimore.
``Barry Levinson, the movie director who grew up in Baltimore, often sends the Clam Bake to his Hollywood friends during the holidays,'' Konicoff said. ``We have shipped it to some very recognizable faces.
``We get calls throughout the year from what we call `Chesapeake Bay transplants,' people who grew up here and have moved away. But the majority of Clam Bakes are shipped during the Christmas holidays.''
Other seafood combinations available for shipping include an Alaskan King Crab Dinner, consisting of 2 pounds of King Crab, 12 mussels, a pound of shrimp and a half-dozen red potatoes. You also can ship crab bisque, vegetable crab soup, crab cakes and a variety of fresh fish fillets. For information on shipping the Clam Bake or other seafood products, call 1-800-782-CRAB. By the way, the Clam Bake sells for $59.95 currently, if you pick it up at Phillips' Waterside.
Another timely gift idea of note is the Entertainment '96 book, on sale through a number of nonprofit groups in Norfolk. In its 35th year, the book is published in more than 120 cities in the United States and Canada, and has European editions in London, Paris, Stockholm and other cities, as well as an Australian and a Latin American edition.
The book costs $35 if you buy it from a business or a group selling it to benefit a worthy cause. You'll find discount coupons for everything from Tides and Virginia Symphony tickets to gourmet dining at two-for-one prices and discounts on fast food.
This is how it works: If you buy the book at The Jewel Box on Granby Street in downtown Norfolk, part of the proceeds will go to Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters. Buy it at the Jackson Hewitt location at Wards Corner, and the Cancer Society will benefit. Hirschler's Shoes is selling it for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. At the YMCA downtown, the book is sold on behalf of the Response Crisis Center. The Colley Discount Pharmacy is selling the book, and proceeds to to the B'nai Brith Women.
Among the Norfolk organizations selling Entertainment '96 are: the CHKD gift shop, the Norfolk SPCA, Christ the King School's Athletic Department, Norfolk Collegiate Lower School, Granby High's swim team, Norfolk Christian High School's junior class, Temple Israel Sisterhood, Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church. Also: Holy Trinity School, the Icelandic American Association, St. Mary's Children's Home, the Mended Hearts Association, the Friends of EVMS (at the campus bookstore), the Northside Middle School Pizazz Dance Team, Booker T. Washington's Challenge Club and DECA, the Maury High Spanish Club, the Governor's School for the Arts, DePaul Hospital's Gerontology Department, and the Association of Operating Room Nurses at DePaul.
For information on the book, or to get your organization involved, call 473-8668. by CNB