Dinner at The Reserve – 1.6.2010

A while back I purchased a groupon for $35 at the Reserve in Federal Hill for only $15.  So I went there with a few friends a few weeks back for dinner.  I ordered the seafood risotto, which I thought was pretty good, but the risotto was a little underdone.  Also, the service at the restaurant was really slow for not being all that crowded.

We were there on a Wednesday, which is apparently “acoustic” karaoke night…whatever that means.  Luckily it wasn’t scheduled to start until 10pm, so we got out of there in time.  We headed to Vaccaro’s in Little Italy for dessert.  I ordered the baci ball ice cream sunday, but they were out of the baci ice cream so I substituted with nocciola.  I had no idea how huge the portion would be.  I could barely stomach it all, but I managed…and it was amazingly good.

1 lb. Burgers at Loco Hombre’s – 12.14.2009

Loco Hombre’s on Cold Spring Lane has $5 off their one pound burgers on Monday Nights.  It’s connected to Alonso’s, which is another restaurant in the Crazy Man Restaurant Group, so you can order the burgers from either establishment.  On Monday nights, Alonso’s tends to be filled with football fans, so we chose to sit on the Loco Hombre side and there was no wait.  They offer each of their burgers in a 1 lb. or 8 oz. “junior” version.  With the $5 discount, the 1 lb comes out to be less than the 8oz., so you may as well go for it.  I ordered the Smokehouse burger, which comes with two slices of bacon.

Ramzi had the Asian burger.  What makes it Asian?  Hoisin sauce.  Fine, fine.  hoisin sauce AND scallions.

The burgers were good, but 16 oz. patties are huge, and I think less flavorful than they would have been if they were smaller.  (You know, the whole surface area to volume ratio being affected and all).  I ate half of mine and saved the rest for lunch the next day.  If I had to recommend a burger place, I would still point you in the direction of Abbey Burger Bistro.

My First Turducken Experience – 11.21.2009

Okay, so I’m a *little* behind, but in my defense, it did take a while to recover from this meal (and the leftovers)!  Ramzi decided to undertake the challenge of making and stuffing his own turducken.  So the weekend before Thanksgiving, we had a bunch of our friends over to help partake in said turducken.  Everyone brought their favorite Thanksgiving side dishes.  There was so much amazing food.  I was quite impressed with all my friends’ culinary skills.

So a 20 lb turkey, a 6 lb duck, and a 5 lb chicken.  All deboned.  With either sausage or cornbread stuffing layered in between.  Kudos to Ramzi for doing all the deboning.  Closing those birds up was not easy.  I was a little worried when we didn’t get the thing into the oven until noon, and guests were due to arrive around 7pm.  Although several websites said total bake time would be around 9 hours, ours was done in just under 7.  And it tasted awesome.  I can’t say I was able to tell what bird I was eating when all was said it done, but it was yummy just the same.  Below is a (sort of ) step-by-step assembly.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Remember to take pictures of all the food =P

The Bacon Explosion – 11.1.2009

The Bacon Explosion is a recipe that swept the internet early this year.  It was first posted on bbqaddicts.com, and was even featured in the New York Times.  For those not familiar with the recipe, it consists of two pounds of bacon woven around two pounds of sausage and smothered in bbq sauce.  And yes, this monstrosity was recreated in my house.  Ramzi and I hosted a brunch the day after halloween, and our friend, Mark made the bacon explosion.  It was a definite hit, but we could all feel the fat clogging our arteries as we ate it.  Don’t think I’ll be having another one of those any time soon…

Seven hours in Beantown – 10.14.2009

What does one do with 7 hours to kill in Boston?  Eat and drink!  JetBlue recently began service out of BWI, and to promote this they offered $9 one-way fares between here and Boston-Logan.  It didn’t seem like an offer to be passed up, so Ramzi, Ed, and I booked a day trip.  We took the first flight out of BWI in the morning and the last flight out of Logan in the evening.

The first thing we did when we arrived was grab some breakfast.  We went to the Paramount, a cute little restaurant in Beacon Hill.  I had the tomato, basil, and mozzarella omelette.  The food was all very good, and the service was fast.  A great way to kick start our food tour.

Following this, we walked over to Union Oyster House near Fanueil Hall for some clam chowda.  We also shared a plate of oysters.  Gotta have oysters at an oyster house.

So we were kind of full at this point, and it was only like 12:30…so we decided to take a break and stopped over by Hennessy’s next door to Union Oyster House for a drink.  Our bartender made us an “Irish Trash Can,” which has equal parts blue curacao, gin, rum, peach schnappes, triple sec, vodka, and a can of red bull, placed upside down in the glass.  As the red bull seeps out, the drink turns green.  Ramzi and I drained it.

