Snacking State-by-State: Washington I - A recipe featuring ANOTHER crab...

For my final foray into the Pacific Northwest, I tackle the Evergreen State. I've been to Washington but once, during a conference in Seattle long ago. Hopefully I can get back at some point in the not-too-distant future. But of course, Washington is more than just Seattle, and food wise it has much to offer inland and on the coasts.

Official Name: State of Washington
State Nickname: The Evergreen State
Admission to the US: November 11, 1889 (#42)
Capital: Olympia (21st largest)
Other Important Cities: Seattle (largest), Spokane (2nd largest), Tacoma (3rd largest) 
Region: Northwest, Pacific, Pacific Rim; Pacific (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Salmon
Bordered by: Pacific Ocean (west), Oregon (south), Idaho (east), British Columbia (Canada) (north)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: apple (fruit); bluebunch wheatgrass (grass); steelhead trout (fish); Walla Walla sweet onion (vegetable)
Some Famous and Typical Foods: Pacific coast seafood, including but not limited to: Dungeness crab, salmon, trout, scallops of many varieties, Geoduck clam, mussels, oysters, halibut, cod; blackberries, apples, huckleberries, cranberries, cherries; hazelnuts; coffee

What does Washington have to offer, food wise? A few of its key exports and notable foods include:

• Dungeness crab – yes, that other famous crab that those of us from the Chesapeake Bay stare at and go “Damn, that’s a big crab!” Far be it from me to get into an argument with a Washingtonian on which is better. I've eaten quite a good bit of both. I love Dungeness crab, but strongly prefer the blue crab. Then again, had I been born and raised off Puget Sound instead of the Chesapeake Bay, I’d probably be singing a different tune.
• Salmon – the Pacific Northwest is indeed salmon country, eaten here for millennia. The Northwestern stuff is some of the best salmon in the country.
• Scallops – specifically the “singing scallop”, which Seattle-based chef Tom Douglas says were so named because “divers say they whistle through their shells when they are disturbed (and of course, the name became a good marketing tool) [Douglas 2001:68].
• Geoduck clams – This is pronounced like “Gooey duck”. The massive, intimidating clam is not available year round, but you can actually find it here on the East Coast when it is in season. You have to go to H Mart (I haven’t checked the prices but I don’t think they’re all that cheap).  I bet when in season you can find it at the Maine Avenue Fish Market, in the other Washington, the District of Columbia.
• Apples – Apples are one of Washington’s major industries, with the Evergreen State producing over 100 million apples every year.  They are Washington's largest agricultural product [Washington Apple Commission 2010]. You can even find Washington apples in the Mid-Atlantic.
• Coffee – Seattle is the home of one of this nation’s best-known evil empires. Mind you, Starbucks with its huge, Borg-like tentacles is only the most famous brand of coffee to come out of Seattle. It isn’t the only one.

That first one, the Dungeness crab, is known up and down the Western Seaboard. When I lived in California it was quite easy to find a Dungeness crab for about $10 (that’s $5 a pound). Pre-cooked, I would bring it home, pick it, and swirl the meat around in butter, beer and Old Bay. Someday I may have to truck on down to H Mart and buy a live one to steam Maryland-style. For now, I will have to use the pre-cooked ones, which are much, much pricier in Baltimore than in Seattle or even SoCal’s Inland Empire.

Faced with the challenge of finding an interesting way to prepare Dungeness crab, I turned to Tom Douglas, who like so many readers of this blog comes not from Washington but from the Chesapeake Bay region (Delaware, to be exact). In his Tom Douglas’ Seattle Kitchen [2001], the chef and owner of several Seattle-area restaurants talks up the many ways to prepare these massive beauties.

The Northwest tradition is to boil the crabs briefly in salted water. The crabs are served hot, or more likely chilled, with melted butter and lemon or mayonnaise. One crab per person is the norm in our house. My daughter Loretta’s favorite treat is to have the crabs wok-seared on a very not burner with ginger, Chinese black beans, and garlic. By the time we’re done, we’re covered from chin to elbows with crab shells and sticky sauce. {Douglas 2001:77]

It didn't dawn on me but the recipe I chose ended up being the aforementioned favorite in the Douglas household, a Japanese-inspired Dungeness crab wok-seared in ginger, garlic and fermented black beans. It’s not as simple as it sounds, mind you, but it’s definitely different for this Chesapeake dweller – though not the former Chesapeake dweller who came up with it.

