Snacking State-by-State: Michigan II - I am the Falafel King!!! (not)

As noted in the previous post, Michigan is home to large immigrant populations from Wales, Poland, Russia, and all over the Arab world (and probably a few Canadians that filtered in from Ontario).  Arab-American cuisine - especially brought by Lebanese immigrants among others - enjoys a strong presence in Detroit and nearby Dearborn, the latter of which enjoys the largest Arab-American community in the United States.

Official Name: State of Michigan
State Nicknames:The Wolverine State; The Great Lakes State

Admission to the US: January 26, 1837 (#26)
Capital: Lansing (5th largest)
Other Important Cities: Detroit (largest); Grand Rapids (2nd largest); Ann Arbor (6th largest)
Region: Midwest; Great Lakes; East North Central (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Wild Rice
Bordered by: Lake Michigan (west and southwest); Indiana & Ohio (south); Lakes Erie & Huron (east); Ontario (Canada) (north and east); Lake Superior (north); Wisconsin (northwest)

Official State Foods and Edible Things: brook trout (fish); whitetail deer (game mammal)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: immigrant cuisines, especially German, Irish, Welsh and Middle Eastern/Arabic; Coney Island dog; pasty (in the Upper Peninsula); morel mushrooms

ArabDetroit.com notes the diversity of the Middle Eastern community in the Midwest: 22 nationalities (including Palestine) represent the Detroit area's vast Arab-American community.  Starting in the late 19th century, Syrian and Lebanese Christians flooded into the area looking for work, followed in the early 20th century by Muslim Arabs (specifically Yemenis and Palestinians) and Chaldeans - from what would later become Iraq) who came to work in the burgeoning auto industry.  Over a century later there are anywhere from 400,000 to 500,000 Arab Americans in Michigan, most in the Detroit metropolitan area [ArabDetroit.com 2011]

Middle Eastern food - popular not just in the Arab world but in Israel as well - has become a popular staple in the United States.  Today you can find hummus, falafel, tabbouleh and a host of other Middle Eastern foods in any supermarket in the US - foods that were at best specialty items twenty years ago.  And usually, these recipes are easy to make yourself.

The recipes: Hummus and Falafel

I tried two hummus recipes.  The first one, from Madelain Farah's Lebanese Cuisine, did not turn out so well for me.  The second, recipe #2 of My Cooking Class: Middle Eastern Basics by Marianne Magnier-Moreno, was what really worked.



The recipe: Hummus

* garbanzo beans (i.e., chickpeas - canned is fine for this.  If you want a smoother hummus, try removing the skins.  I learned this while listening to Splendid Table on NPR  Even at Whole Foods, chickpeas aren't that expensive.  Surprisingly, one can of the cheap ones costs about as much as a can of Goya chickpeas at Food Lion - about 85¢ for a can.  If you go with dried, remember that one pound of dried chickpeas eventually yields the equivalent of about four 15 oz cans)
* tahini (this sesame paste is a vital component to your hummus.  I bought Asmar's brand out of Lebanon, which was a little less expensive than the other ones, at about $3.50.  Probably the easiest one to find is Brooklyn-based Joyva's tahini, which is in a lot of supermarkets)
* lemon juice (I used both a fresh lemon and juice from the bottle)
* garlic (had it)
* olive oil (same)
* parsley flakes, paprika and pine nuts (these are garnishes for your hummus - use whatever ones you like)

Also consider eating this with pita bread, tabbouleh and maybe some nice homemade falafel (see below)
 

Using Mangier-Moreno's recipe (each step beautifully photographed by Frédéric Lucano in My Cooking Class: Middle Eastern Basics), you will drain the chickpeas, reserving some of the liquid.

Combine all of the ingredients except for the chickpea liquid and the olive oil.  Just throw them all into your food processor.

When I made the first go-round, using a different recipe in Maria Khalifé's The Middle Eastern Cookbook (page 21 - the Lebanese Hummus bi Tahini), I got what you see above: a lot of tahini dissolved in water and lemon juice.  Maybe I added too much (well duh).  Regardless, hummus soup was not what I was going for.

Round two worked much better (in fact most of the hummus photos are from my second, successful attempt at hummus-making).  Here, add the chickpea liquid a little at a time, until you get the desired consistency.