Prior to our trip, I had outlined a few places to stop at, thinking that it would be enough to cover 7 hours.  But apparently I’d forgotten how small and walkable Boston is.  There were only a couple places left on the planned food tour, which were both in the North End, so we decided to take the T up to Mass Ave and Boylston and walk around a bit.  We walked over to Sweet Cupcakes on Mass Ave for a sweet treat.  They offer miniature, almost bite-sized cupcakes so we each got one.  The icing is piled high, but it’s nice and light and not overly sweet.

We walked allll the way down Newbury street only to find ourselves back at the Public Gardens and the Commons, before heading back over to the North End.  I didn’t really know what to do…we still had so much time!  And we were still kind of full.  So we stopped in this random bar in the North End and watched soccer while sipping on limoncello for about an hour.  Then we stopped by Mike’s Pastry to pick up some cannolis to bring back to Baltimore.  I wish I had appreciated Mike’s cannolis more when I was living in Boston, but now I guess I’ll take what I can get.

I took these pictures when I got home.  Don’t they look soooo good??  I brought them to work, and they were a total hit.

Okay, last scheduled stop on our little tour was James Hook & Co. for lobster rolls…and more clam chowder.  Their clam chowder was a LOT better than the one we had at Union Oyster House.  You could actually see clam bits in there, and it was a lot heartier.  Very satisfying.

It was about 3:30, and we didn’t have to get back on the T to the airport till about 5, so we walked to Chinatown.  It was too late for dim sum, but we went to Taiwan Cafe, one of my favorite stops in college.  We just got some noodles and dumplings to tide us over on the flight home (not that we needed it…really, we were just trying to kill time).

And that was it!  I definitely got made fun of by security for carrying a big bag of Mike’s through.  We made it home by about 9pm.  Good spontaneous trip.  I realize by now that I’ve done food tours in several major cities along the east coast: Boston, NYC, Philly…yet I have never done one in D.C.  That’s going on the to do list =).

An Abridged Version of Julie and Julia – 10.13.2009

My friend, Jenny suggested the book, Julie an Julia for our book club.  So for our meet up, she asked that everyone attempt a Julia Child recipe.  I decided to try her leek quiche recipe, since it didn’t seem too complicated.  But my gosh that woman used a lot of butter.  Julie wasn’t kidding when she described the vast amounts of butter she went through when attempting Julia’s recipes.  The crust alone used a stick and a half of butter plus a quarter cup of shortening or something like that.

So the quiche was almost a disaster.  I made it the night before, and the smoke alarm in my house is probably the most sensitive thing on the planet.  I go to prebake my crust and the smoke alarm goes off.  So I take the crust out, and the butter is just melting out of the crust.  The entire crust looks like it’s melting.  I freak out and try to patch the crust up as best I can.  I decide to just throw in the filling (which also contained a crazy amount of butter) and hope for the best.  For the most part it didn’t look terrible, but I think I did underbake it slightly.

I have to say I was super impressed with my girlfriends’ cooking abilities.  Angy made stuffed mushrooms, Tiffany made a Fricassee de Poulet a l’Ancienne.  Julie made Coquilees St. Jacques a la Provencal (Scallops Provencal).  Meg: Coq au Vin.  And Jenny and Jess made desserts.  Everything was awesome.  Though we didn’t end up discussing the book a whole lot (we never do), it was a nice evening with friends.

All the dishes as described above, pictured from left to right, top to bottom.

Labor Day Weekend in NYC

Over Labor Day, I went to visit my friend, Linda (visit her food blog, here!), who lives in Manhattan.  We spent the weekend walking around…and eating.  A typical NYC trip for me.  My friend, Janice was in town for the weekend too, so the three of us spent Saturday afternoon together.  When I arrived, we took a short walk over to Chelsea Market and grabbed some sushi to go from The Lobster Place.  We took our food over to the High Line, a cute elevated walkway that runs north-south on the west side of the city.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures because I didn’t bring my camera with me.  We were renting bikes afterward so I didn’t bring a purse.  After lunch we walked north along the high line before renting bikes at Chelsea Bicycles.  We rode along Riverside park for a couple hours.  It was a gorgeous day to spend outside.