Said recipe can be found on pages 90 and 91 of Tom Douglas’ Seattle Kitchen. 

The Recipe: Wok-Fried Dungeness Crab with Ginger and Lemongrass

For this Dungeness crab preparation you will need: 

* Dungeness crab (a two-pounder cost me $20 at the Maine Avenue Fish Market in DC, twice as much as I might have spent in a West Coast supermarket.  Note, however, it was well worth waiting to buy it there - it was thawed, and they will indeed steam it for you (with or without Old Bay - your choice).  You don't have that option when you buy it frozen at Wegman's for about $40 a crab.  Also note: H Mart does sell live Dungeness crab.  I have no idea what it costs.)

* ginger (a nob was about $6 per lb, or about 75 cents for the piece I broke off)

* garlic (had it)

* lemongrass (did not have it; cost $2 for a bundle at H Mart, less than what you'd get at Wegman's or Harris Teeter.  Can you find this stuff at Giant yet?)

* lime (about 50 cents)

* poblano chile (same)

* shallot (and same)

* chicken stock (or in this case, the Better Than Bouillon I had in my fridge)

* rice wine vinegar (I keep forgetting that I have rice wine in my pantry, not rice vinegar!  Whatever; it worked fine.)

* soy sauce (had lots of it)

* chili garlic sauce (easier to find than I thought it would be; about $4 at H Mart)

* fermented Chinese black beans (all I could find at H Mart was this in paste form, again about $4)

* sake (had a nice big bottle of Haiku brand in my kitchen)

* vegetable (here, peanut) oil (had it)

* sugar (had it too)

* cornstarch dissolved in water (a necessity for making nice thick sauces in the wok)

You should also have a wok.

Start by mincing your plants - the chile, the ginger, the shallot, the lemongrass (tender white part only) and the garlic (this I grated).

Next, heat a little oil in your wok.

Stir fry the veggie products quickly.

And add your other ingredients, minus the crab.

Now disassemble that crab.  For those of us from the Chesapeake (and those other areas where crab picking is not uncommon), this is rather easy - it's just like picking a blue crab.  A very, very big blue crab.  For everybody else, start by removing the apron.

Next, remove the carapace (which you will keep).

Rip off the gills (which you will not keep).

Break the body of the crab in half.

Finally, separate the legs from the rest of the body.

Throw the entire thing, sans apron or gills (but including the carapace) into the wok, and mix.

Cover and steam for a few minutes.

Uncover and steam some more. For presentation's sake, reassemble the crab the best you can, carapace on top.

What an innovative (to me, anyway) way to prepare a crab.  The crab is messy, I will give Tom Douglas that, and sweet and sour and tangy and a bit spicy all at once.  It was difficult putting it away for later.  I just could not help but crack into one more of those crab legs.  Now this begs the next question: I wonder how this would work with blue crabs?

Sources:

Douglas, Tom.  Tom Douglas' Seattle Kitchen.  William Morrow: New York, 2001.

"kiwisoutback" (Squidoo.com user).  "How to Make a Starbucks Iced Latte."  In "Starbucks Coffee Drink Recipes", Copyright 2008, Squidoo.com.  All rights reserved.

Washington Apple Commission.  "Crop facts."  Copyright 2010 Washington Apple Commission.  All rights reserved.


Washington Apple Commission.  "Golden Apples and Yams."  Copyright 2010 Washington Apple Commission.  All rights reserved.

Coffee.org.  "History of Starbucks."  Date unknown.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Washington" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "Washington".

Food Truck Crawl on the Miracle Mile in LA!

En route to an hour of eating. I'm following that guy. Okay, I'm going the same direction as that guy, not really following him so to speak.

Tuesday was my day to venture into the wilds of Downtown Los Angeles. I had chosen Tuesday because I was going to a Web Soup taping that evening - fun as always, and the nice people there helped me find my lost keys and even gave me a bottle of water to make me feel better. Awww... (plus, Web Soup Chris Hardwick is coming back to the Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse in June).