To wit, the desired consistency.  Mine was a little chunky, but it worked for me.

Even though it was a bit chunky, I liked this hummus more than any store-bought I have had, and about as much as any I've had in a restaurant.  Perhaps it was because making it was so much easier than I had anticipated, or maybe it was the freshness.  I don't know, but it was a nice one.

For a more complete (and, I might add, vegetarian-friendly) Middle Eastern feast, fry up some falafel.

The recipe: Falafel

The falafel is popular in both the Arab world and in Israel, where it is considered a national dish, and both Arab and Jewish immigrants from the Middle East brought the falafel to the United States.  The recipe I used was one of the rare ones I could find that was chickpea-exclusive.  Most if not all falafel recipes call for fava beans - falafels that use them come out with that distinct green hue.  This is especially common in Lebanese recipes.  This one I used, from Madelain Farah and showcased on Sara's Secrets, is different from one I saw in her book Lebanese Cuisine.  That recipe also calls for fava beans and chickpeas.  The fava-free recipe is better if you suffer from favism (which I do not seem to).  Since fava beans are not nearly as easy to find in the US, this one seemed like a no-brainer.

* chickpeas - this time I used two cans.  Yes, I should have gone the dried route.  Falafels seem to turn out better when you use the dried stuff, again skinned)
* onion, coarsely chopped
* baking soda (had it)
* cumin, chili flakes and coriander (had them)
* garlic, chopped (also on hand)
* flour (Farah's recipe does not call for much flour, but as I found out, I would need a good bit more just to keep it from falling apart)
* oil for frying

If using dried, soak overnight.  Otherwise, drain the chickpeas, but this time do not save the liquid - you won't need it.  Remove as many of the skins as you can.

This won't be a particularly quick process, but it's worth it if you are using the canned stuff.  If using fava beans, you will need to soak them overnight as well and skin them.

Add the onion and process.

Throw in the rest of the ingredients except for the oil (duh) and process until crumbly and mixed together.

Form into small balls, or patties.  I eventually found patties to work best, though the problems I had probably did not have so much to do with the shape of the falafel so much as the lack of flour.  These little beauties disintegrated as soon as I put them in the oil.  So what I did was use the Google to find out how to stop this.  The answer: flour.  Add more and more flour, which will help to bind the falafels and keep them from being vaporized in the pan.

These much better bound falafels held together better, though there were still some bits boiling off.

Drain and serve, preferably in pitas though this is not necessary.  I may have pulled them out too early, but again, I was afraid of seeing yet another series of falafels disintegrating into chickpea dust in the pan, so I took them out when I could.

Farah also gives a quick recipe for a tahini dipping sauce: smoosh garlic and chop with salt.

Mix with water and tahini, and then slowly add lemon juice.  Eventually it will thicken.

My falafels were a little softer than I would have liked.  Again, this may be due to my pulling them out of the oil sooner, or perhaps because I used canned instead of dried and soaked chickpeas.  I still had a good experience with the falafels that actually did turn out, though I ended up putting the pitas aside and just eating them and these lovely tomatoes with my hands.

With the hummus I made earlier, this turned out to be a most filling meal.

Sources:

ArabDetroit.com.  "Arab Americans".  Much information contributed by Rosina Hassoun, (Arab Americans in Michgan, 2005). Copyright ArabDetroit.com, 2011.  All rights reserved.

Adams, Marcia. Heartland: The Best of the Old and the New from Midwest Kitchens. Clarkson Potter: New York, 1991.

braniac (eHow user).  "How to Make a Detroit-Style Coney Island Hot Dog".  eHow article, post date unknown.  Copyright 1999-2011 eHow.

Dooley, Beth, and Lucia Watson.  Savoring Seasons of the Northern Heartland.  Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1994.

Farah, Madelain. "Falafel: Chickpea Patties".  Featured on the episode "Late Night Sandwiches" of the show Sara's Secrets (Sara Moulton, host).  Food Network, 2004.

Farah, Madelain.  Lebanese Cuisine: More than 200 Simple, Delicious, Authentic Recipes.  Twelfth edition. Self-published: New York, 1997.

