Bubba Gump in Harborplace

Hey Phil, make room for Bubba. This from Richard Gorelick of The Sun:

That didn't take long. The anchor restaurant space in Harborplace's Light Street Pavilion that for 31 years was home to Phillips has a new tenant. Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., "the first restaurant group based on a motion picture," will occupy the space previously occupied by Phillips Seafood Restaurant and Phillips Express.

It's the first in Maryland and the Chesapeake region, though Gorelick points out that they almost got here as early as 1998. Next question: will Bubba Gump be getting their shrimp from Thailand?

Baltimore Restaurant Week: The Capital Grille

The Capital Grille is one of those restaurants I've never really bothered to visit. It always looked so expensive, so I never went in. And, well, yeah - it is expensive. Even at lunch. So when I called a friend of mine to suggest we do lunch for Restaurant Week, he suggested a place that was normally expensive. That way, we'd be getting a really good bargain. So Scott mentioned The Capital Grille and I figured it was time.

The Capital Grille is a national steakhouse chain - a very posh chain (that is: this ain't Sizzler). This much I knew, though I had few other expectations, except the hopes for a good lunch. Scott has eaten here before and has raved about it. One recommendation: the steak sandwich, which runs $18 - almost as much as the entire Baltimore Restaurant Week lunch menu. Not one for $20 sandwiches, I insisted on the Restaurant Week menu.

Scott and I were led through the rich wood-grained interior, past bright plate glass windows and massive portraits of famous Marylanders (NB: I had not known that famous Civil War figure Clara Barton was a Marylander, but the Massachusetts native spent the last 15 years of her life in Glen Echo). We were brought to a cozy table with a crisp white tablecloth, where we talked about family, friends and finances over freshly baked bread and butter. I ordered an iced tea (about $3) and Scott got a cocktail. I don't drink many cocktails, so I admit the $10 price tag on that one surprised me a bit.

Like most Restaurant Week spots, the Capital Grille offered a soup-or-salad course, an entrée and a dessert. Since we were in such a classy place, I didn't ask to try anything that Scott had.

I really need a new camera.

Scott got the clam chowder, which he seemed to really enjoy. I got the Capital Grille Garden Salad: a mixture of field greens and tomatoes in a balsamic vinaigrette with chunks of bleu cheese. I have grown tired of bleu cheese, so imagine my delight when I tried this cheese. It was perhaps the best bleu cheese I have eaten in several years: tangy and sharp but not too sharp ("wince-worthy" is the word I'm looking for). This bleu cheese was just mellow and even buttery enough to make me really savor it.


Each of us ordered the 8 oz. filet mignon with mashed potatoes for our main course. I ordered my filet mignon rare, and I got rare. Soft, tender and rare. I couldn't exactly cut it with my fork, but I was able to make a rather permanent dent with it. The filet mignon was beautifully juicy with a flavor that reminded me what quality beef is supposed to taste like. I also found out that day that 8 oz. of meat is a bit too much for me to handle all at once. And if that wasn't enough, Scott railed me about the meat selection at Fogo de Chão, the Brazilian churrascaria restaurant next door. So much meat as much of your meal is served on a skewer. And there is no vegetarian or seafood option. It's all meat. At least they have a wide selection of that. Fogo de Chão ain't cheap neither.

I have to rave about the potatoes. Rarely does a side dish stand up to a main entrée and not make a scene. No prima donna is this bowl of mashed potatoes. These were thick, buttery and moist. No lumps, which I often like a little bit of in my mashed potatoes. If I could just go to The Capital Grille and order the potatoes, I would in fact do that. They were a beautiful accompaniment to the filet mignon but also notable in and of themselves.


I liked my dessert, the chocolate espresso cake. But as good as it was, I can easily say it was not the highlight of my lunch. But something has to take that mantle, and the espresso cake is it. Thick, chocolaty and moist, it was SO dense that I truly had trouble finishing it at all. It was tasty, please don't misunderstand me. But it was the least memorable of my three dishes. This says more about how good the salad was and less about the cake, since I am not a salad person.

