Henry

I am absolutely fascinated by the CP article explaining the edible plants that grow wild in the Baltimore area. Is there any way you might be able to add some pics and give us some harvest windows of opportunity so we know for what we are looking? I would love to find some tasty free treats locally and would like some visual help with this project.

Hi cham101, sorry for the delayed response. Sigh, I actually do have some decent images from my foraging last year, but they're on my FUBAR lappy. However, I will try to get a reader to pull them off the HDD tomorrow. When I was foraging, it was well into fall, and perilla (or beefsteak plant) was right at the limit for picking. Once the seed pod bursts, apparently, the leaves no longer taste as good. Now this is info via my mom, so take it as you will. Right now you may still be able to find some ramps, but I haven't had time to go out and check the patch I know about. I know for sure that there are wild strawberries to be found, on the footpath at Lake Roland for one, along some of the paths at Prettyboy as well. I do have some pics of perilla I just found on my email, which I've attached. You can see there was a ton of it growing along Dulaney Valley Road.

Epazote grows all over the place, and I'll keep my cam on me tomorrow in case I come across some. Finally, there is wild asparagus, which should be ready to harvest right now, but I have yet to find any around here. I've heard that it grows along Rtes. 40 and 70, west of the beltway. Speaking of which, "Stalking the Wild Asparagus" by Euell Gibbons is more or less the bible of foraging. And then of course there's Steve Brill, who I think was profiled in the Sun a few years ago.

I plan on exploring the Korean side of found food more this year. I just think it's a crazy coincidence that such parallel ingredients exist so far apart. Well, maybe not so crazy, since we're talking about parts of the world that are both covered in deciduous forest (the best kind!), and people tend to emigrate to places with climates and geographical features similar to home. But I digress....

-Henry

Edible Chesapeake did a brief profile on Berger Cookies in their Winter '07 edition. It's this free quarterly focused on local foods and such. Waaay to focused on the local thing, if you ask me, but the writing is pretty good and they do cover lots of cool MD food topics. They can usually be found at Whole Foods-type stores and such, so perhaps a Saveur contributor/editor was "inspired" by this little periodical after grocery shopping?

I worked with a woman named Amy who was irredeemably obsessed with Berger's cookies. She ate at least a two-pack every single day, which by my rough calculation would be 500 cookies a year. Personally, I can definitely appreciate the blatant over-the-top-ness of them, but after one I'm off sugar for at least a couple days. But then my savory tooth has always eclipsed my sweet tooth in terms of influence. Someone needs to invent a steak-topped cookie.

I miss Tony Cheng's! I remember back in the day it was actually a special occasion destination when the fam was jonesing for Szechuan. I seem to recall that after a long period of vacancy, the space was occupied by a Chinese carry-out briefly, before its current incarnation as a Mexican joint, El Patron. Which imo is really quite crappy in terms of both food and service. Now of course we have to trek out to Hunan Manor in Columbia, which since the tragic demise of Szechuan Best in Randallstown is the best option within a half hour drive of Baltimore I think.

As far as dim sum, there used to be Grand Palace in Glen Burnie, which provided a sturdy if slightly dingy option. Every several months I get wind of a rumor that it'll re-open. Other than that I guess it's Jesse Wong in Columbia, which my dining colleagues (heh how's that for pretentious) seem to enjoy, but I find almost everything to be overly sweet. Weird. The last time I had dim sum at Chinatown was probably 3-4 years ago, when they seemed to be getting a lot of local press. I remember it being OK. Lastly I thought the guy who runs Matsuri was Vietnamese?

I highly recommend trying the lengua tacos - succulent, enormously beefy. I know what you mean about the res and pollo, they can be a bit dry, but I've always found them pretty well seasoned. Also the guac is thinner and blander than I like, but this place still makes the best tacos in Baltimore imo. Sunday mornings, around 11, seems to be the best time to go both for fresh tortillas and meat.

Guinness certifies the world's largest crabcake!

235 Pound Crabcake

Hello all just a quick heads up - the Superfresh on 40th St. in Roland Park has an interesting deal on crab meat. First, it's from Venezuela but is NOT swimmer crab, it is actually marked as "Callinectes Sapidus", which is the blue crab we are all familiar with here in Maryland. I bought some and it does indeed look and taste like domestic. More importantly, the price is listed as $28.99 under a "Sale" banner, but the tubs themselves are labeled as $13.99! This is of course absurdly cheap for jumbo lump, particularly meat of such high quality.

On another note, someone from the Eastern commented on my article at citypaper.com indicating that where she lives, they tend to add a little baking powder to their crab cakes to puff them up a bit. I prefer dense cakes, but I plan on trying her way this week.

-Henry

So is there an interesting restaurant with great food say on the south side of Baltimore? We have friends that live in Parkville and we live in Laurel and we'd like to meet someplace in between. Cuisine? Open to all. Price? Reasonable-ish but open to lower or higher end joints, too. It needs to be a sit down restaurant, ideally a place we can linger and not feel rushed as we haven't gotten together in quite a bit...