But I started my day in LA by seeking out food trucks. It all started out the night before when I read on my new phone about the Dim Sum Truck (Twitter: @dimsumtruck - NB: since so many of these food trucks get their word out through Twitter, I will post links to their Twitter feeds. This will be helpful if you visit LA, or if you actually are visiting my Bawlmer-based blog from the City of Angels). It's one of those Android phones (Hey, these things really are useful!!!) and I downloaded one of those free "apps" to tell me where food trucks are. The Dim Sum Truck was at the Miracle Mile yesterday, right across from the LA County Museum of Art (or LACMA). I had even set my GPS to its location (5850 Wilshire Blvd, LA, CA) to just go right there. What I found, however, was more than just the Dim Sum Truck. Oh yes, much, much more.

If you see this across the street, you are in the right place.

In retrospect, there were about sixteen trucks along three blocks of the Miracle Mile, including the Cool Haus ice cream truck (Twitter: @COOLHAUS) on the other side of the street. When I first saw the trucks I almost short circuited: I literally wanted to go to each one, but I knew this was not going to happen. So I had to peruse them all. A few of the many standouts:

* The Wien (Twitter: @thewientruck), one of two wiener trucks there, with regular, all beef, Polish, spicy Polish and (if I remember correctly) veggie dogs all priced around $5, before toppings and stuff. A dog is still going to run you not much more than $6 or $7 if you get a few toppings. And yes there is a bacon dog.
* Bool BBQ (Twitter: @BoolBBQ), which I ate from last year, with its revolutionary Korean BBQ tacos
* La Rue de Paris (Twitter: @laruedeparis), which sells pastries and especially crepes from between $4 and $8.
* No less than two Indian and two Mediterranean trucks, selling everything from tikka masala (New Delhi Express, Twitter: @newdelhiexpress) to pitas (Pita Pusher, Twitter: @pitapusher) to Mediterranean-Mexican fusion (Kabob Express, Twitter: @mykabobexpress).
* And of course, several taco trucks, including one of at least three Korean food trucks (the aforementioned Bool BBQ).

The Dim Sum Truck

After much hemming and hawing, I finally settled on three. The first one was the whole reason I went to the Miracle Mile in the first place: the Dim Sum Truck, which was the very last food truck I stumbled upon. For just $6, I got three pieces each of pork shu mai ($3) and shrimp har gow dumplings ($3), along with a garlicky soy dipping sauce. And I got my food almost instantly, too - warm as is usually the case from dim sum carts, and flavorful. This was as good as I've had dim sum lately, certainly better than your standard "Asian buffet" or "frozen" variety, and as good as the stuff you'll usually find in most restaurants.

dim sum and samosas

The next one I stopped by was the Bollywood Bites food truck (Twitter: @BOLLYWOOD_BITES). I stepped up to it before the enthusiastic guy came out to draw in customers, and went for the cheaper $2 order of potato and pea samosas. Theirs came with two dipping sauces, and were incredibly fragrant, flaky and tender. The filling also was better than many samosas I have eaten, even at many restaurants.

The Bollywood Bites food truck

My last stop was a taco truck. This time I stopped at the Komodo Food Truck (Twitter: @komodofood). Though I almost went with the Bool BBQ truck again, what drew me to Komodo was not its intriguing pan-international fusion tacos, but the Baltimore Ravens flag hanging from above the window.

There it is, hons.

Yes, I am a sucker for a Bawlmer ex-pat. I bought one of the Java tacos - Indonesian spices with pork, scallion and cucumber for $3.


While not nearly as spicy as they advertised (it didn't make my mouth hurt anyway), it was still a juicy, slightly sweet and savory, and tasty soft taco. I had some flashbacks to a cochinita pibil that I had made a while back, not so much for the flavor as for the look. Ooooh, I wonder if anyone is planning a Yucatecan food truck? (Note: some of the trucks take Visa or Mastercard. Komodo does, but you must spend at least $10. They make this easy for you, since they offer whole meals that cost $10).

I drove away from the Miracle Mile thinking that this was, by far, the best $15 I had ever spent on lunch in Los Angeles, and I have had more than a few of those over the last several years.

Finally, a helpful list of food trucks that showed up at the Miracle Mile on Tuesday. I have posted Twitter links wherever I could.

