Favorite Baltimore Restaurants, Round Two

A few years back, when asked about our favorite restaurants, I would usually respond "Grace Garden." GG was/is a Chinese restaurant in Odenton, MD--kind of a slog from where we live near Towson, but so worth the drive. We went a few times a year over a number of years, and we wrote about it more than once (here, here, here, here, and here). Though the restaurant still exists, it's under new management with a new chef. We tried it once early on and it just didn't move us in the same way. The new owners bought several of the original chef's recipes, but what we tried was missing the wok hay (breath of the wok) of the originals. (IYKYK!) Now we have multiple new favorites, all much closer to home. Coincidentally, all three of the restaurants named below are alongside the Jones Falls, an 18-mile-long stream that runs from Baltimore County to the Inner Harbor. Not sure why we haven't done a progressive dinner yet, hitting all three at one night, though I must admit we have eaten at two of them on the same evening.

patatas, empanadas, calamari, et., al., @ La Cuchara

La Cuchara (3600 Clipper Mill Rd, Baltimore, MD 21211)

This cavernously sized yet somehow intimate restaurant serves dishes inspired by the Basque cuisine of parts of France and Spain. The menu is divided into sections featuring several categories of small plates, plus entrees, and one is able to mix and match as desired. The several entrees we've tried over the years have been uniformly delicious, but we prefer to order several tapas-style dishes and enjoy them with one or more glasses of wine, preferably at the expansive bar. While I miss the days pre-COVID when happy hour meant half price pinxtos and tapas and $5 pours of wine, the food is just as good at twice the price. 

If one is merely feeling peckish and just wants a few snacks to nibble with cocktails, there is a selection of Spanish hams and cheeses that are perfect with the restaurant's lovely housemade breads. Also nibbly things like gildas--small skewers with a single boquerone (white anchovy), olive, and pequillo pepper--and wee croquetas made with cured ham or rehydrated salted cod. Tapas selections are fairly hearty and can include tender tangles of grilled squid with calabrian peppers, a couple of salad selections and perhaps a soup, and patatas bravas--crisp cubes of potato dressed in both spicy mojo and garlicky aioli and accented with scallions. I check the menu regularly in case there are limited-time items like sweetbreads, crispy oysters, soft shell crabs, or razor clams, in which case we scrap our regular dinner plan and head to La Cuchara. 

The photo above was taken in the Fall of 2020. The restaurant was only serving hot food during happy hour a few days a week, and only at ten concrete tables set up in the parking lot. We made a point to get there a few minutes before 5pm to snag a table and eat as much as humanly possible. We did this for about 8 weeks in the late summer and fall, until it was too chilly (and too dark) to eat outdoors comfortably. During this time, the restaurant also offered chef-prepared food to heat up at home and grocery staples like toilet paper and bags of flour. I greatly admired La Cuchara's efforts to stay open and serve their customers and did my part to support them. We are so happy to have them back open full time again. 

pasta, whole fish, lamb chops @ Cosima

Cosima (Mill No. 1, 3000 Falls Rd, Baltimore, MD 21211)

I think we fell in love with Cosima on our very first visit back in December 2015. We try to eat there at least once a year, particularly in the more temperate months when we can snag a table on the back patio. In fact, we've celebrated Mr Minx's birthday at Cosima every year for at least the last five, including 2020. 

While we're fond of the location--Mill No. 1, an historic mill building tucked between Falls Road and the Jones Falls itself--the food of course is the restaurant's most important feature. The homemade pastas are a big draw for Mr Minx, and as I mentioned in the last post, I'm fond of their pizzas. In fact, if the scallop and bacon pie is on the menu, it's definitely on our table, along with the crispy brussels sprouts, fritto misto, and whatever octopus preparation is being offered. We normally get one pasta and one secondi to share between the three of us, if there's any room left after our orgy of apps. And keep the wine flowing--but let me have a negroni bianco, too. 

