Local Easter Celebrations

If you're not up to cooking on Easter, there are plenty of Baltimore-area restaurants that are willing to do it for you.

Cinnamon Tree Restaurant at the Hunt Valley Inn is offering an Easter Champagne Brunch including Fresh Maryland Crab Claws on Ice with Lemon, and Pan Seared Filet of Sole with Mornay Sauce. An Herb Roasted Prime Rib and Roast Pork Loin station with side dishes "provides the comfort of a home cooked meal for the family." For dessert, try their specialty Cinnamon Tree Cinnamon Rolls or Easter Cookies.  (Adults: $35.95 / Children under 8: $16.95)

Citron at Quarry Lake is offering both brunch and supper on Easter Sunday. Brunch runs from 12-3pm, supper from noon to close.

Cosima is offering a one-off a la carte Easter brunch, from 10am - 2pm.

The Turn House in Columbia is having a brunch buffet from 10 - 3, including lamb and ham carving stations, oyster bar, plus all of your breakfast/brunch faves. ($45 adults, $20 children 12 and younger.)

Wit & Wisdom at the Four Seasons Baltimore is offering breakfast, brunch, and dinner on Easter Sunday. Breakfast will run from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Brunch starts at 9 and runs until 3pm. There will be live music, a carving station, make-your-own omelets, a sweet & savory crepe station, roast-your-own s'mores, raw bar and a decorate your own Easter Egg cookies station for the kids.
($69 per person, $29 per child under 12. Bottomless Mimosas are also available for $14.)

An à la carte dinner menu will be available from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. as well as a full tavern menu from 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Hibachi Grill & Supreme Buffet

Lest you think the Minxes only like throwing down big wads of cash for dinner, we want you to know that we are also big fans of cheap eats. The other day we tried the Hibachi Grill in Parkville because: 1) we were curious about all of those positive reviews on Urbanspoon; 2) we are serious about providing a public service to you, the Minxeats reader; 3) we were feeling gluttonous.

For the low, low price of $9.99 (not including beverages), an adult can overindulge in a large variety of Asian and American-style foodstuffs. And tons of fried foods. The evening we dined chowed down, we found hoards of people availing themselves to all manner of fried stuff - zucchini, chicken wings, fish, chicken nuggets, spring rolls, egg rolls, scallops, shrimp. It was a little appalling to watch the parade of towering plates bearing brown crunchy items as we carefully contemplated our own selections from the vast array of rainbow-hued foods.

I like the "one of each" approach to buffet dining, whereupon I select a small piece of several different items on my first tour of the bar. One stuffed mushroom cap. One piece of General Tso's chicken. One piece of broccoli. One spring roll. One fried scallop. One salt-and-pepper shrimp. One piece of fake crab from the bin marked "crab with cheese." One piece of fried fish from the bin marked, "fried okra." On my next trip, I tried one piece each of three varieties of inside-out sushi roll, more broccoli, and a big pile of the salt-and-pepper shrimp.

While others raved about the sushi, I thought it was largely forgettable. Fresh, but nothing special and not worth the trouble unless one is particularly fond of cold sushi rice. The broccoli however, was perfectly cooked, bright green and pleasantly crunchy. And while the heads-off shells-on shrimp were a bit on the salty side, they were decently sized and nearly as tasty as those we regularly eat at dim sum. I also liked that the General Tso's had some actual heat, and the stuffing in the tiny mushrooms smacked of Old Bay.

One last trip to the bar involved dessert - a small slice of sponge cake, a tiny wedge of cheesecake, a spoonful of 'nanner pudding. On the way past the salad bar (which I had ignored) I noticed there was a vat of kimchi and another of octopus salad as well as a heap of whole crawfish waiting to be pinched and sucked.

There was nothing earth-shattering about Supreme Buffet, certainly nothing deserving of the several "awesome" comments by UrbanSpoon members, but I'd go again. Ten dollars ($7 at lunch) is a pretty good deal for all the shrimp and octopus salad one can eat, and if you're feeling really cheap, here's a dollar-off coupon good until the end of November, 2010.

Hibachi Grill & Supreme Buffet
2033 E. Joppa Rd
Parkville, MD 21234
(410) 882-8278

Korean Buffet

With only two days off for Spring Break, we Minxes tend to stay close to home. It was a good time, however, to make a pilgrimage to Catonsville to visit H-Mart and stock up on exotic produce and meat.

By the time we finished standing in the long checkout line, we realized it was time for lunch. We headed a couple of doors down in the same shopping center to Hanoori Town to pick up some carry-out. The buffet at the back of the first floor food court serves sushi for $7.99/lb and hot food for $5.99/lb. Not completely trusting of sushi that's sitting out in the open, we opted for the hot buffet, trying a little bit of just about everything.

Click to embiggen

My favorite items were the kimchee and the spicy bulgogi. The kimchee was young, pretty much completely un-fermented (I really don't like the almost-effervescent quality of aged kimchee) and cabbagey/nutty/spicy. The bulgogi was similarly spicy (plenty mild for my taste buds) and the meat was tender and beefy.

On the less-successful side, the chicken wings were heavily battered and had gotten extremely soggy under the heat lamp (and over the water bath). They were probably quite tasty when fresh out of the fryer. The fried squid suffered a similar fate - soggy breading. The meat itself wasn't as tough and rubber-bandish as one might expect under these conditions, however. The shrimp, which included heads and tails, were tasteless and completely mushy and disgusting. Avoid those.

Other items were merely ok - nothing took us back to our favorite Korean buffet at the now defunct Purim Oak. But it made for a pretty decent lunch. I'd eat there again, in a pinch.

Hanoori Town
822 N Rolling Rd
Catonsville, MD 21228
(410) 747-8315