As some of you may remember, Animated Meat first came to life in 2008 as a way to document some sights that managed to slip through the cracks of most popular travel websites. You may also remember that the original website was built on Apple's now defunct iWeb. From there, it migrated over to WordPress where it met an untimely demise at the hands of Russian hackers. Many of those old, pre-2012 entries have found a new home here in the Before the Now section. I would consider these posts as my starting place as a writer, probably comparable to a musician's first demo tapes. They are very rough, but I took them all seriously and wrote each one with passion. While I would like to believe that I have matured in my abilities as a writer, it is my hope that I carry this same blind passion into all of my new efforts.

The Fish House - Originally Published 2009

June 24, 2018

The odds were stacked against the Fish House in Stanley Park. It’s a seafood restaurant near a body of water. It’s an elegant looking place in the middle of a busy park. I was thinking that it might be like Tavern on the Green in Manhattan, an elegant place that specializes in fleecing the tourists.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. After wandering around the park, the Fish House offered up a mellow place to site back and watch people on the putting green. The food was elegant, but it wasn’t stuffy or pretentious. The wait staff was friendly and had plenty of information for us tourist. It’s worth a stop, especially with the early bird special.