Best mashed potatoes ever?

Had dinner last night at a very busy, as usual, Culinaria in Brandywine Hundred.

Here's the funny thing that happened while we were waiting at the bar for a table:

We're sipping a smooth glass of pinot noir, enjoying the bustling Saturday night atmosphere and were happily chatting away, when the hostess comes over to tell us it was going to be a few more minutes for our table and that the kitchen has now run out of mashed potatoes.

Uh, OK.

"Is that a problem?" she says very sweetly.

Uh, no.

"It is for some people," she tells us.

(Nosy journalist that I am, I can't let it go at that.)

Really? Why?

Then she explains that a couple who also had been waiting for a table just left after they found out there were no more mashed potatoes.

Now, I love mashed potatoes, perhaps the world's greatest comfort food, but I'm not leaving a restaurant I enjoy visiting, such as Culinaria, just because they run out of spuds. And the thought of doing that just struck me as really funny.

Then I became intrigued: People come to Culinaria just for the mashed potatoes?

"Yes, people love them," the hostess says. I couldn't pry out much more information about the mashers other than "They're just really good." (And, as if on cue, I heard a couple at the bar begin waxing poetic about the mashed potatoes. No lie.)

I've eaten at the restaurant many times before - the roasted salmon curry with Jasmine rice is one of my favorite menu items - and the food is always terrific. I know I've had the mashed potatoes there before but I was drawing a complete blank about the taste.

I feel like a woman possessed and now I have to know more about these mashed potatoes.

This is a case of Nancy Drew culinary sleuthing and I need to unravel The Great Mashed Potato Mystery.

Are these really the best mashed potatoes ever? What makes them SO good?

Inquiring minds - and palates - need to know.

- Patricia Talorico