Not long ago I blogged about the challenges associated with dining out in many restaurants. I believe that butter, salt and sugar are each used with fairly reckless abandon in the restaurant industry - those three bad-for-me-and-you ingredients lead to patron satisfaction and good reviews by the local food critic.

My father was a chef and restaurateur before I was born. Though he burned out and left that industry more than a half-century ago, the skills and techniques he acquired were staples of my kitchen at home during my childhood. No wonder I have my weight problem (and yours, and yours - and yes... yours too!).

So this past Saturday, dinner out with friends presented a special challenge Spark-compliance-wise: how to be reasonably sure that the restaurant would not sneak bad-for-us yummies into the food. After some research and debate (and because here in the Baltimore-Washington corridor there are zillions of choices) we settled on a vegetarian restaurant that prided itself on creativity and healthfulness.

Now I am a meat-and-potatoes (and especially seafood) guy through and through, and approached this venture into healthful eating with a very healthy amount of trepidation and foreboding. Vegetarian is not my thing, and I find its fans to be somewhat zealous in their mission to rid the food world of all things animal. So I was girding myself for the disappointing compromise this surely was to be.

I was pleasantly surprised - I'll say shocked to find the food completely outstanding - both my wife's Curried Lentils Indian Style and my Quinoa with Root Vegetables. Service by an engaging and knowledgeable waiter was top notch - we split the pineapple cobbler for dessert than that was great as well. Who knew?

I did notice that by our 7:30 departure, it was standing room only with a line out the door. Despite this, we were under no pressure to give up our table as we experience at so many restaurants. Prices were high-normal for a our region, but not excessive. Most importantly, we had every confidence that the kitchen was not sneaking extra butter and salt into the food just to improve apparent palatability to those like me with simple, pedestrian and uncultured taste buds.

Kudos to Great Sage! We definitely will be back.

www.greatsage.com