Bowie Restaurant Project: 2012 City of Bowie Restaurant Guide

I could say that I've taken the project of reviewing every Bowie restaurant too seriously when I'm excited by the 2012 City of Bowie Restaurant Guide coming out. But I think the real sign is reading through it and realizing that I have a more accurate database of Bowie restaurants than the City does.

Now, it's their right to define restaurant differently than I do. They list 94 "eating establishments". Of those:

• Crescent Food Market (now Crescent Beer & Wine) doesn't serve food.
  
• Rip's, the Subway in Sunoco and Chick-fil-a are not in Bowie.
• Cake Courtesan (not open yet), Auntie Anne's, Hershey's Ice Cream, Cold Stone Creamery, Rita's Italian Ice, The Cakery and Best Pie Company don't serve meals.
• Hunan Delight, Papa John's, China Chef, Hunan Gardens and Bowie Seafood Market are takeout-only.

The first two objections are, in my mind, inescapable. That knocks the 94 restaurants down to 90. The latter two are my interpretation. With those deletions, we drop down to 78.

The guide missed out on Uptown Cafe, which opened last year in the Melford office park. I was waiting until it appeared in the guide to review it, but since I seem to be keeping better track of these things than they do, I'm going to go ahead and review it later this week. That brings us up to 79.

That list of 79, by the way, includes a few places that haven't opened yet.

• Dunkin' Donuts in Bowie Plaza
• Asian Chao in Bowie Town Center
• Bang Bang Mongolian Grill in Free State Mall
• Jersey Mike's Subs in Hilltop Plaza
• Muffin Man Caribbean Cafe in Hilltop Plaza

I don't think I've seen Asian Chao reported anywhere. If I google the address listed (and correct the misspelling), I get the address of Panda Express, which isn't on this year's list, so I guess is being replaced.

So of these restaurants, I thought I was up to number 42. Number 36 was the Subway inside Sunoco, which I guess I should now delete, just like I did with Rip's. (Except I'm not going to honor the Subway with a "Beyond Bowie" review.) Number 38 is Panda Express. I'm going to keep that around, since it wasn't a mistake, and I don't think numbering should change because restaurants come and go -- only if I have made a mistake about what's actually in Bowie. So that brings the total up to 80, and I have 41 reviews.

I've e-mailed some of my corrections to the City; we'll see if they respond.