Okay, I'm back.

First, let me dispense with my trip to Raidas Asian Cafe & Restaurant. Where is it? Officially, at 1891 Hwy 40 East, Suite 110. Worthless, right? Okay, you know where St. Johns Seafood & Steak is, right? Where you turn off of Hwy 40 just west of there and cross the railroad tracks, instead of turning left to St. Johns, turn right to Raidas. It's where the ill-conceived and consequently ill-fated coffee shop was most recently. Then, before that it was the ice cream shop which charged huge mark-ups on the very same Blue Bell ice cream you could get by the gallon at the grocery store. Okay, apparently, this place is owned by the same folks who owned the now defunct Dynasty Chinese Restaurant down across from Winn Dixie. Here's the skinny on the name: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raidas I believe they just opened last Thursday night. I went there after the city council meeting. When I arrived, there were two booths with two people each who were just leaving. There was a large party of 6 adults and one screaming child in desperate need of a serious ass whooping (he was answering every admonishment from his mother with "I hate you"). There were two more folks in a booth who came in 5 minutes after me. Thye got there food ten minutes BEFORE I did, by the way.There was the Chinese wife of the family that owns it running the register. There were two occidental waitresses, one occidental dish washer, and three Chinese male cooks in the kitchen. I ordered my meal at 8:15 PM. Not a scrap of food was placed in front of me until 8:50 PM. I had at least 6 apologetic explanations that my food was on the way and that the cooks had just "gotten way behind" from both waitresses. Now, how, you may wonder, could three cooks woking their brains out get so behind with so few customers. That was undoubtedly because of the steady stream of customers coming in to pick up to-go orders they had phoned in. Apparently, these were people who had been there at some point during the previous 3 days they were open and had picked up to-go menus. The food was good (though strangely, there were not nearly enough vegetables thrown into the wok with the HUGE amount of pork). The white rice was cooked nicely, but cold. Clearly, these folks are having a problem gelling in the kitchen. I saw one older Chinese guy in a complete chef's outfit including white hat. The other two were younger guys (all were fluent in Chinese - a good sign). I suspect they had nowhere near the experience of the older guy who was probably pulling way more than his share of the load. I don't think these guys need a visit from Chef Ramsay - yet. They just need time to work out a few kinks. Like the party of six adults and one kid ordered about every kind of fried rice imaginable. It was weird to watch the waitress make six consecutive trips, each about 5 minutes apart, with six different plates of fried rice served separately as they came out of the wok. This same thing happened at the other tables. I asked for shrimp roll appetizers. "Sorry, we're out of those but we should have some more in about a week." Ditto for spring rolls. They need time to get a feel for their proper stockage levels in their food orders. They may also need to re-think whether they want to be both a sit-down AND a take out restaurant versus one or the other. My advice: give them about a month to get their act together before you try them. That's what I'm going to do before I write a serious review. Last night's city council meeting. There were a number of impassioned speakers in favor of maintaining the Gilman Park Bait Shop as a bait shop versus a welcome center for passing yachtsmen. Former councilman Joe Riggins spoke out for it, as did a fellow who crabs for a living (forgot his name) and Jim Stein at some length. Jim went on at some length about the importance of knowing how to keep bait shrimp frisky and implied that by the time they got handled many times on their way to Reef Donkey bait shop (though he did not mention it by name) they would turn out to be kind of "whimpy" shrimp that a self-respecting fish would turn his nose up at. I'm sure Jim did not know (and probably would not have cared anyway) that the rather, as it turned out, thuggish young owner of Reef Donkey was in the audience. He stormed up to the podium and all but cussed Jim out. Lets put it this way: he spewed out enough fighting words that if Jim had been 40 years younger, it would have probably been a real good thing that there was a police officer there. A couple of guys spoke out for the yacht club. There was some discussion of that deal I talked about earlier where the DDA is interested in giving permanent financing to that supposed counseling firm that wants to locate downtown. Now get a load of this: it turns out that the building that this outfit wants a DDA loan to buy and refurbish is none other than Kyle Lewis' old hardware store which, so far as I know, Kyle still owns. (Correction: I've been informed by a reader that Kyle sold the building in 2002.) While Kyle is not actually on the board of the Downtown Development Authority, he is on the board of the St. Marys Development Authority. He's still got the knack. From no-bid hardware sales, to sign installations by a city crew, to a low interest loan to buy his building. Nice. As to this morning's meeting of the Camden Partnership, Inc., I've got some reading up to do on them first. I'll put out something tomorrow, if Gordon Jackson, who was also there, does not beat me to it. For now, I'll just tell you that the rumor that several groups were going to merge under one umbrella organization was a false one. Oh, yeah, I did not find a dog today, but I did get their paperwork to read and fill out. They're not cheap! I'm really kind of thinking about spending just a little more and buying the kind of dog I want without the third degree and the dictates.