Magnier-Moreno, Marianne, with Frédéric Lucano (photographer).  Middle Eastern Basics: 70 Recipes Illustrated Step by Step.  From the series "My Cooking Class".  Firefly Books: Buffalo, NY, 2010.

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

Because it's Eid Ul-Fitr

It's the end of Ramadan, Indian-style, as ShebasRecipes.com's Sfehmi shows us a fave sweet Eid breakfast... sheer korma!? Yes, something sweet and desserty to break a month-long daytime fast. As she points out, "It's yummy."

Because it's Eid Ul-Fitr

Remembering the world's biggest bowl of tabbouleh, from a Guinness record-breaking salad made at a school in Ramallah! Sure, it's from June of 2006, but you must admit: it'd be one hell of a way to break a fast! Linked from the Huffington Post website, where you can judge it against 19 other world's largest foods. They left out that crabcake from HonFest, but I emailed them about it so you don't have to (REUTERS/Loay Abu Haykel).

Lahore Kabob House

I don't understand why Mount Vernon was so much more swamped this Saturday than most, but it was. It was so swamped that I gave up after about 45 minutes of circling the neighborhood, and headed up Charles Street. Along the way I found a spot right in front of Lahore Kabob House, just minutes away from "Little Korea" and the neighborhood gay leather bar by foot. This place is unique among South Asian restaurants in that it has a dinner ($10) as well as a lunch ($8) buffet. The proprietor who seated me failed to tell me there was anything but a buffet. I wish I had seen a menu, like the folks had who were seated across the very tiny (but still not packed) room. It's a very yellow and beige, sparsely decorated room, with only generic decorations of flowers. The only inkling that this is a Pakistani restaurant are the TV blaring 24-hour news in Urdu, and the psychedelic picture framing (perhaps a) short Koranic passage posted behind the buffet.

But I wasn't here for decor. I was here for food. And the sparse choices in the buffet were surprisingly good. I say "surprisingly" because, again, the place was a little dinky, and the selections in the buffet didn't look that promising. There is a big steamer filled with chicken biryani - which was a little dry "chicken-wise", but that was the only thing I really didn't really care for, and even that was okay. Rice-wise, the biryani was pretty good.

I used my camera phone. Not a very good photo.

I don't remember most of what else was on my plate. The lack of labels really didn't help me out either. A few that I do remember:

• the chicken tandoori was, again, okay. Most chicken tandoori I've eaten is "okay" so it's pretty on par with most I've eaten, maybe a little less juicy
• I hate to say, but most of the stuff I did really like I just can't identify to save my life. There were various curries in chicken and beef (no lamb or goat, at least I didn't taste any). They were all pretty good. So too were the chickpeas.
  
• Nothing actually on a skewer, though that's not necessarily de rigeur for a kabob house; some kabob houses sell stuff that was merely cooked on a skewer, one that you will never ever see.
• I will say that the heaping plate of naan that they brought out was one of the dullest I have ever eaten.
  
• Plus: you receive a free pitcher of water with your meal!

I can't say this is the best Indian or Pakistani meal I have had, but it was better than I was expecting when I sat down with my steaming plate of biryani in hand. Since there are obviously non-buffet menu items, I will venture back to try some of those. There is indeed goat on the menu. And when the place closes down for the night, they send some of their leftovers to the Baltimore Halal Meat & Grocery a few doors down, on the corner of 21st and Charles. Here you can buy Lahore's buffet items until they close late at night. It's an average buffet as far as buffets go, though the home-cooked feel of the food makes it seem better.

I've always thought it strange that a halal market, a gay leather bar and at least four different Korean restaurants just flowing with soju were all so close to each other.

More Farmers' Market Stuff

Over the last week and a half I visited three different farmers' markets: Towson's on Thursday morning and afternoon, Waverly's on Saturday morning (I just got back from there in fact), and the I-83 one on Sunday mornings. Each one has its own unique personality, with a little overlap - there are always the "farmers' market junkies" who go hopping around from farmers' market to... er, um. Damn, I guess I'm one of those "farmers' market junkies".

Apart from that, Towson's seems to be the farmers' market for the leisurely crowd, the Roland Park- and Mount Washington- types, who may have the money to buy a few nice extra vegetables, chutneys and nuts. The Waverly market is a more plebeian one, with a hodgepodge of different working, middle, upper-middle and "granola" class folks all co-mingling together on a super small and compact scale. The I-83 market is just a big mishmash of everyone and everything, a nice cross-section of the city at a massive farmers' market for the 19th largest city in the US.