the chef, the shucker, the farmer @ True Chesapeake

True Chesapeake Oyster Company (3300 Clipper Mill Rd Suite 400, Baltimore, MD 21211) 

True Chesapeake opened its doors in the fall of 2019 and got in a handful of months before the pandemic hit and threw the restaurant industry into a tailspin. They closed for a bit, reopened for outdoor dining and take-out, then closed again for the winter. We waited with our fingers crossed and breath bated for a re-opening announcement, which happened in April 2021 and came with a vaccination requirement. Not only was the food at True Chesapeake still delicious, but also the management was smart. The restaurant was our new annual New Year's Eve dining tradition and we wanted to continue slurping oysters to close out the years for the foreseeable future. 

There are a number of things we love about this place. Oysters are the heart and soul of True Chesapeake. The namesake restaurant gets its tender bivalves from its own farm in St. Mary's County. Blue catfish and snakehead are also featured regularly. If you've read our book Maryland's Chesapeake, you know these are invasive species that are doing a number on the Bay. Chef Zack Mills--long a favorite of ours since his days at Wit & Wisdom, and a contributor to more than one of our books--is doing his part to eradicate these harmful creatures by serving up their tasty flesh in various ways. And while seafood makes up the majority of dishes on Chef Mills' menu, he throws non-seafood-eaters a bone or two with selections like steak, roast chicken, and one heck of a good burger. 

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Best of 2019, Part One

2019 was not a good year for me. Even food-wise, I think it was a bit lackluster. Not for trying though...Mr Minx and I ate most Saturday dinners in one or another of our favorite restaurants. Though we had lots of good food, little of it was truly impressive.

Rather than go through posts by month, I'm grouping these by area. The first few items were eaten in New York, and the rest in the Baltimore area.

I love Korean galbi (thinly sliced bone-in short rib, marinated and grilled) and was surprised by the version served at Samwon Garden in NY. Rather than the somewhat chewy Korean-style cut, these ribs were western style and had been braised to fork-tenderness. So delicious.

Pretty much everything we ate at Don Angie was great, but my favorite dish was the tonnato vitello, a cold dish of spicy veal tartare flavored with bits of celery, topped with a veil-like slice of tuna crudo. The flavors and textures were marvelous. Somehow it didn't even seem like we were eating a dish of chilled raw meat covered with more chilled raw meat.

At White Bear, a little hole in the wall on Prince Street, we had the crowd favorite #6 dumplings, chili oil wontons. (Literally every customer that came in after us, along with the three already waiting for their food, ordered this dish.) With just the right amount of heat, these tender and juicy dumplings were a good introduction to our dumpling tour of Flushing.

Even better were the lamb and carrot dumplings in the New World Mall. I can't even describe how tasty these plump morsels were. They were seasoned so well, they didn't need any sauce at all.

My new favorite breakfast spot in Manhattan is Pondicheri Cafe. The saag and egg toast can beat the pants off avocado toast any day, even if the accompanying kale salad tends to get stuck in my teeth. The sourdough bread, well-toasted and buttered before being topped with spicy spinach sauce and a perfect sunny-side-up egg, is alone worth the price of admission.

Back in Baltimore....

We dined at Cosima twice this year. I cashed in my OpenTable dining points for a gift card to Cosima, and we used it in March. I am never disappointed in their pizza cape sante e pancetta. In fact, it might be my favorite pizza in town.

One of the many reasons 2019 sucked so badly was the demise of Grace Garden. I've eaten there dozens of times over the years and blogged about the place ad nauseum. It was my favorite restaurant. And the crispy eggplant, which was crunchy, soft, sweet, and spicy all at the same time, was one of my favorite dishes.

Another favorite (though maybe I shouldn't use that word--it's bad luck) place is Hersh's, where the pizza is always close to perfection, with a thin blistered crust and flavorful (and often unusual) toppings. We only got there once this year, but we were not disappointed.

