Woody's Rum Bar & Island Grill

Woody's Rum Bar & Island Grill occupies the top floor and roof deck of a building on the northeast corner of the intersection of Thames and Broadway, making it a perfect spot to soak up both the atmosphere of Fells Point and a few rum-based libations. You want to sit in the sun? Go up on the roof. If you prefer breezy shade, the third floor is the place to be. The place is small, so you won't ever be too far away from the bar.

A recent facelift has added some lively new artwork by Charles Lawrance. The menu of island-inflected dishes has been updated as well, adding new items to a selection of favorites. At a recent VIP tasting celebrating the restaurant's opening weekend, we sampled the entire menu. Ev-ry-thing. Oh, that's the food menu, not the drinks menu (otherwise, we might not be here right now.) We started with rum punches, which were sweet and fruity and oh so easy-to-drink. Thankfully there was plenty of tasty food coming to help absorb some of the alcohol we'd be imbibing that evening.

Rum Punch

You can check out Woody's menu here.

Among our favorites were the spicy Caesar salad. I'm a sucker for grilled romaine, and loved the piquant dressing, which was spicy but not overly so.

Spicy Caesar Salad
grilled Romaine hearts, queso fresco, spicy Caesar dressing, radish, corn strips

We also enjoyed the nachos. Despite looking like merely chips and cheese, the grilled pineapple salsa and chipotle jerk crema added a myriad of smoky, spicy, and sweet flavors.

Woody’s Nachos
corn chips, house made cheese sauce, grilled pineapple salsa,
pico de gallo, scallions, chipotle jerk crema

Mr Minx also really enjoyed the Jamaican hot pepper shrimp, served with a hunk of baguette to dip in the flavorful juices.

Jamaican Hot Pepper Shrimp
spiced scotch bonnet pepper butter, red stripe, baguette

Calamari
corn flour fried, Woody spice, mango chile sauce

Island Wings
spicy pineapple BBQ sauce

Also notable were the calamari and wings.

We also tasted all of the sandwiches on the menu, particularly enjoying the Cubano. Out of the four varieties of tacos available (fish, shrimp, black bean falafel, and jerk chicken) we perhaps enjoyed the fish tacos most of all, although the falafels were pretty delicious as well.

Woody’s World Famous Fish Tacos
marinated mahi, Baja slaw, lime crema, pico de gallo, cheddar jack cheese

If you've got a hankering for the islands but can't afford to leave the mainland, head over to Woody's for Caribbean-inspired food and drinks. Watch the Os, grab a mai tai, and have a good time.





Posted on Minxeats.com.

Lazy Ropa Vieja

Ropa Vieja, which means "old rags" or "old clothes" in Spanish, is a classic Cuban dish of shredded beef seasoned with tomato, bell pepper, and cumin. It's traditionally made with flank steak, which shreds nicely into long rag-like pieces, but have you seen the price of flank steak these days? I'm sorry, but I'm not paying $13 for a chunk of meat that I'm going to stew into oblivion. Instead, I paid less than half that amount for a 2lb chuck roast, which I cut into cubes. If you're really lazy, you can buy pre-cubed stew beef, but that's going to cost a few more dollars.

There's a perfectly lovely recipe for ropa vieja in our book, Food Lovers' Guide to Baltimore, provided by Marta Quintana, owner of Havana Road in Towson, but it had too many steps for me on this particular Sunday. While I love to cook, sometimes I just like to throw things in a pot and see how it turns out. That probably makes me a perfect candidate for a slow cooker, but I have no room for another oversized kitchen gadget. Stovetop cooking is more my bag, anyway.

So to cut down on the steps, I cheated with a jar of Goya sofrito, which already contains onions and peppers and seasoning. Marta uses brisket, and doesn't brown it first, so I didn't brown the chuck. I just "chucked" it into the sofrito which I first mixed with water and seasoned with a couple of bay leaves and lots and lots of garlic. After stewing for a couple of hours, the meat was very tender. I put it aside while I thickened and further seasoned the stewing sauce with tomato paste and spices. Some ropa vieja recipes call for sliced olives and pimento, so I pulled two more jars out of the pantry and added some of each. After shredding the meat, I put it back into the sauce and cooked it a bit more before a final seasoning with salt, pepper, and lime juice.

