Our favorite (i.e. only) guest blogger Brian insisted on ranting publicly about the erstwhile genteel-sounding Mt. Vernon Flower Mart.  Frankly though, I’m not a fan simply because it occurs on weekdays, further choking traffic in mid-town where drivers tend to be even shittier than your run-of-the-mill Baltimore non-driving stupid motherf…but I digress. Enjoy.

It’s the time of year that every sensible city dweller dreads. Spring kicks off various festivals and glorified flea markets that bring hordes of slack-jawed county folks pouring into the city to wander aimlessly, endanger pedestrians, and look the other way as their filthy spawn gleefully trash some poor bastard’s sidewalk garden. The only good thing about these nuisance events? The food of course! There’s something special about being able to walk a block from your apartment and enjoy a gyro, a waffle cake, and a beer or two while standing on the sidelines and checking out the jailbait as they shamelessly flaunt themselves about.

Read the rest of “Flower Mart of Shame” »

In case you don’t know, this is Pigs in Space.

BBQ season ‘09 foodnerd-style has officially commenced! In what was surely a personalized message to me from the universe (or Safeway’s marketing dept., whatever) I trekked to the supermarket at 10:00 p.m. to placate a serious Stouffer’s French Bread pizza craving when I happened across a truly beautiful bit of signage:

Read the rest of “Ribs…On…Saaale! (Say it like “Pigs…in…space” for full effect)” »

Sorry folks, stupid godaddy’s terrible ftp server is making my life miserable.  Anyway, last Thursday I was on the reddio with talk show extraordinaire Dan Rodricks, this time chatting about my round-up of tamales in the B-more area. It was in the annual food issue of Citypaper, and I gotta admit they might as well have called it  the Henry Hong special edition, because, pardon my French, but I was all up in that piece! I had the cover story about tamales, a normal ‘Eat Me’ about raw food (for which I got amazingly little flame), plus I was on the Eat Guide cover as the token non-black ethnic-type and I wrote a fair number of the mini-reviews therein. (Audio of the show inside)

Read the rest of “Hot Tamales and Fish Tacos (nudge nudge wink wink)” »

So I’m trying something new today, just to mix it up a little. Guest blogger! Yeehaw! In this case, my good friend Brian who has recently begun the sometimes humbling, but often rewarding journey that is experimental home cooking, AKA “Yum what is this it’s delicious?” “I dunno some shit I just made up” Enjoy!

Before things get too crazy, I believe introductions are in order. I’m a 30-something guy living in Baltimore who started cooking for real mainly to impress girls. (Fellas – remember not to set the bar too high on the first meal!) The neighborhood I live in has only one small grocery store within easy walking distance and I don’t own a car. Plus, I’m pretty lazy. Consequently, I often have to make do with a painfully limited selection of items for my culinary adventures. On the plus side, this lack of choice forces a bit of creativity to stave off boredom and/or full blown Five Guys addiction. By no means do I think of myself a master chef, I routinely “discover” basic herbs like they were the dead sea scrolls and use them with reckless abandon for weeks at a time, but I’ve made some things that I am pretty proud of, and I am always learning. Of course, I would like to use nothing but the freshest and highest quality ingredients, but due to the aforementioned lack of options and laziness, plus an occasional bout of penny-pinching, I sometimes cut a corner or two.

Henry has graciously allowed me to post chronicles of my triumphs and failures in the kitchen. I would have liked to present these feats as normal recipes with a nice bulleted list of ingredients and such, but unfortunately, I am terrible with measurements because I never use them. I season and cook by eye and by feel, so any attempt by me to assign units of measurement to anything that I’ve made would most likely end up in disaster. Also, I usually drink when I cook, so I can never remember exactly how much of what I put into any given dish. Every meal is an adventure!

Read the rest of “What, you think you’re a big shot now? Let’s see your pasta bake!” »

First up we have Myojo Chukazanmai, which I’ve had little luck translating, but “chuka” means Chinese…anyway, the flavor I tried is “soy sauce with chili oil pack”, which is more aiming for a basic Chinese-style broth. They’re also available in more Japan-style flavors like miso. I originally thought they were a Japanese product, but now I hear tell they are actually made in Singapore. Hmmm. I will investigate. Ratings are on a 5 scale:

Price: $1.69
Flavor: 4
Texture: 4.5
Spicy: 0
Extras: Oil/Soy Sauce packet

Read the rest of “Ramen Review - Myojo Chukazanmai” »

Oh poor poor instant ramen! It’s shocking that so many people have no concept of how broad of a variety exists, and the enormous meal potential that resides within each humble little pack. It suffers a stigma in the US, in the inintiated’s mind mainly the domain of indigent college students. I must admit that even many of my very own friends know only of Top or Cup o Noodles (which are in fact made by Nissin, the company that marketed the original instant ramen invented by the late Momofuku Ando). Yes these particular friends are non-Asian, but seriously people it’s 200 freakin 9 already! Get to know ramen.

The range of flavors (and quality)  is truly awesome, and with just a few tweaks, a sub one dollar portion of food can be made into a fine repast for two. With some additional time and effort investment the horrifyingly unhealthy aspects can even be somehwat mitigated. In the next several days, I’ll be posting detailed reviews about some more interesting brands, stuff I couldn’t fit into my Citypaper article this week, which includes a general overview and some buying/cooking tips.

Grace Garden

410-672-3581

1690 Annapolis Rd, Odenton, MD 21113

Holy crap it looks like these images are from June 23rd, I know it’s been a while, but I didn’t think it was that long ago. Anyway if there is anyone left still reading, you’ll have noticed that I’ve been on something of a hiatus. This can be mostly attributed to major Godaddy problems, but I suspect it’s also related to the malware problem on citypaper.com a while back. Anyway it seems I was infected with a keystroke logger and some asshole bot screwed up my hosting account. Long story short, I’m back and now posting about Grace Garden seems almost passe. But thanks to Dmnkly over at donrockwell.com, I managed to check out this place quite a while before it more or less blew up, having been reviewed recently in citypaper and in the Sun, I think.  The praise is deserved I gotta say, although some of the more gushing reports may be a bit exaggerated.

Read the rest of “Quality Chinese in Odenton. Yes, Odenton.” »