All-American Gourmet Grill (American food - Twitter: @AllAmericanGG)

Bollywood Bites (Indian - Twitter: @BOLLYWOOD_BITES)

Bool BBQ (Korean fusion, including their legendary Korean BBQ tacos - Twitter: @BoolBBQ)

Chili Dancer (pan-international dishes, focusing specifically on Thai and Southeast Asian food, that showcase chilis - Facebook: The Chili Dancer, though nothing is posted; Twitter account has been so inactive that I'm not sure it's even theirs)

Cool Haus (gourmet ice cream sandwiches - Twitter: @COOLHAUS)

The Greasy Wiener (hot dogs, including New Jersey-style "rippers" - Twitter: @TheGreasyWiener)

Happy Cup Ramen Truck (ramen noodles, duh - Twitter: @HappyCupRamen)

Kabob Express (Mediterranean-Latino fusion - Twitter: @mykabobexpress)

KoManna (Korean - Twitter: @KoManna)

Komodo Food Truck (pan-Asian and pan-international tacos - Twitter: @komodofood)

La Rue de Paris (pastries and crepes - Twitter: @laruedeparis)

New Delhi Express (Indian - Twitter: @newdelhiexpress)

New York Galbi (Korean - Phone: (213) 985-8219 - I cannot find a Twitter or Facebook account for them)

Pita Pusher (Mediterranean - Twitter: @pitapusher

Vchos (pupusas and "Central American-inspred tapas" - Twitter: @vchostruck)

The Wien (hot dogs - Twitter: @thewientruck)
Other photos:

The view towards the Mediterranean food trucks

Got pupusas indeed!

All those food trucks

Guido-Approved for the Left Coast. Orange people welcome.

And from New Jersey to New York, all in a small section of the Miracle Mile.

One Night in Raleigh Part 2: Chocolate and Cha Chiang

Before heading back to Bawlmer, I wanted to see what downtown Raleigh had to offer during the day. Since I am a museum person, museums were the logical option. And Raleigh has a few nice museums in their downtown area, plus a public parking lot that only costs $1 an hour, max of 8 hours. Two of your best options are the state history (which I had no time to check out) and natural history museums. I swear, out of all the state museums I have ever seen, the North Carolina Museum of Natural History is one of the best in terms of its layout, subject matter, location and exhibits. To wit: the massive skeleton of the whale hanging from the ceiling of their North Carolina coastal life exhibit, or the recreation of a woodland mountain habitat that you can see taxidermied animals staring out from! (The Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman also has similar exhibits, but I liked NC's just a wee bit better. Does Maryland have one, or do we just use the Smithsonian as ours?).

Perhaps their keystone exhibit - similar in focus to the Smithsonian's elephant in the rotunda - is the skeleton of Acrocanthosaurus, the celebrated "Terror of the South," having freshly attacked a life-size model of a Brachiosaurus. One mother had to coax her kid into the exhibit (this one under a four-story tall glass rotunda room). Press one little button, and the injuries that felled this most complete specimen of Acrocanthosaurus magically light up!

Beware, kid!

Of course, I came because they had a special exhibit on Chocolate! They wouldn't let me take any photos, as is the case in so many special exhibitions of stuff.

This was the only thing they would let me take a picture of. Wow.

This was all for the best, as I would never have been able to figure out what to photograph first. So here are the highlights of this very cool exhibit (all text was in English and Spanish):

• life-size model of a cacao tree with dissected model cacao pods
• the ancient history of cacao, highlighting the importance and prestige of drinkable chocolate to the Maya (especially in the first millenium) - that includes replicas of Maya chocolate drinking vessels, and a verybrief introduction to Mayan hieroglyphs (basically, that they represent actual words, which I knew, but hey, not everybody does)
• the more recent history of cacao, including how the Aztecs used the beans as money, how the Spaniards exported it to Europe, how chocolate (as prestigious to Europeans as to Mesoamericans) profitted from the African slave trade, and how it finally became available to the masses.
  

I was allowed to take whatever I wanted from the exhibition store, so long as I paid for whatever I took. I bought some locally-made chocolate caramels (25¢ each), some chocolate-covered cacao beans from Nahualli Trading Co. ($9 - how's that for po-mo redundancy?), and locally manufactured "HOT South of the Border" bon bons from the Carrboro, NC-based Miel Bon Bons ($4 for a bag of two). The ckeckout person noted that I was adventurous. These were chocolate bon bons coated with pineapple and chili pepper, and they were chewy, soft and spicy all at once. These were very good bon bons, and I would get them again. Miel Bon Bons also makes a habanero bon bon, which I would've tried had they had any. I wonder if they do mail order? As for the rest: I could've stuffed those caramels in my mouth all day, and the cacao beans were what I expected, even though I had never eaten a cacao bean before: bitter coated with sweet.