We also found ourselves at R&R Taqueria in Perry Hall an awful lot. It was one place that we knew my Dad would enjoy. In fact, his last meal outside of the hospital before he passed in November was at R&R. He loved the spicy tacos, like the chicken tinga, and he always added extra hot sauce, always remarking on the heat factor but never breaking a sweat. Me, I enjoy the tacos, but when I tried their fluffy tamales bathed in a not-too-spicy mole sauce, I fell in love.

We had quite a feast at Sullivan's steak house in 2019. Though the steak was well-cooked and tasty, I really enjoyed the decadent white cheddar and bacon au gratin potatoes. I'm not a potato person, but I thought about this dish a lot this year.

La Cuchara has the best happy hour in Baltimore. Hands down. Argue with me if you will, but it's a fight you cannot win. Who else serves generous pours of very good wine for $5 and offers half price appetizers? And I don't mean chicken fingers and onion rings. I mean these scallops. Three fat beauties, perfectly seared and still a tad raw on the inside are already a bargain at $15 if you order them while sitting anywhere other than the bar at a time other than 5-7pm or 9pm-closing (or all evening on Sunday). During Happy Hour, they are $7.50. Three scallops anywhere else will cost nearly $30. Let's go over that again. If you eat at the bar anytime between opening and closing, except between 7pm and 9pm, you can get all primeros and pinxtos for half price. Recently, Mr Minx and I had 4 glasses of wine, generous plates of lamb meatballs, shrimp with preserved lemons, and roasted carrots with chanterelle mushroom puree, plus two orders of cheese and potato croquettes, for $52. On a Monday night. Beat that.

I can eat the lemony calamari alla plancha from Birroteca all day and not get sick of it. Always a favorite. I need to give a shout-out to restaurant owner Robbin Haas, who also passed away this year. He was a good guy.

Then there was Fogo de Chao. We got to eat there twice this year, on their dime, and we were amazed at how good everything was. We used to frequent a churrascaria in Rockville called Greenfields. They were good, but Fogo blows them out of the water. (They're closed anyway.) Every cut of meat that we tried at Fogo was juicy and perfectly seasoned. The pork ribs were a favorite, but all the varieties of beef were impressive too. Can't wait to go back. I'd even pay for my own food.

Fogo also served my favorite dessert of the year, a warm creme de coconut served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a flurry of lime zest.

La Calle, in the downtown business district, serves some mighty fine salmon. I had it for lunch three times in 2019, and every time it was perfectly cooked (salmon should be super moist and fatty-textured, "blubbery" is the way Tyler Florence describes it) with a crisp skin. I should really try the tacos there, but then I'd have salmon FOMO.

Last, but not least, was the pork belly tostada from La Food Marketa. Big-ass slabs of juicy and super porky pork belly on top of a thin and crispy round of fried masa. What else does one need? I'm also a fan of their octopus, which I ate at least twice last year, and pretty much everything else on the menu. That goes for Chad Gauss' other restaurant, The Food Market, as well.

I'm sure there were other tasty things eaten last year that I've forgotten to mention. But also a lot of mediocre stuff. Here's hoping that 2020 is at least as good as 2019 and hopefully a lot better, cuisine-wise and with everything else.

Check out next week's post, which will feature some of the best things I cooked at home.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

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Flashback Friday - Grace Garden

We've been to Grace Garden countless times. This post was written after our very first trip, on  July 20, 2008
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Grace Garden

I read a lot of local food blogs and occasionally check the Chowhound boards and was intrigued by the effusive praise heaped on a small Chinese restaurant, located in Odenton of all places. I contacted my friend LaRaine, expert on things Chinese (being Hong Kong born herself) and we arranged to meet at Grace Garden to see (and taste) what the hubbub was all about.

