Chiu's still got it!

I don't get to write too much about where I eat anymore.  Last night I got to go with the sister, her husband and friends to Chiu's in Harbor East.  We didn't do what we usually do: order a few rolls, some soup, maybe some sashimi, and tempura ice cream.  We had a more varied menu.  Our one friend, who used to work in a Japanese restaurant, was not too big on the sushi rice, and the tempura shrimp wasn't as crispy as it usually is.  But overall we found the service and the food to be good as usual. The food came out about as quickly as I could have hoped for.

One thing I do want to point out: Hakushika's Snow Beauty sake ($18 for 300mL).  When you shake it up, sediments at the bottom mix in with the sake to make it very milky.  I liked this sake.  It was silky (hey - silky and milky!) and a little sweet, though very slightly gritty if you don't mix it well before pouring.

Food Truck Rally in Baltimore!

Get ready to rrrrrrrrrrresauraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaant!

(Okay that was stupid. Anywho...)

Charm City is finally hitting the foodie big leagues, as several of her food trucks are clamoring together in Harbor East on Friday, July 8 (that's this Friday, y'all) for a Food Truck Rally. It will be at the more-than-occasional venue of the Silver Platter truck (421 Central Avenue). Attendees so far, according to the above-linked page at the Baltimore Sun website, should include:

* GrrChe (Twitter: @grrche - gourmet grilled cheeses)
* Gypsy Queen (Twitter: @thegypsytruck - As their website says, they join "inventive cuisine with cheeky-smart ass street food". Smart ass food sounds enticing to me.)
* Iced Gems (Twitter: @icedgemsbaking - The gourmet cupcake truck and bakery that I have oft raved about here and on Twitter)
* Miss Shirley's (Twitter: @missshirleys - I didn't realize one of the city's favorite brunch locales now comes to you!)
* Souper Freak (Twitter: @souperfreaky - delicious soups and sandwiches. Oh sweet Jesus, I caught myself almost saying "sammies")

I assume the Silver Platter truck, with its blue crab tostadas, buttermilk calamari and New England lobster rolls, will be there too, but I saw no word in the Sun. One can hope. I haven't gotten a chance to try it yet.

From Dogwood to Kumari: Birthday Weekend Blowout!

Monday was my thirty-somethingth birthday.* And I ate. And I ate. And now I feel like I'm starting my new year of life with a few extra pounds (note to self: look into Towson's alumni gym membership, which is relatively cheaper than the local gyms). I have to say I had good meals all around! I don't eat out that often anymore, so I was playing catch up. But half of these meals were gifts, so it kind of evened out. A few tidbits about the tidbits I bit:

Chiu's Sushi (Harbor East)

Cathy and I went here on Friday for sashimi. A few years ago Chiu's was her first taste of sushi, and she never looked back.


Their deluxe sashimi plate ($25) is loaded with salmon, tuna and yellowtail. But unlike most deluxe sashimi plates, that's all it had. Still luscious but not as much variety as I have gotten used to in a sashimi plate. There is more variety in a larger sushi-sashimi boat, but that would have provided too much food for us to finish. We accompanied that with two of their current special rolls, the Pretty Angel Roll and the Osaka Roll. My favorite roll was covered in crab meat and red and white tobiko, with tempura flakes inside. I should've noted which was which. I think the one I am describing was the Pretty Angel Roll. I paired that with a nice cold 300 mL bottle of Hakushika sake. Cathy tells me I said some embarrassing stuff in the elevator in the parking garage. I guess she can't take me anywhere after I down a bottle of sake.


And as usual, we each finished our meals with a generous helping of tempura ice cream.



Dogwood Restaurant (Hampden)

The following night I went out with friends to the new and improved Dogwood Restaurant. It had been a while since I was there. Dogwood did not fail to amaze me the first time I went, way before their remodeling, but they impressed me more this time. The guys told to me to get what I wanted. I still try to restrain myself in these situations, but I did get some great food, not to mention the Phoenix cocktail ($9), a fizzy and smooth Prosecco-based cocktail that kept me quite happy for much of the evening.

I started off my meal with the Dogwood Baked Oysters ($16), though that big roasted head of garlic ($4) did intrigue me. The oysters - stuffed with such treats like lump crabmeat, spinach, fennel and parmigiano-reggiano (or "reggianito") - were plump and juicy, and went all too fast. As bold as some of these flavors tend to be, they still managed to take a backseat to the oyster (as they should).


While Eric and Alan each went for delicious red meat dishes (hey, it's not a frequent thing for them), I ordered the special stuffed bronzini (I don't know what it cost - I didn't pay, I didn't ask). Both Eric and our waitress recommended this highly and I am glad I took their advice. This meaty, tender Mediterranean fish was served whole, stuffed with all manner of goodies: bread, olives, tomato, onions, and green beans. The flavors blended together wonderfully in this dish. It held up as leftovers the next day, when I got into the head. I don't eat many fish heads so I was not sure what all was edible and what was not.


Eric got this lovely 12 oz. beef tenderloin ($23). I didn't try it but he liked it. I did get a taste of the celery root-sweet potato gratin. I didn't realize the two flavors melded together so well.


Alan got this big ol' New York strip ($31). He was quite pleased with it.