Afterwards I had a few options for lunch. There was one BBQ place I wanted to check out - where else but in Raleigh can you find both types of North Carolina BBQ, the sparse vinegary whole-hog pork BBQ of the East and the sweet tomato/ketchup based shoulder-only BBQ of the West? But I wanted to walk, and this was not in walking distance. I had choices of sandwiches, burgers, Pan-Asian, Chinese, sushi, Southern, deli, Irish - the choices were dizzying. One place, the Duck & Dumpling, continued to pop up in small adverts everywhere I went (the hotel, the museum, etc). When I found that I was only a few blocks away I hoofed it on over.

Duck & Dumpling is a very sleek, very stylish Chinese-Vietnamese restaurant with snappy service (the regulars next to me got their cashew chicken almost immediately). It has a small yet eclectic menu styled by Chef David Mao. What specifically drew me in was the $12 prix fixe lunch menu. Let me say that again: $12 prix fixe lunch menu. What a great, frugal find for a guy who just wasted $40 on a motel room he didn't even use! I was all up for that.

As with most restaurants in our own Restaurant Week (coming up in early August, by the way), Duck & Dumpling offers three courses (appetizer, mains and dessert), with your choice of one of three to five dishes for each course. For the first course, I could have had a salad with ginger dressing, but the waitress described a most intriguing edamame hummus (probably the first time you have ever seen those two words in the same sentence) with taro chips.


The chef simply made a hummus out of edamame instead of chickpeas. I was too curious to pass this up, and I'm glad I got it. It tasted surprisingly more like hummus than the waitress described it, and it was substantially thick. I've never been that crazy about edamame, but this was good.

For the main course, I ordered the only noodle dish on the prix fixe menu, the cha chiang noodles: a savory dish (Savory noodles? Go fig.) of thick noodles covered in ground pork and finely julienned cucumber slices.


I asked for spicy sriracha sauce on the side. The pork was indeed savory and slightly salty, which I liked, and the cucumber pieces gave a nice, refreshing contrast to all the savoriness. I kept on dipping my chopsticks into the sriracha and mixing it around in the noodles, to slightly spice things up.

I originally wanted flan for dessert, which they had run out of. So instead I ordered a Kahlua chocolate souflée. I waited a while for my dessert when my waitress comes out and tells me the chef just made more flan! But I stuck with the souflée, and it was a good choice.


From every place that I stuck my spoon, piping hot choclate sauce oozed out into the soft, moist cake. It was a delicious way to end my meal, and strangely appropriate considering the Chocolate! exhibit I had just spent half an hour not taking photos of.

The meal came to only $12 plus tax, and the sweet tea (they also offer unsweetened - which I normally order and then dump a whole lot of artificial sweetener into it anyway) was apparently part of the cost. Either that, or they forgot to charge me. Anyway, it was a good way to prepare for the mammoth 5 hour drive back to Baltimore, towards which my GPS sent me via US 1 to I-85, not straight up I-95 as I expected. It was more scenic, I must admit. Plus I got to stop in a Food Lion and buy another six pack of Fat Tire!

Other photos:

Yep, they have these guys, too

And this is what they look like when they're babies. They're baby blues!

Don't look up!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

Unsuspecting dinosaur, you have no idea what that Archocanthosaur is gonna do to you...

REALLY don't look up!

Er, don't look down?

for Duck & Dumpling

Exit 22: Greenspring Avenue

There doesn't seem to be much off of this exit. If you turn one way, you have deer for two miles. Okay, you could turn that

into something. The other way is Quarry Lake, and the new ritzy housing development and business park. The former probably won't be filled up anytime soon. The latter is already filling up. I mentioned that Fresh Market that I came across not long ago. I figured it was that and a Walgreen's. But right now there is a bit more.