After perusing the online menu for a while, we both determined that there were several things we wanted to try. For our first adventure, we ordered two dishes that required advance notice - the tea smoked chicken and a dish billed as "Chinese Sea Treasures." Raine called those in on Thursday. We also determined we needed to try one of the pork belly dishes, plus something noodle-y to round things out. Finally, just in case Mr Minx was unhappy with our choices, we'd try a fifth dish of his choosing, although I strongly urged him to order from the head-on shrimp selections.

Mr Minx and I set off on our journey an hour in advance of our meeting time because we weren't too familiar with the Fort Meade area. A good thing the Web site has this photo of the restaurant, otherwise we wouldn't have spotted the unassuming store front. The inside is just as unassuming as the outside, perhaps more so - a plain room with a handful of mismatched tables, the walls decorated with photographs of the food. And what sounded to be Christian country music playing softly in the background. Am I the only person who likes to hear the appropriate ethnic music in restaurants or none at all?

But hey - one doesn't go to Grace Garden for the ambiance.

One goes for the food.

This is the Braised Pork Belly with Mui Choy - Thick Slices of Seasoned Pork Belly, Slow-Cooked with Preserved Mustard Cabbage. This was the most tender and succulent pork belly I have ever eaten. It was arranged over a dish of mui choy, a dried salted mustard cabbage that has been reconstituted and braised along with the meat in a thin, sweetish sauce. Delicious.

Cantonese Sea Treasures - Shrimp, Scallop & Sharks Fin Stuffed in Cucumber, Steamed and Glazed with Light Sauce. These were more interesting looking than tasting. The filling was extremely mild, with more shrimp than scallop and I detected no shark's fin at all. Of course, the price of that stuff is so high, it's likely very little was used. The cucumbers were hollowed out and lightly steamed so they still retained some texture. The taste was fine, but it reminded me more of a fancy dim sum dish (the cucumbers were cut into segments; you really can't tell that from the photo). It was difficult to eat, as the filling slid right out of the cucumber, and together it was nearly impossible to pick up with chopsticks. (I liked that the restaurant gave us chopsticks right away, and didn't offer Western utensils to us at all.)

Smoke Tea Duck - Whole Duck Steamed in Smoky Tea Flavored Sauce. So I mentioned above that we ordered the tea smoked chicken. Apparently whomever took the order heard "duck" so that's what they prepared. Not a problem for us duck-lovers! And I'm kinda glad they made the mistake. The duck was absolutely amazing! It was perfectly smoky, like the duck accidentally flew through a campfire before ending up on our table. The meat was tender and juicy, and the skin was imbued with smoke. Mr Minx remarked that he had never tasted anything like it. And lucky us - we have more than half the duck left in our fridge right now to eat during the week.

Cantonese Soy Sauce Noodles - Thin Egg Noodles Stir Fried with Ginger, Scallion and Soy Sauce. I thought this would be a good bland dish to order. LaRaine was expecting something more like the thin noodles we ordinarily get at dim sum at Jesse Wong's, the flavor of which comes primarily from wok hei. Those noodles are also fried to a nice crunch. Grace Garden's version were soft and redolent of sesame oil, a flavor, opined Raine, that should not have existed in the dish at all. As for Mr Minx and I - we liked it, and it was pretty much what I expected.

Golden Shrimp - Crispy Fried Head-On Shrimp Coated with Golden Salted Egg Yolk & Crisp Garlic. This dish was Mr Minx's choice. It looked terrific, and tasted pretty good too. My one issue with it was that the shrimp were perhaps too big, so the shells were a bit on the tough side. And one must eat the shells because that's where the flavor is. And if you like to eat the heads, as Mr Minx does, perhaps it's best to refrain from eating all of them, as that causes some mighty painful indigestion within a very short amount of time.

Ok - I actually have two issues with this dish. The shrimp didn't have the lovely iodine flavor that I pretty much only get at Chinese restaurants. But the semi-caramelized crisp garlic and egg yolk topping, particularly mixed with plain rice or the noodles, almost made up for it.

