The sights and smells of the Annapolis boat shows are tantalizing. But what called to me this year, after spending nearly two weeks at our booth in the show wasn't the marvelous pit beef sandwiches or the delicious pain killers. No, this year it was Hell Point Seafood, the tippy-top of which I could see from our booth, staring at me from just outside the show. I hadn't been there since just after its opening in the spring of 2009, and remembering its excellent food, I decided that I should go for a little end-of-show party.

So the next week, the edit staff, plus my husband John, made a date for a post-show celebration dinner at Hell Point Seafood. Upon our arrival we were led past the bar, upstairs to the main dining room--an elegantly appointed, fully enclosed dining room with a full set of windows overlooking Ego Alley (and the parking lot, but it's easy enough to look over that and see pretty scenery). It was warmly lit and very welcoming, its beige walls complemented by dark wood furniture and tables. 

Our server greeted us promptly and took our drink orders while we began poring over the menus. The menu changes daily and is clearly made up of  seasonal and local ingredients. And, of course, it's heavy on the seafood--with prestigious chef and owner Bob Kinkead, of Washington, D.C.'s Kinkead's, at the helm.

A celebration dinner, we'd clearly need to start off right with some appetizers and were impressed by the choices available, notably a trio of "seafood cocktails," Thai fried squid with green papaya salad and oysters on the half-shell. It was hard to pick. In the end we chose the clam "Stuffies" with chorizo and lemon, and P.E.I. mussels with yellow curry, coconut milk and lemongrass. The stuffies were Hell Point's take on a New England classic, served atop large grains of salt, they were magnificent. As were the mussels, which were plenty plump and made even more tantalizing by the curry sauce, which was slightly sweet, slightly spicy and delightfully creamy. Needless to say, the contents of our bread basket were consumed in the sopping up of this tantalizing broth.

Not content with rushing on to entrees, the four of us ordered a round of soup to keep the feast going. Tim's New England Seafood Chowder was ever so tasty and full of humongous bits of clams and other goodies. And the cream of crab soup, which Jody, John and I opted for had a nice amount of flavorful crabmeat and was super silky, enhanced by the added sherry.

Now that we were pleasantly appetized, the four of us were ready to move on to our entrees, which were arriving just as we finished our soups. Jody chose the evening's special, the New England style lobster roll sandwich, which had enormous nuggets of sweet lobster overflowing from the house-made roll. Tim had a crabcake hankering and wasn't disappointed by his two large (and largely lumpy) cakes, served with mashed potatoes and a corn relish. John ate just about every morsel of his sesame crusted rare tuna, which was accompanied by fantastic shrimp dumplings and local purple bok choy. I decided to try the fried flounder with house-made Tasso ham, all topped with shrimp and a garlic butter sauce. The fish was perfectly fried with a light crispy crust and the mild fish was elevated to new heights by the sweet, salty ham and creamy sauce. 

Though you'd think that by now we'd be full, we were still up for some dessert. We shared three: Jody chose the sweet and creamy coconut lime cheesecake, complete with a macadamia nut crust, caramelized pineapples and a rum caramel sauce. John's chocolate cake was equally delicious--a tiny chocolate cake layered with bits of chocolate praline and covered with a phenomenal dark chocolate ganache sauce and a few flecks of edible gold. And if that didn't knock your socks off, it came with its own little shot of milk to help you wash it down. I picked the hot apple crisp with ice cream. Yes, I know, it sounds so plain in comparison, but it was without a doubt the best piece of hot apple anything I've ever eaten. And it was the perfect end to a hard-earned celebration dinner.