Ledo's Pizza (Locust Point)

On Sunday night I went to Ledo's Pizza with quite a few of the guys in the chorus I sing in. It was just a nice meal after rehearsal. I ordered the fried calamari ($5), a little rubbery but still worth ordering again. I was pleasantly surprised with the waffle fries, sprinkled with a dash of Old Bay. It came with a not terribly spicy dipping sauce. My main course was their small (personal-size) Hawaiian pizza ($6.50). The ham was juicy and the pineapple wasn't too juicy (both pluses). The thin crust on this square pizza was flaky, not soggy or rubbery on the edges like it is in many chains.



Kumari (Mount Vernon)

Monday night I visited my family for two egg yellow cake (a classic from our Sunbeam stand mixer cookbook from 1950) with chocolate buttercream frosting. Then on the way home, it was a brief stop in the Grand Central for a beer. I wasn't going to stop for dinner, but I figured it was my birthday. So why not? I initially headed down to the Mount Vernon Stable, whose service I have found to be wonderful on some nights and unkind on others. Despite there only being four customers in the restaurant, the staff still couldn't be bothered to at least say "We'll be with you in a minute", so up to Kumari it was. They had no customers, and greeted me immediately.

I keep forgetting how good the food is at Kumari. I was pleasantly reminded the other night. I kept it simple, and just ordered a main dish. First they gave me a complimentary papadum with a three-chutney sampler of, which they seemed all too eager to clear out of my way (I like the chutneys. Why do you want to take them away?). The onion chutney was my favorite, though their tamarind chutney was deeper and thicker than most I have had, which tend to be thin and runny. It was actually a little smoky, if tamarind chutneys can be.


My main dish was the Nepali Bhojan ($16). This is their non-vegetarian "typical Nepalese everyday meal" (I had their vegetarian dahl bhat set on a previous visit a while back). I can't identify everything on the platter, and I didn't get a chance to copy it from the menu (the online menu is a bit briefer) but it was all good. One favorite items include the soft and extremely buttery naan. I used it for dipping into everything, including the chutneys, which it seemed I had to almost wrest from the waiters who wanted to just clear it out of my way. Other highlights of the meal include the juicy and somewhat spicy lamb curry and a filling bowl of dahl. Their potato pickle is not a typical pickle, as it isn't a pickled raw vegetable. Instead, it's a tasty cooked potato in what I think is Nepalese pickling spices. It's not what you would normally expect in a pickle.



That's it for my birthday weekend. I've eaten out too much these past few days and it's time to stay in for a while and fix some food.

* If you missed it on Twitter then I'm not telling.

Glarus Chocolatiers

I did not know about this place, Glarus Chocolatier, a self-proclaimed Swiss chocolatier (Swiss chocolate, mmmm). There are two locations, in Timonium and now in Harbor East, across the street from Whole Foods in that new building they just finished. It says "LAUREATE" on the side, and has a swimming pool on the second floor. You can see it at eye level from the Whole Foods parking garage. It's the weirdest thing!

So I see it after indulging myself with some side dishes and little pieces of cheese that Whole Foods sells (tiny leftover sections of expensive cheeses so that you can get enough of a few tastes to decide if you want a bigger piece in the future; also makes an interesting quiche). I thought it looked strange from a distance - there are what appear to be bookcases in the chocolate-colored chocolatier. Why would a chocolate shop be lined with bookcases? That was enough to intrigue me into coming in. And of course, I saw the shelves lined with chocolate - chocolate bark, specifically, but also with a clever display of a real cacao pod split open, next to a bag of almonds, I didn't look too long so I don't remember).

What kept me there was what the woman behind the counter said to me and the two people who entered ahead of me: they let you try things you're interested in. (SCORE!) Strangely, I didn't pre-sample. There weren't many flavors, and each chocolate is about $1.33, so you can't buy too many without spending tons of your own cacao beans (which I don't have much of after this Thanksgiving).

I got a box of four, which I just realized that, at $6.50, costs more than they do by the piece. I think they charge for the box and the nice wrapping (they even have a little basket of copper bells to tie onto it; next time, I'll just save the woman the trouble - and myself some money - and get them in a bag).

The woman was quite friendly, and when I asked, she told me that they'd only been there for about five weeks. Having not come down to Whole Foods for a while, I realized that this had to be why I haven't seen it yet.

The chocolates I got were lovely visually and taste-wise, but the cost will keep me from coming back too often. This is a place where you should go to buy nice chocolates for that special someone. Of the four I got - and please do eat them at room temperature - m favorite was probably their butter truffle, which looks like a spiky yellow ball, and has a buttery inside. Yum. The others were good, too - the newly-laid out pumpkin truffle had a thick chocolate shell but was richly pumpkin-y, while the kirsch truffle had a really cool sea-saltiness (because it's covered in sea salt, duh) to cut through the sweetness of the chocolate. And I got a non-truffle, the rigi spitz, which is best described as a slightly brandy-flavored chocolate with white chocolate on top. It was good, albeit my least favorite of the four I ate. Next time I may need to try the barks, though they are a bit pricey for me. Still, it's not like I'll eat it all in one sitting, unlike these truffles. Hell, before I was back out of the car I was halfway done the box (which my niece is now using to play with her Charlie Brown dolls).