Overall, I enjoyed the food at Grace Gardens and wish it was more conveniently located to Towson. It wasn't the paradise of perfection that I was convinced it must be from all the accolades, but it was home to some great Chinese cooking. We'll certainly go back again to try more, particularly the Sichuan selections.



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Grace Garden Dinner to Celebrate the Year of the Rabbit

Is it terrible that since we've found Grace Garden, we eat very little Chinese food? Once a quarter or so, we venture out for dim sum, but Grace's lip-smacking offerings have really spoiled us for dinner-time dining.  Odenton is a 45-minute haul for us, so sadly, eating Chinese food has become a special occasion. And what more special an occasion to celebrate at Grace than Chinese New Year? Mr Minx and I really enjoyed last year's feast, so I made sure to sign us up as soon as the first chatter started on the Charm City Chowhounds list.

A few of the ten courses served for the Year of the Rabbit were identical to those we ate to celebrate the Year of the Tiger - the soup, the amazingly plump and delicious lamb chops, the 8-treasure sticky rice-stuffed duck - but the rest offered new taste experiences.

This is the much-vaunted Sichuan Triple Treasures that I had read about on so many other food blogs - beef tongue, tripe and tendon mixed with spicy Sichuan sauce, scallions & peanuts, served chilled. Despite the amount of praise, I had never tried this particular dish because every time we've eaten at Grace Garden, my peanut-allergic brother has been with us. (I don't even risk eating at Five Guys if I'm going to see him later in the day.) Also, I figured I was probably the only one at our table adventurous enough to eat tendon and tripe. Turns out, it earned every compliment. The three types of beef offal in this dish of fuqi feipian, also  known as "man & wife lung slices," are sliced wafer-thin, cooked until very tender, and are seasoned with a lively sauce of chiles and Sichuan peppercorns. Even compared to nine other outstanding dishes, Mr Minx declared this one to be his favorite of the evening.

Another dish that was created for the occasion was a variation of GG's famous fish noodles, this version being topped with a spicy sauce containing bits of more fish. It was quite good, although I think I prefer the austerity of the original version.

The whole fish this time was mostly unsauced, the meat arranged on its own deep-fried carcass of delightfully crispy edible bones, which are almost  tastier to eat than the fish itself.

We also had two vegetable courses this time around, one a stir-fry of Chinese chives that taste a bit like a cross between asparagus and scallions, but better (and stinkier), and one of a green vegetable with caramelized garlic cloves. There was some discussion over the type of vegetable in the dish; one diner was pretty sure they were snow pea shoots, but I believe they were more closely related to choi sum or another member of the brassica family.

Finally, our dessert was better, but no less-odd than last year's: the chef's version of a Jell-O salad, made with lime gelatin, pineapple, and cream. Better than bean jelly, IMHO.

I'm already looking forward to next year's feast.

Top Restaurant Dishes of 2010

This past year, Mr Minx and I dined out quite a bit and tried out many new-to-us places. For the most part, our dining excursions were largely rewarding, but some meals were more successful than others. Here are some of the highlights, in order of consumption. :)

Back in March, we had a fantastic multi-course meal celebrating the Chinese New Year at Grace Garden with the Charm City Chowhounds. While most dishes were amazing, my very favorite was the lemongrass lamb chops, a dish I got them to recreate for me in September. (They'll do it for you, too, if you call and request it three or so days in advance. Be prepared for sticker shock when you get your bill.) They were big (the spoon is oversized) and meaty and redolent of lemongrass, with just enough fat to make them juicy. Heavenly.

Lemongrass Lamb Chops

On my one lonely trip to New York this April, I had the pleasure of dining at Momofuku Ssam Bar for the first time. The much-lauded pork belly buns definitely deserve a spot on this list.

June was a bumper month for dining out. First, we tried Talara, where everything was uniformly delicious. However, I would have to say that my favorite dishes were the "Fire & Ice" seviche with prickly pear granita, and the tres leches cake.