It was delicious.

Lazy Ropa Vieja

1 6oz jar Goya sofrito
2 lbs chuck roast, cut into cubes, or 2 lbs beef stew meat
2 bay leaves
6 large garlic cloves, chopped
3 heaping tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1/2 cup sliced pimento-stuffed green olives
1/2 cup chopped pimento or roasted red bell pepper
juice of 1 lime
salt and pepper to taste
Cilantro and green onion (optional)

Dump the sofrito into a stew pot and add about 2.5 jars' worth of water (rinsing out any sofrito clinging to the sides while doing so). Add the meat, the bay leaves and garlic, and cover the pot. Bring mixture to a boil, then reduce heat to a bare simmer. Cook for about 2 - 2.5 hours, or until the meat is fork tender.

Remove meat to a bowl with a slotted spoon. Turn the heat up under the pot of remaining liquid and add the tomato paste, cumin, and paprika. Bring to a boil, whisking well to combine. If there seems to be an excess of liquid, keep at a boil for a few minutes until it reduces to about 2 cups. If there's less than 2 cups in the pot, turn the heat down to a simmer, adding a little bit of beef stock, if necessary. You want the resulting dish to be like a very thick stew, but not dry.

Shred the meat with two forks and return to the pot. Stir in the green olives and pimento. Cook for an additional half hour. Remove from heat and add the lime juice and salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with rice, plantains, and black beans. Or just rice. Garnish with cilantro and green onion.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Havana Road

On a recent weekend, Mr Minx and I decided to check out the new Cuban restaurant in Towson, Havana Road. Who would have thought that such a cute little restaurant existed in one of the fairly small and otherwise generic storefronts on Pennsylvania Avenue? The decor is somehow both homey and modern, with mismatched tables and chairs in a cozy room with dark red walls adorned with posters and photos of Cuba, a black-painted ceiling strung with tiny lights to mimic a night sky, and bark-shaded pendant lamps. Each table is decorated with an old cigar box and a single fresh flower in a simple glass vase. We immediately felt at home, except that we chose the wrong chairs in which to sit - beware the high-backed straw-seated ones that are not meant for lingering.

For those who are unfamiliar with Cuban cuisine, it derives from a melange of Spanish, African, and Caribbean influences. The Spanish influence was apparent in the shrimp and garlic sauce appetizer from the specials menu; we also sampled the black bean soup.

Havana Road's rendition of the former was fairly simple: perfectly cooked shrimp relaxing in a bowl of warm, very garlicky oil, with lightly toasted bread on the side. I liked the way that the garlic was skillfully cooked so it was toasty and brown but not burnt, giving the oil a rich mellow flavor.

The black bean soup was even more simple, at least in appearance. Mr Minx says it resembled a bowl of very well-used motor oil. Although unattractive, the soup was quite nice; somehow hearty and delicate at the same time, mostly smooth-textured, and well-seasoned with a hint of cumin.

For our entrées, we tried the classic Cubano sandwich, made with slow-roasted Cuban pork, ham, Swiss cheese, mustard, and pickle, pressed on traditional Cuban bread, with a container of mojo sauce and plantain chips on the side. The combination of ingredients in a Cubano may seem ordinary, but the result was anything but - it's melty hot, gooey, but not greasy, and the onion/garlic/lime kick of the mojo gave the sandwich a bright kick.

The ropa vieja--a dish of beef cooked so long and slow the meat falls into rope-like strands--was rich and hearty, and came accompanied by caramelized sweet plaintains, a bowl of black beans that was much like a solid version of the soup, and some plain (rather uninteresting) rice. The portion was so large, most of it was relegated to a doggie bag to be eaten later in the week.

We also tried an order of the yuca fries - fingers of cassava fried until crisp on the outside and fluffy yet chewy on the inside - much better than most restaurant French fries I've had and definitely worth getting - and glasses of their fruit tea, a refreshing quaff that tasted mostly of citrus.

Overall, we were quite happy with our meal, but then we are big fans of garlic. If you are, too, you won't be disappointed with Havana Road.

Havana Road
8 W Pennsylvania Avenue
Towson, MD 21204
(410) 494-8222