Towson:

I went last week on a whim - and some asshole snapped a photo of my license plate, I am certain of it. I circled round again and he was about to do it again, but I slowed down and glared at him. He seemed a little taken aback wen he saw it was the same car. I wanted to ask him why he did that - did he have some nefarious plan or something? So I parked in the Towsontown garage next to Trader Joe's (you can do that, y'know) and went over to ask, but he was safely nestled in a conversation. It looked like he was a press photographer anyway, since I saw him snapping photos of the merchants later. I let it go, but not before I bought a freshly grilled hamburger from the folks at Kabob Hut, who regularly set up a grill in front of their place on Market Day. A hamburger - which you will probably get medium rare - is $4. It's patted by hand and is juicier and more flavorful than most hamburgers I have eaten anywhere at all. Hot dogs are $2. I didn't see any produce that I needed, but almost bought some strawberries for $5 a pint. I'm usually a little disappointed with the selection at Towson's market, though I love that it's located so close to many great businesses, including Towsontown Center and many restaurants right along the same street. I've eaten at the Kathmandu Kitchen several times, and it's often due to the Towson Farmers' Market.

I-83:

The next one I went to was last week's I-83 Farmers' Market. I got there pretty late, as much of the good stuff was taken (no spinach). Mostly I went shopping for my sister, who has her own little handful at home in Lansdowne. She wanted spinach for salad, and fixins for a salsa. She gave me $20 and a loooooong list of veggies to get. I found about half of what she asked for, and paid more than I wanted to for the rest. She wanted avocados and three different bell peppers and some jalapeños, of which I found none. Also no spinach, though I did find a mesclun and baby spinach mix for $6 for a pound. Also found ten shallots for $4, garlic at 50¢ a head, and cilantro (bunched) and basil (live) for $1 each. I bought myself some garlic scapes - 3 for $1 - and a $1 bunch of oregano. And I was amazed to find something I hadn't enjoyed since I went to the Market Nights a few years ago on Thursday nights in Redlands, CA: cinnamon-y mini-donuts with powdered sugar (one minibag for $4). I put on my own cinnamon and powdered sugar but I love them just the same.

Waverly:

Hoo-wee! I hit the jackpot here. There were some nice little prepared foods here, though I think I-83's is better for the sheer size of the selection. I just got back with a bag of green tomatoes - from the Eastern Shore - for $3.75, a big-ass bunch of basil for $2 (which makes the piddly live plant I got for Cathy look like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree), a nice large bunch of cilantro for $1, and two, no, three ears of bicolor corn for $1.

It's fun to see what turns up at Waverly's market. There was a group of people selling furniture out of a U-Haul van today, and it wasn't crap either but nice, older, sturdy wooden furniture. It was all lined up along the entry walkway so I walked around it. I don't need any furniture. As with every farmers' market, there is also more than produce at Waverly's, too. And I know that these same merchants pop up at most of them, but they're just so much more accessible here for some reason. I can't explain it. The purveyors of flowers, meat, cheese, bread, potted herbs, desserts are all out there for you - it's cozier.

The prepared food is nice, as I have stated before. Today's selections included a gluten-free vegan spelt brownie with dates and (yuck) nuts ($2). The nuts were only on top. Usually I can't stand or tolerate nuts on my brownies but this one really made an exception. This brownie just tasted richer and more chocolaty than most brownies. It was also a little oilier. I also got a small container of yemisir wot (spicy lentil stew) from the Ethiopian Delites kiosk ($3). They also make a take-out meal for $5, including a little of everything they sell (also all-vegetarian). I finally inquired about where to find injera bread in Baltimore. The solution: call Dukem ahead of time and buy it from them. Easy enough!

I cuaght the location of the South Asian market nearby as I was leaving so I parked again and went into Punjab Halal Meat & Groceries (the City Paper's Best Ethnic Grocer of 2006, and Best Indian Grocer of 2007) for some asafoetida powder for $2.75 and a samosa for 85¢. Love their selection, especially all the frozen fishes.