Also in June came the Chef for a Day dinner prepared by fellow blogger Liz Stambaugh at Sotto Sopra. Her foie gras gnocchi were both feather light and super rich at the same time - perfection!

Foie gras gnocchi

We went on another Charm City Chowhound excursion, this time to Columbia, where we were introduced to the authentic Thai menu at Bangkok Garden. The salad of smoky grilled eggplant and especially the sour red curry and acacia omelette hotpot were the standout dishes of the meal for me.

Acacia omelette hot pot

Finally, at the end of the month, a very generous friend treated me to a wine dinner at Top Cheftestant and All-Star Jennifer Carroll's restaurant, 10 Arts by Eric Ripert in Philly. I wasn't bowled over by the majority of the dishes, but the pork belly-stuffed ravioli with morels was quite delicious, making me want get back and try more of Chef Carroll's cuisine when she's not trying to feed 80 people the same thing simultaneously.

Our first trip to the B&O American Brasserie, in August, yielded another dish for this list - the pork belly with bananas and lentils. The pork belly had all of the right textures - toothsome meat, melting fat, and crisp skin - and the lentil/banana combo was shockingly tasty (considering how bizarre it sounded).

Pork belly with bananas and lentils

I can't mention the top dishes of 2010 without a comment or ten about the amazing dinner we had at Volt this past September. After nearly a year of waiting, we were finally able to experience Table 21 and I have to say it met all of my (very high) expectations. One of my favorite courses, one that I still fantasize about (yes, I fantasize about food - probably no big surprise there), was the sublime, meltingly-tender tuna tartare and its many accompaniments. Another was the goat cheese ravioli. And the scallop with pea purée, the chicken parmesan, the lobster.... Everything.

The charcuterie plate we enjoyed at Clementine in September sure doesn't look like much, but that chicken liver mousse with rye whiskey and honey was some of the best chicken guts I have ever ingested.

Clementine charcuterie

Finally, to round out the year of pretty terrific restaurant dining, I'm going to say that the Low Country Louie seafood cocktail that I had at Langermann's on my birthday in November was one of my favorite appetizers of the year: perfectly cooked seafood in an interesting mustard-and-cilantro mayonnaise that I would love to recreate at home sometime soon.

I'm thankful to have had the opportunity to dine in so many good restaurants in 2010 and hope to continue the streak in 2011.

Chinese New Year Celebration Welcoming the Year of the Tiger - A Month Delayed

We were originally scheduled to visit Grace Garden for a Chinese New Year feast in late February, but the blizzard(s) had other plans for the restaurant's roof. After closing for a few weeks for repairs, Grace Garden re-opened and thankfully re-scheduled our orgy of gastronomic delights. Mr Minx and I were two of 36 members and friends of the Charm City Chowhounds who paid a mere $25 per person to enjoy ten courses of some of the best Chinese food in the area. Regular readers already know how much I enjoy my trips to this small restaurant in the wilds of Odenton.

After the crowds were assembled around three large round tables equipped with lazy susans, dishes, and utensils, and the din of people chattering reached near-unbearable levels (I couldn't hear myself speak), the food started coming out and soon nothing was heard but the sounds of slurping and murmurs of pleasure. Ok, but it did get quieter.

First up: Brocade Pouches of Many Treasures - described on our special menu as "pomegranate-shaped wonton chicken soup."

The broth came out first and we all eagerly helped ourselves to a serving. The "pomegranate-shaped" wonton, in the form of beggar's purses, came next, followed by plates of baby bok choy. When assembled, this wasn't your mother's won ton soup - the broth, although billed as chicken, had vaguely seafood-ish flavors and a hint of chile heat. The "wonton" was actually an egg-white omelette or crepe wrapped around a chunky filling of chopped shrimp, pork, and other goodies. Unusual and very good - we could definitely have enjoyed a larger portion, but we were each sharing with 11 other people....