So? What fits the bill and is exciting you now?

There are a couple places in Canton that may fit the bill, though I wouldn't characterize the food as "great". But then I am a bit of a hard sell. I recently ate at Helen's Garden - excellent, interesting starters, but the entrees were a bit stodgy and merely ok. There's alway Pazo, which though not as good as it once was imo, is still reliably high-quality and certainly visually impressive. I had very good pho and pretty good other Viet food and An Loi in Columbia recently, though this of course would be a longer drive for you. I must say that I have never been impressed with the food at Bicycle, and the fervor of its very loyal fololwing utterly baffles me. Many dishes seem gratuitously "interesting", and though the food is pretty good most of the time, I don't think its a very good value. Hope this helps.

Some brief notes. Pulled pig a bit of a mixed bag - some nice browns in there with a good smoke ring, but the interior meat a bit "grey". Not sure how they hold it prior to serving. Flavor was a little bland for my tastes, although their "traditional red sauce" was pretty decent.

The ribs, however, were quite good. Good smoke through the meat, maybe cooked to a slightly drier level than others may like, but I enjoyed everything except the very edge of the half-rack. Good pig flavor, and that slight stickyness where the fat has melted into the meat. I'd go back for these.

Sides were generally weak. Cornbread came in plastic-wrapped individual servings, and in the cake-like northern style. A fancy machine dispenses Luzianne tea, sweetened or not, but not nearly sweet enough to pass for southern sweet tea. Not much to commend the mac and cheese either. But they do carry 2 oz snack bags of Zapp's chips.

Thanks for the helpful and knowledgeable notes Dave. I'm considering making the drive up there from Baltimore to try it. You may or may not know the we in Central MD suffer from a plague of subpar, downright fake bbq.

-Henry

Hey, that's great news!

I've very much enjoyed Henry's recent writing at City Paper, and I hope maybe this'll help to kickstart the Baltimore board a bit (not that I've been much help, lately).

@Dmnkly-

Hey there I know you! Though the topic seems to have faded away a bit, I am still planning a trip to Hudson Valley Foie Gras next month to see the operation for myself. I was lucky enough to visit Korea every summer as a kid, where I would spend at least a few weeks at my aunt's farm in the mountainous countryside. Long story short, I've slaughtered poultry, so I am under no pretension that even the most progressive livestock farm is anything other than a place of death. I merely want to evaluate to my own satisfaction whether it is a place of gratuitous suffering. Whew, heavy stuff for a Sunday morning. Anyway cool to see you here Dmnkly - I've been meaning to ask you, what do you have against vowels? Haha and thanks.

-Henry

awesome- loved that crab cake article.

welcome henry hong!

@1000yregg-

Thanks so much! It still astounds me that anyone actually made it through that beast of an article. So many words, so many words. Hey quick tip for anyone living in the Hampden/Charles Village/Roland Park area - the Superfresh on 40th has Jumbo Lump crab meat on sale, it is Venezuelan but the tub indicates the meat from Callinectes Sapidus, i.e. our very own blue crab - and I can confirm it tastes like domestic. I've never seen this before, Venezuelan meat is almost always from swimmer crab. And the best, super-secret part is although the sign says the price is $28.99, the label on the tub has it marked for $13.99! As of Friday, they had lots left. Thanks again 1000yregg.

Oh and Call USA-1000!!!

-Henry

On behalf of DR.com, I'd like to welcome Henry Hong as co-moderator of the Baltimore and Annapolis forum. Don and I have discussed this a lot, and we both agree Henry is a great talent, someone who has an innate love of food, and also someone who actually lives in Baltimore at the moment =D. He has a pulse for what is going on in the city and can contribute a lot to this board, including his passion for making great BBQ.

Henry has been involved with restaurants his entire life; his family has been in the restaurant business since before he was born. He currently operates one of his family's restaurants (Suzy's Soba), and is actively writing about food for several Baltimore publications including City Paper. Click here for a list of Henry's articles, including his amazing feature on Baltimore crab cakes (following in the foodsteps of our own Todd Kliman).

So please join me in welcoming him to our little family =D.

Jamie thanks so much! Sorry for the extended delay in replying, it's just been one of those weeks - both equipment and staff meltdowns at the restaurant, plus, PLUSPLUSPLUS! I had the incredible luck to be interviewed on WYPR this past Thursday by Dan Rodricks. Somehow we managed to fill an entire hour with crab cake related yammering. Here's a link to the show:

http://www.wypr.org/mid_day.html

In any case, I shall do my best to broadcast my pent up food nerdiness in a helpful manner on this very cool forum. I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but boo Chowhound! Ahem, sorry for that lil outburst. Thanks again Jamie for your kind welcome, and of course Don you rock, and Baltimore DR.com regulars - please feel free to knock my a$$ back in line if I screw up.

-Henry