So from this past week's farmers' market hopping I have learned the following things:

• The I-83 market is like the Arundel Mills of farmers' markets
• The Towson Market has some gems, and is centrally located around Towson's businesses, though can be lacking in its selections.
• The Waverly Market seems to have the best selection of produce in a small area, and is - again - cozy.
  

A few recommendations...

Those of you who write blogs know that it can at times be, well, time-consuming. Especially for such a focused blog like this one. As such, there are too many restaurants and too many meals, too many funny videos and too many other things I do that I just don't get to mention. So here they are: a few things I haven't mentioned lately that don't really merit a whole post (unlike my recent trip to Green Spring Station - I'll post on that soon).

• If y'all read about my excursion off Exit 17 to Woodlawn, you'll remember that the Shaheen Indian-Pakistani Restaurant was recommended to me. Well I went - twice. Pretty good stuff. 100% halal for the observant Muslim diner. Their goat is some of the best and least bony I have eaten in a while. $5.99 per lb. to take out their lunch buffet (the first I've seen do it by the pound), plus a section of desserts. Good stuff.
• Plus, did you know my post about that very subject is the first one that comes up when you Google "shaheen security square mall"?
  
• Speaking of which: just this past week I stopped by a place off Rossville and Bel Air Road, the recently opened Mount Everest (for which I can find no links whatsoever), which serves Nepalese and Indian food, as well as Italian, Greek and American. It's the "pizza-subs-and-curry" place turned into a festive-looking Nepalese restaurant. Their chicken tikka masala is a bit dry, despite floating in all that tikka masala sauce. Their saag paneer (Indian cheese in spinach) is quite good. $8.99 per box.
• I stopped by Pepe's Pizza on Falls Road. For $3.45 after tax I got enough Hawaiian pizza to last me two meals. Good and filling pizza. BTW: my recent Exit 23A post is the second hit when you Google "pepe's pizza mount washington".
  
• My sister treated me to dinner tonight at Damon's Grill (she's so nice). There is a smattering of locations in Maryland, but it's mostly based in Pennsylvania and Ohio. We got some great burgers for $7.95 plus 50 cents per topping. Get too much (fried mushrooms, fried onions, guac and Provolone cheese) and it'll all slip and slide off. Her mudslide was also tasty. The apple cobbler that we split was okay. I've had better, but it was decent.
• Oh, Cloverfield rocked.
  
• Whole Foods' rice milk really isn't all that bad when compared to the real thing, at least in hot chocolate and in cereal. Just avoid rice drink - it's not the same.
• And I made one more recipe from a book I bought in California and have had on my shelf for a while, Paulette Mitchell's 15-Minute Single Gourmet: 100 Deliciously Simple Recipes for One (1996: Macmillan, New York, NY). It was her basil pesto. It didn't turn out the way it should have - either I had too little basil or else I used walnuts instead of pine nuts. It's more like a chunky basil paste. it's still edible, just not what I had had in mind.
• And I'm still waiting to take advantage of the smokelessness of the local bars. They did this too in California when I lived there. Even though I am a militant non-smoker, at first I thought it was silly. I mean, it's a bar for God's sake. But it didn't hit California businesses bad at all - most of them just installed outdoor patios if they didn't already have them, and they worked just fine. Put up a few outdoor heaters and Maryland's bars will be just fine too.

Exit 23A: I-83 South (to Baltimore)

I don't even know where to begin with Exit 23. Unlike the last few exits, where you have to travel long and far to find some original eatin', Exit 23 leads to I-83 South - the main artery emptying into Baltimore from points north. And you can find dozens of things to eat off of every exit.

So as I usually do in this situation, I got off the first exit. This is Exit 10, to Northern Parkway and Mount Washington. I am quite familiar with this exit - it's the one I ultimately take home. It's also one I have visited many, many times. And I've talked about a few of the restaurants and markets here - Crepe du Jour, Chiyo Sushi, Whole Foods. Which is why I won't mention them in this space again. But there are still too many other places to mention. A few that I still have not gotten to:

• Sushi Hana (map), which apparently just moved from Towson. It's right at the terminus of Lake Ave in the Lake Falls Village - it's in the same shopping center as the Quantum Yoga and the Blockbuster. A few folks are very fond of this place, so I must give it a look-see. There are a few other places there that I need to investigate, such as Al Pacino Pizza (same map as Sushi Hana);
• Pepe's Pizza (map) right across the street;
• Mt. Washington Tavern (map), part of Mount Washington Village - always crowded, by my estimation;
• Ethel and Ramone's (map), also in the latter village - I ran into a friend at the crepe place that told me about this Louisiana-type Creole food establishment. This is one of the next on my list;

There are so many other places I haven't even mentioned. That's the problem with reviewing this exit - TOO MUCH to talk about.