So for about $20 for me (before tea, tax and generous tip), I had a remarkably delicious and inexpensive lunch at one of the loveliest "business lunch" places in town - with, I might add, excellent service (kudos to our waiter and the staff). But with the generous amount of meat I got at The Capital Grille, could my system really tolerate a possible trip to Fogo de Chão?

Birthday Weekend Loose Ends

Brewer's Art

My sister and I had our "culture club" on Friday - the two of us and a few of her co-workers and ex-coworkers. The place we went was the fabulous Brewer's Art Pub., a constant standby on "best of" lists all over Baltimore. I was quite impressed, and everyone else seemed to be as well. A few things we got that were so good:

• I started with the Proletary Ale and Onion Soup with Broiled Gruyere Cheese ($7). I liked this soup, particularly because of the broth. Everything else is usually my favorite part of the soup, but not usually the broth. Not so with this soup - good everything.
• I washed that down - if you really need to wash down soup - with two glasses of their Resurrection Ale ($7 each). At least I think that's the one it was.
  
• My entrée was the tasty Roasted Pork Tenderloin, which I could have eaten with a spoon ($19). This was medium rare - not as unwise a choice as I thought it would be. It was covered in a chocolate demi-glace, though I really was so focused on the pork that I didn't taste it much. Coupled with that was a dish of roasted apples and potato pavé. I wasn't terribly crazy about this pavé thing, which was a dried-out stack of thin potato slices in a sort of really broad obtuse triangular prism sort of formation (oooh, go back to your 10th grade geometry now). I would've been much more satisfied with the buttery mashed potatoes that Cathy got, which were heavenly. She got grouper, I think. She liked hers too.

Pork and apples with, uhhh, potato cake? I was very impressed with the pork, not so much at all with the potato cake.

• Dessert was the densest chocolate cake I have ever had. Yummy.

Trust me, it's heavier than it looks.

The grand total for each person was, on average, $50 after tax and tip (there were six of us, leading to a "gratuitous gratuity" of 18%).

Eddie's of Roland Park

The next night my landlord - he was first a friend before he became my landlord - threw this big St. Patrick's Day party. So much liquor, wine and beer - Guinness, Harp, some ale made by Guinness, and Corona (?). While he did make the desserts himself, he bought all the dinner from Eddie's. who make a mean corned beef and cabbage. Yes, I have had better, but for store-made-and-bought it was pretty good. Their mashed potatoes actually impressed me. No soda bread, but I've never been impressed with the store bought soda bread.

Just a reminder: don't tell a room full of gay men that today is your 35th birthday, unless you want a really campy birthday serenade. Especially if some of them are in theater.

Edo Sushi

Since I paid for Cathy at the Brewer's Art, she returned the favor by paying for me at Edo Sushi. I felt bad going to a more expensive sushi place than normal, and suggested alternatives, but she insisted. Actually, for a while we were wishing we had looked for something else. It was either Edo Sushi or something in Federal Hill, maybe Thai Arroy, or Matsuri, or one of those other places there. I never get there often enough anyway. "No, let's go to Edo Sushi!"

Then we got into a massive backup. Cars just sitting there by Harborplace. We were wondering what the hell could be causing this!

I hit myself in the head the way they do in the V8 juice commercials when I saw all the people starting down Pratt Street in green clothes, carrying Irish flags. Guess who forgot the St. Patrick's Day Parade was at that exact hour. Yep, me.

So half an hour later we are in Edo Sushi. We were very impressed with the lunch, not impressed at all with our dessert:

• We started out with miso soup. But it was not your simple miso. It was hearty, with scallions, tofu, and whatnot in a big bowl. I almost didn't finish it.
  
• I was getting impatient since our food wasn't coming out and there weren't many people there for lunch. But then the waiter brought everything out at once, and we.
  
• The Harbor Maki ($14) was just eight slices of crunchy, crabby, shrimpy goodness. The presentation? Also gorgeous. It was one of the tastiest rolls I have had. And none of it was raw, I don't think.