Food-wise there is not a whole lot yet, but the variety is good for what there is. It's a mixture of sit-down and take-out, and it all looks so damn new. In fact, with all the development going on, if you added palm trees I could swear this was Fontana, California (the new nice part, I mean). The weather certainly made me think it was, up at 70 degrees (aah). Funny tangent: I talked to my friend Jim who lives out in Yucaipa (same northwestern part of the same largest county in the lower 48 as Fontana). It was 48 degrees there on Monday night - ha! (Of course, he will be laughing when it gets back up to the 80's over there and we're buried under two feet of ice sometime next month.) The handful of new establishments includes:

• Ciao! Pizza Bistro Italiano, which has no slices but they do have 10" personal pizzas. It's one of the fancier take-outs, which has "20 wines for $20" and lots of antipasti, pastas, fish, veal and so on. It looks like a chain, but all indications from the website is that it's not.I grabbed a menu and left.
• A Boardwalk Fries, the first I have ever seen outside of a mall. I was tempted to go in for one of those frankfurter sandwiches.
• Jasmine Asian Bistro - Unless Sun food critic Elizabeth Large and I are mistaken, it looks like the Towson restaurant I liked so much has now relocated here.
• California Tortilla, a mostly-local Tex-Mex chain with over 30 locations in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, DC, Virginia, West Virginia and Florida (most of those are in MD and VA). According to their website, they feature a limited-time Greek burrito. So is this Grex-Mex?
  

I chose this last one for one simple reason: they had a special promotion yesterday, apparently the day after they opened, where they had free lunch from 12 to 2. My father told me long ago: "Don't pass up free food" (he actually said that, I'm not kidding), but I was still a little leery. Especially after the enthusiastic person at the door (who turned out to be just a customer waiting for her co-worker) talked up the deal with an enthusiasm rarely seen outside of a Scientology HQ (**shudder**). But I went in anyway. The folks behind the counter were even more gleeful. I figured since I was here, why pass up the chance to eat free? Unless there's something in the salsa, of course.

I didn't order much - just one steak soft taco (normally $2.50, but that day it was not) and a soft drink (normally another $1.50). While I waited (it didn't take long) I saw a dazzling array of hot sauces from all over the world on their walls - scores and scores from Mexico to Vietnam to Louisiana and back. Some were decorative, others were actually for sale.

I got my taco and headed out to sit on a bench. When I bit into it, it didn't taste like steak. In fact, they gave me their beef one instead (normally $2.30, which is what they rang up and would have charged me - maybe they heard the wrong thing). It was buried under a ton of shredded lettuce, but there was a lot of ground beef underneath it. There could have been a little more cheese and a lot less lettuce. I did, however, pass up the complimentary salsa fresca that comes with a sit-down meal, so that one's on me. And hey, am I going to bitch about free food? No. Still it was adequate - I'd get it again, even though I'd need to pay for it the next time.

I got so little because I wanted to try another place - California Tortilla was the first one I went into. All the others didn't quite have what I wanted, so I went to the Fresh Market, picked up a muffin and went home.

Address:Places I visited:

California Tortilla (Mexican / Southwestern-TexMex) - Quarry Lake at Greenspring, 2588 Quarry Lake Drive, Baltimore, MD 21209; Phone: (410) 484-5229

• Would I eat there again? Yep
• Would I go out of my way to eat there again? I might
  

Places to look up later:

Boardwalk Fries (hot dogs / fast food) - Quarry Lake at Greenspring, 2622 Quarry Lake Drive, Baltimore, MD 21209; Phone: (410) 580-1500

Ciao! Pizza Bistro Italiano (Italian) - Quarry Lake at Greenspring, 2620 Quarry Lake Drive, Baltimore, MD 21209; Phone: (410) 486-1840

Jasmine Asian Bistro (pan-Asian - just moved from its Towson location, so maybe it's time for a new review) - Quarry Lake at Greenspring, 2592 Quarry Lake Drive, Baltimore, MD 21209; Phone: (410) 484-5170

Other photos:

Take that Maryland flag away and it's Fontana, Corona or Chino Hills, I swear!

I didn't even know it was Jasmine's until I walked in and saw the menu. Honestly, this place could use a sign or something!

Shelves and shelves of shweat-inducing shauces!

I wonder what this is going to be? Not a restaurant, that's for sure. Probably some sort of department store.

* Exit 22 sign adapted from

http://www.aaroads.com/mid-atlantic/maryland600/i-695_il_exit_022_04.jpg. Thanks and apologies to the original photographer.