That evening, we didn’t have dinner anywhere, but ended up having wine and cheese with some of Linda’s friends.  Before everyone got to the apartment, Linda and I walked to Billy’s Bakery and picked up some cupcakes.  Billy’s is a cute little bakery less than 10 min. away from Linda’s apartment.  And it’s open till 10pm or later everyday.  How amazing is that.  You don’t find that kind of place in Baltimore.

I had half a red velvet, and half a carrot, both of which were pretty amazing.  Who doesn’t love cupcakes for dinner?

The next day, Linda and I met up with her friend Jon, who supposedly also writes for Very Foodie of You (though he has yet to post).  We had brunch at Poco on Avenue B.  For $20, you get your choice off the brunch menu, and unlimited sangria or mimosas.  Despite never getting any refills on our sangria, the food was still really good.  Linda got the lobster mac ‘n cheese, which was really good, but very rich.  I had the Poco Benedict, described on the website as, “crispy arepa, chorizo, manchego cheese and poached eggs, topped with pimentón hollandaise.”  I always gravitate towards eggs benedict when I go out for brunch, and this dish was a nice twist on traditional eggs Benedict.

Lobster Mac 'n Cheese

Poco Benedict

Afterwards we walked around a bit, and ended up at Momofuku Milk Bar.  We got pork buns, and tried the cereal milk.  I thought the cereal milk was way overrated.  Who wants to drink milk that tastes like he just ate a bowl of cereal….only he didn’t.  The pork buns were nice and fatty, but overpriced.

After more walking around, we found ourselves at Yogurt Land, a softserve frozen yogurt place similar to the phileoyogurt that I described in a previous post.  I got a little bit of each of a few of my favorite flavors: mango, lychee, green tea, and raspberry (which is not really a favorite…more like a random).

I think that just about concluded the afternoon.  We walked back to my friend’s apartment and sat around and kinda passed out a little before dinner at Socarrat Paella Bar, right across the street.  We got there not too long after it opened and it was already full.  Luckily we only had to wait a few minutes to sit down.  The restaurant is tiny, with one really long table that seats maybe 25.  I suppose one could call it “intimate,” especially with the mood lighting.  The three of us shared cannelones, and croquetas del dia for appetizers, and ordered the Paella de Pescado y Mariscos.  Honestly the best paella I’ve ever had, though I suppose I’ve only had it one or two times prior.  The crispiness of the rice at the bottom reminded me of dolsot bibimbap.  Though it was slightly oversalted, I still quite enjoyed it.  We left with really full stomachs, thankful that we only had to walk back across the street to get home.

On Labor Day, Linda and I ventured out into Brooklyn and had lunch at Motorino, a pizza place.  They have a cute little courtyard in the back, and since it was a nice day out we sat outside.  They have a $10 prix fixe lunch menu where you get a pizza and the soup of the day or a side salad, which was a really good deal.  I had salad with a soppressata piccante pizza.  Nice, thin and crispy crust.  Excellent.

After lunch, we walked towards Williamsburg to explore the area a bit.  We stopped in a couple of Jewish bakeries and picked up many chocolate-filled pastries, including babka…actually now that I’m wiki-ing it, it looks more like kokosh, since it wasn’t twisted and topped with streusel.  Regardless of the name, it was delicious.  I can’t really deny any pastry that incorporates chocolate.  Oneg Heimishe, one of the bakeries we stopped in, is known for their ‘babka.’  It was featured in the New York Times.

That just about wrapped up my latest visit to NYC.  I ended up confusing  my bus departure time and missing it, so I had to wait two hours for the next bus to Baltimore, but that wasn’t so bad.

Baltimore Restaurant Week – Summer 2009

I always get really excited about Restaurant Week because it’s an opportunity to check out restaurants that normally might not fit into my budget.  After checking out all the menus, I finally narrowed down the number of places I wanted to try to three.  First on the list was Brass Elephant in Mt. Vernon, which actually closed its doors not too long after Restaurant Week.  Another one bites the dust in this economy, I guess.  I’d heard good things about Brass Elephant, but my experience there was not that great.  For a Friday night, the restaurant was not crowded at all.  The service was also subpar.  Our server was slow, and she broke the cork when opening the wine bottle my friend ordered.  Not impressive.  To start, everyone got–I suppose it could have been considered an amuse bouche–of foie gras on a piece of crusty bread.  This was my first taste of foie gras, and I have to say I’m not a fan.  For my first course, I had the smoked rockfish with cold smoked salmon, which was garnished with whipped horseradish cream, pickled radish, and hearts of palm.  The salmon was okay, but the rockfish didn’t taste very fresh.  For my second course, I had a filo-wrapped cod with hazelnuts, sage polenta, and a parsley and sage pesto.  I remember enjoying that.  The fish was cooked well.  For dessert, I went with the creme brulee, because I feel like that’s something that a restaurant shouldn’t mess up.  It wasn’t really anything to write home about.