Next up came a dish billed as Laughing Mouth Always Open - stir-fried clams with XO sauce and minced pork.

We each got about three clams, the taste of which was a tantalizing melange of the dried-seafood flavor of XO sauce and the pebbly texture of the pork.

For our next course, we received Gold Coins Everywhere, which were shrimp-paste-filled shiitake mushrooms over lettuce and hair moss. The "hair moss" must have been the green vegetable bordering the dish, one the many variations of the genus Brassica that is so popular in Chinese cuisine. This dish reminded me of something one might have at dim sum, with the shrimp paste not unlike shrimp balls, or the filling one might find in eggplant, tofu, or dumpling dishes.

Next we were served Happy All the Time, or lemongrass fried lamb chops. This was one of the best things EVAR! The chops were succulent, still somewhat pink inside, the outside savory with lemongrass and spices. I wanted to grab the platter and sneak off with it, but alas, I had to share with my tablemates. If only this were a regular menu item, the Minxes would order it every time. And maybe an order to-go.

Another favorite of mine was A Million Wishes Fulfilled, a.k.a 8-treasure sticky rice-stuffed duck. I've seen this ordered by other diners and was put off by the raw-looking paleness, but it is truly a dish that tastes far better than it looks. It is a study in unctuousness. The duck meat itself is impossibly tender, the sticky rice stuffing, which absorbs much of the fat and juice from the duck, is an oily delight, and the skin itself just melts in the mouth. For a little bit of textural content, the rice contains bits of chestnuts and ginkgo nuts. There was plenty of this dish to go around, so I had my fill. And we took the leftovers home with us. Score!

In contrast, the flavors in Every Year is a Prosperous Year, a dish of whole fish and tofu cubes in a spicy bean-paste sauce, were sharper and more pungent. I think the dish could have been far spicier, particularly considering the mild dishes that preceded it. The fish were small and I got more bone than fish (the cheek) but the meat was succulent and I kept going back for spoonsful of sauce to moisten bits of rice.

Got to have a vegetable at some point, and the one we were served was called Golden Branches and Jade Leaves which was pea shoots with egg. I was extremely curious to try the gelatinous brown chunks, since I knew they were the whites of preserved eggs. They tasted like...egg white. The greens themselves were delicious, crisp, a touch of Spring. I could have done without the egg flavor, however.

As we neared the end of the menu, we were presented with a dish to which I was looking forward: Dragon King Celebrates an Abundant Year, which was pan-fried lobster in a sweet-ish sauce reminiscent of sweet and sour. But...not the gross and gloppy pineapple-and-bell-pepper-infected sugar-fest that constitutes sweet and sour in most American-style Chinese joints. This one was possibly a more-authentic tomato paste-and-vinegar concoction, light on the vinegar. In any case, the lobster was tender and although it was a bit hard to extract the morsels of meat from the sauce-coated shell, it was worth the mess.

Our final dish was billed as Golden Fried Rice, although it doesn't look particularly golden. It was full of bits of shrimp, fish, and scallop and topped with crunchy fried garlic. Not a stereotypical soy-colored fried rice at all, and even tastier.

But wait - there's more! We thought we were finished eating, but were brought a bonus dish of Grace Garden's now-famous Fish Noodles!

Yum. 'Nuff said. (We also got to take home the leftover noodles and fried rice.)

Finally, for dessert, we were presented with scary Jell-O. A downer in a meal of high notes. The menu said something about rice cakes, but apparently things changed. The agar jelly, flavored with red bean and some sort of tea (jasmine?) was certainly lighter and possibly more refreshing, but I can't say I'm a big fan of gelatin in any form. Maybe if it were all tea jelly, I could have enjoyed it more. In any case - I ate it. Yeah, I'm a hypocrite. :)

That's it! What? You thought there'd be more? Eleven courses is plenty, believe me. After the first three I thought we'd have to go for a cheeseburger afterwards, but once the heavier dishes came out I was able to eat my fill. And then some.