I remember a few years ago I stopped by the Mediterranean place next to Crepe du Jour. The Desert Café (map) has belly dancing on Friday nights (at least it did in 2006). Their food was a little more than I wanted to spend, but hell, that goes for every restaurant in Mount Washington. The hummus plate I got was okay, even if I haven't been back since.

The other night I stopped in Mt. Washington on the way home, and decided to try out a new place. I first bought some wine at The Old Vine (map; down the street from the Lake Falls Village). Here I got a cheapo bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau (for a small get-together I'm having on Saturday) and some Gekkeikan sake - $18 total. I could've gone into the Mount Washington Wine Company (map) next to Whole Foods, but I figured I'd stop by some other time. And of course, you just can't beat some of the bigger stores (Wine Source? Wells Discount Liquors?) if you want a variety. But we all should patronize the smaller shops - that is, patronize with a long "ā" - give them your patronage, not with a short "ă" - criticize and make fun of them.

Before heading home I wanted to try out one of those now-ubiquitous "pizza-subs-and-curry" places that are popping up all over Baltimore. So I went to Mount Washington Pizza, Subs and Indian Cuisine (map)- only to see that the cheapest Indian food was about $9 (a sub? Just $5, but I wanted something with curry in it, dammit).

So I don't know why I went to the Kabab Stop (map) instead, where the prices for all-halal kebabs are just as high. But I'm glad I did, because for just $14 I got lots of tasty food - some of it was average but most of it was quite good:

• the main course was the lamb seekh kabab ($8), "minced lamb blended w/ herbs, spices, and barbequed in clay oven," as it says on their menu. It was tasty enough, though not enough of it was actually there. This, however, was not a problem, because of all the other stuff that came with it:
• this chickpea stew that had to be the best part of the meal. Man, it was tasty.
• the plain naan bread - I was a bit underwhelmed but I'm used to ordering garlic naan with my meal, so perhaps I was already primed for something other than the plain stuff;
• an iceberg-free salad of carrot, red onion, cucumber and green pepper, which was quite good mixed in with
• the complimentary basmati rice - a little drier than I a m used to but it was much better when I ate it as leftovers later this week;
• a yogurt raita which was, I think, cilantro, but I'm not exactly sure
• Along with that I ordered the veggie samosa ($2.50) - two large, filling and somewhat greasy samosas with their own raita - and the batura ($2.50) - a somewhat oily, puffed bread that could have easily passed as (Native American) Indian fry bread or an elephant ear at the state fair (just sprinkle powdered sugar on it; you won't tell the difference). Still, just as the proprietor said, it was very tasty. But of course, some of the unhealthiest stuff is also the tastiest.

Note that the Kabab Stop is not part of Mount Washington Village, so it is easily passed by while you're speeding towards Whole Foods. Please stop there and give 'em your business. And there is the Pizza Boli's next door if you're in the mood for pizza instead of batura.

Other photos:

This is all the stuff you get for $13 plus tax at the Kabab Stop. Wow.

Of course, Mount Washington also has shopping. But I'm not really a "shopping" person.

Places I visited:

The Desert Café (Mediterranean / Middle Eastern) - 1605 Sulgrave Ave., Baltimore, MD 21209; Phone: (410) 367-5808

• Would I eat there again? Yeah - though it's been a good while, so maybe I should check the place out again.
• Would I go out of my way to eat there again? Apparently not, seeing how long it's been since the last time I went.
  