 

Courses shown counterclockwise from top left.

Another note about the poor service:  my friend, Stephanie had to leave dinner early and when she realized this, we tried to flag down our server to request that her dessert get packed up ahead of time so that she wouldn’t have to wait for it.  Our server was nowhere to be found for at least 10 minutes.  And then when she explained her situation, the server said she would pack up the dessert, but it came out at the same time as the rest of ours, so Steph had to wait around even though she was pressed for time.  Needless to say, Brass Elephant didn’t really meet my expectations.

 

The next restaurant I tried was Meli in Fell’s Point.  I really enjoyed dinner here.  Despite having reservations for 8:30 or 9pm for 8 people, we still ended up waiting quite awhile for our table, and this wasn’t the fault of the staff per se, as the party that was occupying our would-be table took longer than expected to get up and leave.  Our host said he would try to comp us something, but either he wasn’t able to, or he didn’t even bother to try.  That was okay, though, because the food was outstanding. I started with a lobster mac and cheese, followed by a duck dish that was really well prepared, and finished with some sort of mediterranean dessert whose name I can’t remember, let alone spell.  There was an option to pair the restaurant week menu with a wine flight.  I chose to do that, and each of the wines went very well with the courses.

 

Finally, the last visit for this go around was Jack’s Bistro in Canton.  Jack’s has a tiny dining room, with maybe 6 or 8 tables tops.  And of course we had a large group for this excursion.  We were lucky enough that they were able to seat us all together.  The appetizer that piqued my curiosity the most on their restaurant week menu was the chocolate macaroni and cheese.  Sounds potentially disgusting, but it worked out really well.  The second course was basically a big slab of beef with shoestring fries on the side.  The meat was cooked well, but it wasn’t super special; and I think it would have gone better with some sort of green vegetable on the side.  Then at least I could say I was making some attempt at being healthy.  And lastly the dessert.  omgoodness nom nom.  Deep-fried s’mores.  Yes, you read correctly.  They were so good, I had to include two pictures.  Unfortunately the ice cream in the middle melted rather quickly, but the whole thing was sinful.

 

All in all, a successful restaurant week.  Can’t wait till the next one!

Philly Cheesesteak Tour 7.25.09

Over the summer, Ed and I went to Philadelphia for a Philly Cheesesteak tour.  We met up with a couple of Ed’s friends who drove down from New York, and we spent the afternoon waiting in line, and indulging ourselves.  As many times as I’ve visited Philly, I’ve never actually had an authentic Philly Cheesesteak.

We hit some traffic on the way up there so by the time we arrived we only had a few hours.  Of course our first stop(s) had to be Pat’s and Geno’s, which are located right across from each other.  Since we were four people, we got two steaks from each location and went halfsies so as not to overexert our stomachs right off the bat.

A little history on Pat’s…

 

Be sure to use the proper ordering etiquette at Pat’s!!

 

A side by side comparison, (both with whiz, of course).

I didn’t like that the meat on Geno’s steak wasn’t chopped up; and there was definitely less flavor.  Both were equally greasy.

Next stop was Jim’s Steaks on South Street.  It’s a favorite of my friend, Kate.  The line for Jim’s went around the corner, so we stopped by phileoyogurt for some froyo.  Phileoyogurt is pinkberry/yogiberry-esque frozen yogurt, but there’s like 20 different flavors all the time.  And it’s self-serve (toppings too!), and you pay by the ounce.  There’s so many flavors to choose from, and each set of two flavors can be “twisted,” too.  Unfortunately there’s only one sample per customer.  I ended up getting a mango/lychee twist without toppings, since I figured that was a pretty safe choice.

Meanwhile, Ed was holding our place in line for steaks, and the line moved pretty slowly.  It was like waiting in a roller coaster line in an amusement park.  Once inside the establishment, the line wove back and forth.  Good times.  really.  But eventually we made it to the front.  And though the service at Jim’s was not nearly as efficient as that of Pat’s or Geno’s, I think it was well worth the wait.  Definitely my favorite cheesesteak of the day.

 

Unfortunately, Ed and I had to leave after that…I was going to the Jason Mraz concert that evening, but it was still a fun way to spend an afternoon.  I’ve decided cheese whiz is the way to go for sure.  I’ll have to find a new cheesesteak place to try next time I’m in the city