Beautiful

• Of course, raw never stops up. Our sashimi plate ($20) had a beautiful, fully edible presentation next to typically satisfying tuna, salmon and other types of sashimi. We were just very satisfied and happy.
• So of course there had to be a little letdown at some point. There was - the tempura ice cream (about $5) was greasy and not in any way crispy on the outside, with a ton of vanilla ice cream on the inside. Every tempura ice cream I have previously had has been much better, and that includes the one I got out in Pasadena, CA, which was just ice cream inserted whole into a pre-fried tempura shell (!?). Avoid it, please.

I've never seen so many people in silly glittery green shamrock Mardi Gras beads in a sushi restaurant before, but hey, first time for everything. Of course, this was just stupid.

A green dog people? Please. That's just bómánta

La Tasca (Baltimore Restaurant Week)

I went with my sister and some friends to La Tasca to sample their tapas menu for Restaurant Week last night. La Tasca is a gorgeous, two-story restaurant in Harborplace with a beautiful view of the Harbor and the USS Constellation. It's right there - I mean right there - at the other end of the Skywalk from the Gallery on the other side of Pratt Street. Very conveniently located. Also near La Tasca: the above-average Irish restaurant Tir na nÓg, and Edo Sushi. I've never been to Edo Sushi, but it's constantly mentioned as one of the Best Restaurants in the area. I have to go sometime.

La Tasca has an arrangement where if you want the Restaurant Week prices, then everyone at the table must order from the Restaurant Week menu. This was great, because we were all there for Restaurant Week. Their menu included one salad, four tapas of our choice (from a selection of about twenty), and one dessert. We started out with glasses of sangría (which were extra). I got their rebujito, which had sherry in it. At least they said it did. It didn't seem so obvious as I drank it, but I figured all the sherry had settled to the bottom. Oh well, it would kick in soon, I thought. My salad was pretty good, fresh greens with chopped bell peppers and fresh tuna, and topped with balsamic vinegar. Everyone else seemed to like her salad. One of us got a salad with lots of prosciutto, and wanted something a little sweet in it to cut that.

Continuing to sip my sangría, waiting to feel the kick or, for that matter, taste the sherry, we waited patiently for our tapas. My favorite tapa was the calamares (calamari - note the cognate?), battered and served with mayonnaise (not so much a mayo-based sauce but, it seemed, just plain old mayo). It was a little salty (in a good way) and very crunchy without being tough or dried out. I really liked the calamares and would get it again. That is, if I was going back. You see the rest of the tapas were, well, lacking.

• Meaty, perhaps once-frozen albóndigas in a generic tomato sauce with some peas thrown in. My sister and I shared the three that we got, and we still left some behind. It wasn't due to their size.

• The blandest mussels I have ever eaten in my life. At least one of mine was closed. I've never left so many behind before. Trust me: you will find better ones in one of the street fairs in Little Italy. Another great plate of mussels: Nasu Blanca. And wait: doesn't Tapas Teatro serve some, too?

• I got a flank steak and potatoes dish. The potatoes were tasty and flavorful. I found the steak to be on the tough side. My sister liked it better. That was good, because she got some memorably forgettable tapas as well.

• One thing she ordered was a salmon steak with chopped up tomatoes or something (they were pretty flavorless, so it was difficult to tell what they had once been). She didn't care for it. I thought it was better than anything I had eaten save for the calamares.

• She also got a typical tapas restaurant dish, a tapa-sized bowl of paella a la Valenciana. It included some pretty dry pieces of some kind of meat that tasted like chicken. The rice pilaf itself was not bad.

• Believe it or not, our friends fared worse. One dish that one of them got sounded like it would be delicious garden vegetables served Spanish-style. What she actually got was mixed frozen vegetables from a bag. So classy! She was quite annoyed about it but remained gracious - it wasn't the fault of the waiters' after all. But it did become the running joke of the evening.

• One of them also got some shrimp simmering in a butter sauce, which I tasted. I think it was a butter sauce, but it really could have been wine, or something else. A throwaway, sadly: again, I have had better. At least they were tender.

The desserts were much better. My sister got this truffle and chocolate dish which was tasty (I tried it), while one of our friends got a bowl of strawberry ice cream, which she also liked. Our other friend and I each ordered the crème Catalana: basically a large custard in a shallow dish with crème brulée caramalized sugar in the middle and strawberry slices on top. It was good, but still not as good as similar dishes I have eaten elsewhere. It seemed almost like a lazy crème brulée with that crispy topping just in the middle. But it was good enough that I would recommend it if you went to La Tasca. I mean much of the stuff is pretty bland, so at least order something tasty.