Kabab Stop (Indian, halal) - Address:5719 Falls Rd, Baltimore, MD 21209; Phone: (410) 323-6060

• Would I eat there again? Yes
• Would I go out of my way to eat there again? I would
  

Mount Washington Wine Company (wine / beer / liquor store) - 1340-E Smith Avenue, Mount Washington Mill, Baltimore, MD 21209; Phone: (410) 435-7410

• Would I shop there again? Yes
• Would I go out of my way to shop there again? Probably
  

The Old Vine (wine / beer / liquor store) -6054 Falls Rd, Baltimore, MD 21209; Phone: (410) 377-9599

• Would I shop there again? Yes
• Would I go out of my way to shop there again? Probably
  

Places to look up later:

Al Pacino Pizza (pizza) - 6080 Falls Rd., Lake Falls Village, Baltimore, MD 21209; Phone: (410) 377-3132

Ethel & Ramone's (Creole) - 1615 Sulgrave Ave; Baltimore, MD 21209 Phone: (410) 664-2971

Mount Washington Pizza, Subs and Indian Cuisine (pizza & subs / Indian) - 1620 Kelly Ave
Baltimore, MD 21209; Phone: (410) 664-1111

Mount Washington Tavern (pub) - 5700 Newbury St., Baltimore, MD 21209; Phone:
Get Directi(410) 367-6903

Pepe's Pizza (pizza) - 6081 Falls Rd., Baltimore, MD 21209; (410) 377-3287

Sushi Hana (Japanese) - 6080 Falls Rd., Lake Falls Village, Baltimore, MD 21209;I can't find their new phone number since they moved here from Towson

Impromptu Road Trip to New York: 1 of 2

I took a very impromptu trip back to NYC yesterday, once I found out that Company, that excellent musical I saw last month, is closing this Sunday. It’s a shame, really, but it’s for the best. You don’t want the show to get stale.

Just some quick notes on what I did and where I ate (everything else stays in New York). Photos to follow. NB: I got many of these recommendations from another Frommer’s book, Pauline Frommer’s New York City Guide.

Street Food – from hot dogs to halal

After the train station I decided to save some money and just eat food along the way to the hotel – the Gershwin on 27th Street, between 5th and Madison (next to the ubiquitous Museum of Sex). At this funky hotel I had booked a bed in a 10-bed hostel room for just $41! (Even better, they upgraded me to a 6-bunk room for the same price). Thought I’d hate it, but I didn’t.
My first stop: the ever famous Sabrett’s. Someone told me a while ago that this is New York’s finest hot dog. I may have been confused. This was the most flavorless hot dog I have ever eaten, and I have eaten many hot dogs in my life. I don’t know if it’s because all the flavor was boiled out of it. I have had better luck with an Esskay frank boiled for 5 – 10 minutes. But the thing was inedible. Maybe if I see one grilled or fried, I’ll try it. But not boiled.

I had even worse luck with a knish that was encased in a rock-solid outer shell. Kind of like that chicken I had at Higgin’s in OC. But I fared quite well, however, at one of many halal food stands further along. I got a falafel sandwich on pita. It was messy, and the falafel was not crisp. But it was very tasty. Maybe that’s where all the flavor from the hot dog went – but wait, then it wouldn’t be halal, would it?

Meskerem

Next I hit the specialty sales by the Empire State Building. Bought a nice shirt to use that night at Prato’s. Then it was a quick jaunt back to the hotel to dress, and off I went for dinner.
Meskerem is not related to DC’s Ethiopian-American institution. This was where I ate before I hit Company. For $15.95, I got a small lentil sambusa (like a samosa, but of Somali/Ethiopian origin) with this great sauce - berbere sauce perhaps? – and a plate of lega tibs, or lamb chunks in mild Ethiopian spices, and a Diet Coke. Beer is on the menu, but don’t bother because they don’t have any – it’s BYOB!

After Meskerem I hit Barrage, a festive little gay bar on the way back to the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, for a pint of, um, something. It wasn’t memorable. Even more memorable than that was the Heineken I had at another gay bar, the New York Eagle, after the show. Very few people there on a Tuesday night.

Have a Blessed Ramadashanah!

Today is both the first night of fasting before the Islamic month of Ramadan and the first evening of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Happy 5767 and 1427, y'all! These days are solemn for both religions, but I am neither Jewish nor Muslim, so I don't have to fast. Instead, I think I'll seek out some good Kosher grub and some good Halal eatin' this weekend!