OK, This could get interesting....

Went to Legal Seafood for dinner for the first time. Worked my drooling way through the menu, realized that if I ordered what I wanted, dinner for the three adults and two kids would be about a week's grocery budget and then some. So I got extravagant and ordered fish and chips.

Technically, it wasn't really chips. No vinegar, no rolled up newspaper - just shoestring potatoes just like the ones from the grocery store. Heck, MacLardAss has better fries than these.

But the cod.....it was incredible. It was the softest, fluffy-est melt-in-your-mouth fish I have ever had. It was wrapped in a crunchy, wonderfully perfectly fried crust that tasted of fresh flour and salt and pepper. (I'm getting hungry again just thinking about it!)

My older daughter whined her way to the table, complaining about how the place smelled of fish. People turned and looked at her, so I felt like I had a "Bad Parent" tatoo on my forehead as they stared at the loud kid with the attitude. I needed duct tape at that point. Or a magic Cone of Silence. Or something.

She whined her way through the kid's menu while her sister colored her picture of a shark and made fun of the "Things you probably didn't know" on the inside of the menu. She complained about lobster. She complained about shrimp. When her sister said she was ordering chicken fingers, she complained about that, too. There is a rule that siblings can never order the same food. I remember that one from my childhood, too. So Whiney-Pants ordered the fish-shaped ravioli, after much consultation about what it contained: cheese. No fish.

And then the fried clam appetizer appeared. She complained about how I had a little plastic sword in my lemon in the ice water, and she didn't. Her sister had a sword. So I surrendered mine to her and they proceeded to have pinky swordfights, not too loudly, thank God. Five minutes later, I bit into a "chip" and something crunchy was in my mouth.

Crap. It's the tooth that anchors my bridge. So much for eating the softest, fluffy-est cod. So much for eating, period. I took my doggie bag like a good girl and left while my husband's editor paid for dinner.

I figure the fish and chips will cost us a couple of thousand at the dentist to replace the bridge that now has to be replaced, and root canal, and all the happy dental torture that goes along with it.

Legal Seafood, indeed. I'll have to rob a bank to pay this one off!