And by this time the sangría had truly not kicked in. I now suspect they just gave me some fruit juice with an anemic splash of sherry in it that I couldn't even taste, if there was any sherry in it at all. I could have easily gotten behind the wheel with the drink in my hand and still have had a ridiculously legal blood alcohol content.

Long story short: for $30 plus about $5 per drink, this was a pretty forgettable place to eat. Truly, the meal was uneven - even the alcohol was weak - and even though the service was not bad, you go for the food, which became the butt of many of the night's jokes. Note to the folks at La Tasca: you don't want your guests making derogatory jokes about your dishes, especially when they are giving you their business. That's when "patronize" with a long /ā/ - to give your business to someone - and "patronize" with a short /ă/ - to make fun of - mean one and the same thing. Folks, that's not a good thing. Plus, I can find jokes online for free - why should I pay $30 plus tax for new ones?

Tír na nÓg

My sister and I met a friend for dinner on Friday night. She and her coworkers have started a "dinner club" where they meet every few weeks for dinner. The only rules? Each place must be a different one from the previous ones, and we can't revisit the same cuisine twice. Last we went to my perennial fave Chiu's Sushi. That's when they unwittingly drafted me as their president, because of my vast knowledge in what there is to eat around town (I'm the only male, and all the women made me their president. Am I the only one that thought this was sexist?).

This time, our second meeting, we finally got to Tír na nÓg, the restaurant we avoided last Friday on account of the very sudden ice "storm." I'm glad we didn't go out last Friday - traffic into downtown was bad enough this Friday! Imagine traveling in all that icy slush.

Tír na nÓg is expensive, too damn expensive (probably I'll just head to Mick O'Shea's next time, like everybody recommended), but beautiful to look at. It has a wonderful view of the Harbor and the Light St. Pavilion. Inside the décor looks almost like a pub in an old Irish church, with a lectern-looking staircase and a pipe organ themed bar. March Madness was all over the TV's (the first time I had gone, last summer, it was nonstop soccer on every channel, which is no surprise). And there were all these ancient-looking photographs on the walls.

And the food is quite tasty. To go with my Guinness (you knew that was coming, didn't you) I had the house fish and chips (for $17 - my God, I paid less for it in London!). It was a BIG fish and chips, so much so that I boxed half of it. The chips were nothing to write home about, even in their mustard and butter sauce. The fish was juicy, plump, flaky and delicious, and the coating was crispy. This was after a sparse appetizer ($11) of caramelized scallops and watercress in a red wine sauce. My sister had the special, a small and flavorful steak. Our friend had the seared salmon. Both steak and salmon came with colcannon (mashed potatoes made with kale or, in this case, cabbage, and with a large dollop of butter in the middle).

I still forced myself to eat dessert (yes I know, how horrible). I ordered Ginger and Guinness Spice Cake ($7), and they were right - it was indeed spicy. Also very rich and a little chocolaty, this dish came with a large dollop of whipped cream (the real stuff). A very dense and gorgeous cake.

For the three of us - one appetizer, three entrées, three desserts, two sodas and a Guinness, we paid about $100 before tip. The service was good, so we were generous and gave a 20% tip. But the place is just so damn expensive!

Chiu's Sushi

I usually enjoy going out alone, but Saturday night my sister and I decided to go for some dinner and a movie. I figured I would drag her to my favorite sushi restaurant, Chiu's Sushi, next to the Whole Foods by Little Italy (I love their buffet, and if you buy anything in there, you get two hours of free parking with validation. Consider it for your next night out). "They have cooked things, too, right?" She asked. Yes - she will try new stuff, but doesn't do the raw meat thing.

So the two of us went to Chiu's and were seated. The server, who may be one of the owners, brought out hot towels. Remember, folk, they are NOT for your face. They are for your hands. I myself don't like them, as they dry out my skin, but most people must appreciate them, or else they wouildn't bring them out!