Overall, a great dining experience. Mr Minx and I sat with our friend and fellow blogger Dara and her friend Jeff, and met several other dedicated local foodies. I look forward to our next Charm City Chowhound adventure.

Grace Garden
1690 Annapolis Road
Odenton, MD 21113
410-672-3581

Grace Garden Again

On Saturday, despite the heavy rain, we made another excursion to Grace Garden in Odenton for some really good Chinese food. Considering the restaurant had recently been named Best Chinese by the Baltimore City Paper, there was only one table occupied and a couple of people waiting for carry-out orders when we arrived at about 5:45 PM. When we left, nearly two hours later, there were just as many (or, as few) diners as when we got there. Don't know if it was the rain, or the location, but secretly I was happy to see that the restaurant wasn't already taken-over by more city-folk like me. I know, selfish. Bad me.

MinxBrother joined Mr Minx, LaRaine, and myself this time, and he requested that I order the tea smoked duck again so he could try it. I happily obliged, because it was probably the favorite dish I had last time we ate at Grace Garden. Once at the restaurant, we ordered five more dishes that we had not yet tried.

This was the beef chow fun, and probably my least favorite dish of the evening. It was heavy on the beef and light on the starch, which might be a good thing for some, but the chewy rice noodles are my favorite part of this dish. It was also a bit on the greasy side.

Here we have fish noodles - noodles made from actual ground fish, stirfried with mushrooms and Chinese sausage. The dish also contains cilantro, which we asked for on the side because Ms LaRaine is allergic (tragic, I know). Having seen many an Iron Chef episode in which Chen or Morimoto combined fish and egg whites in a food processor and then squeezed it into boiling broth, we were all curious to experience this dish for ourselves. It scored high on our list - it was very subtle, the "noodles" having a texture not unlike very tender chicken breast strips (you know, cooked Chinese style so they almost melt in the mouth) and were not at all fishy-tasting. The sauce was barely there, delicate and velvety, binding the elements together into a flavorful whole. I'd order this one again and again.

I thought we should have a vegetable and ordered Sichuan string beans from the "regular" menu. Not as garlicky as some I've eaten before, these were nevertheless delicious and generously dosed with ground pork that had been sauteed in savory Sichuan sauce. I could have eaten a plate of just the meat bits. They'd make a fantastic Chinese "sloppy Joe" - I have to remember to pick up a can of Sichuan sauce at the Han Ah Reum next time we go shopping to try that for myself.

LaRaine was curious to try the Sichuan dish listed as possessing "ma-la" or the tongue-numbing qualities of Sichuan peppercorns in a sauce also hot with chile oil. The rest of us worried slightly that it might be too hot for our fairly wimpy Western palates, but that was for naught. The chunks of very mild fish that had been coated with ground peppercorns were hotter than the chunks that were not, but overall the table considered the dish to be "medium-spicy." I find the hot chile oil I like to use while eating dim sum to be hotter than this dish. Overall, though, the flavor was nice and I'm glad we tried it.

Finally, we ordered the misnamed "pocket tofu" which leads one to believe the dish is comprised of pieces of tofu with a pocket cut into it, stuffed with shrimp mousse. What it is in actuality is a combination of homemade tofu mixed with shrimp mousse, the mixture appearing to be scooped (literally, with an ice cream scoop) into liquid for braising. We ordered the hot bean paste sauce version, and it was only lightly spicy. The tofu mixture itself was light and fluffy and reminded MinxBro of fresh mozzarella. It was very good, if not quite what we expected.

I would say our second visit to Grace Garden was as successful as our first, and we definitely need to schedule a third trip sometime soon. I'd like to try the hot and spicy smoky shrimp, the salt and pepper squid, crispy Sichuan fish with rice powder, wok fried quail, the Hak-ka style tofu - oh heck, I want to try everything on the menu!

Have you been yet? No? What are you waiting for?