My sister ordered iced tea and I got a small warm sake - I usually order sake at Chiu's, and it's usually hot enough that you need to blow on it. I started in on my sake and my sister notes that she really wanted lemonade. No problem - we're going dutch anyway.

Now at Chiu's, I usually order an appetizer, and I told my sister that's what I planned to do. She ordered the extremely tasty seafood tempura plate, for about $20. I splurged and got the sashimi plate (again, about $20). Each meal came with salad and miso soup. My sister loved the salad - but had to use chopsticks! Now, she has never used them before, and judging by how long it took me to learn (a period of a few years, as I recall it), I had little confidence that I could show her, or that shewould pick it up either. But like Chloe Dao getting it right with her first foray into menswear in that Project Runway challenge where she had to make over fellow designer Nick (fabulous), my sister quickly got the hang of how to use the utensils. I told her one simple thing that I didn't realize: it's okay to use it to scoop your rice. I don't exactly know if that's proper chopstick use, but it works fine for me. She even told the waitress she didn't need a fork when she was asked about it, in a friendly manner (The folks at Chiu's are very friendly, I have found)!

After the salad and soup came our entrées, and MAN were they BIG and TASTY! Now I know better than to order the entrée, because I can't eat that much and I am not going to take sashimi home in a doggie bag. Not a good idea.

I've had the tempura before, but never the seafood tempura (though do order their soft shell crab tempura - if ever there was an appropriate item to eat at a Japanese restaurant on the Chesapeake Bay, it is this). My sister adored the veggies and the fish, and had me try a wonderful tempura'd scallop. Warm and moist on the inside, crispy and delicious on the outside! Next time I go there, I should just order the tempura, because it is quite good.

But it will be difficult to pass up their sashimi (raw fish without the rice - with the rice, it is sushi). Again, my raw-ophobic sister was initially unreceptive, but finally she said, "Aw hell, I'll try it. I would eventually, anyway." So the first thing she tried was a white fish. She dipped it in soy sauce... and she loved it! She was shocked! She soon confessed that the thing that most worried her about it would be the texture, which she didn't think she would like. But the sashimi actually wound up being smoother than cooked fish, and certainly not slimy. We both noshed on raw salmon and tuna - though she was more than content to leave me the octopus (Hey, more for me!). It was hard not to finish everything on my plate, because, again, it was all so good. The egg and shrimp sashimi was tasty. We even ate a little of the parilla leaf garnish (I was told it is called opa), which was deliciously peppery.

Almost stuffed, and with our beverages gone, we were faced with the question of dessert. My sister didn't want anything - she just wanted to bag her tempura and go. I, however, insisted that she at least try some tempura ice cream, one of my favorite desserts of all time. She relelnted and ordered one for herself. A few minutes later the tempura ice cream appeared. I've seen this dish done adequately, and I've seen it done half-assed. The least appetizing was at a sushi restaurant in Pasadena, California, which offered five different flavors of tempura ice cream. It seemed as if they took a pre-fried tempura shell and placed a dollop of ice cream inside of it. LA-ZY! Chiu's, however, does it up right! I'm not sure what they put around the ice cream to keep it from melting under the batter - I've read that some kind of pound cake coating works well. The one time I tried to make it, all I got was blobs of tempura floating in a pot of oil and boiled ice cream. It gave an interesting flavor and texture to the shrimp tempura I made next, but it still was not what I was looking for. But at Chiu's, the ice cream was good. The crispy coating was hot, and the ice cream - vanilla coated with a thin layer of some kind of cake - was still solid and cold. The chocolate sauce on top was also a nice touch.

We finished our meal and got the check - $60 before tip!!! This was for: one seafood tempura plate, one sashimi plate, one warmsake, small, one lemonade, one tea, and two tempura ice creams. At $30 each, that was definitely more than I usually pay for myself. But I rarely eat out with my sister, and I thought for once, I could splurge. My sister liked the complimentary Japanese gum we each were given. Not me - I usually just throw it out. I'm not too crazy about gum. But I was crazy about the food, and look forward to my (hopefully less expensive) next trip to Chiu's Sushi.

Next time, however, I definitely get the sashimi appetizer! My stomach is just too small for the entrée!