theminx

I'm Polish and I go to Ze Mean Bean when I miss my grandmother's cooking. Their barszcz is as close as I've found to hers.

I'd love for Chef Li to add the lamb chops we ate during the New Year's special dinner! I'm drooling just thinking about them.

Szechuan House is our go-to Chinese restaurant, particularly because they deliver. Can't beat the bargain of $2.50 for a quart of won ton soup! I like to order from the "country side taste" part of the menu, even if half of the entries contain the forbidding word "intestines."

So Meli has started mixing the green apple relish into the polenta? When I ate the dish last year during Restaurant Week, the relish was served separately and really made the dish because its tartness cut the creme brulee-like sweetness of the scallops' honey topping. The meal was pretty good overall, but I was disappointed in the quality of the pastries. I figured since they had a pastry case out front the Greek-style goodies would be stellar but they were merely passable.

Before we discovered Kyodai (the rotating sushi bar in Towson), my husband and I ate at Sushi Hana in Mt Washington pretty regularly. We're fond of the inauthentic rolls full of myriad stuff, and Sushi Hana has some bizarre ones. My biggest complaint is that many of them are too large to eat gracefully. One roll (can't remember the name) is at least 3" in diameter and deserving of a knife and fork. My other complaint is that when one orders green tea, one gets a tea bag and a cup of boiling water. Ugh.

As HowChowBlog remarked, I did visit Red Pearl last week. My party tried two items from the Sichuan menu and were pleased to find that both dishes had a nice dose of Sichuan pepper, although neither were particularly spicy. We also tried the Peking duck, which was pretty good, and a whole fried rockfish in Sichuan sauce. So far, the place is no competition for Grace Garden, and I haven't tried enough items from the menu to know if it's worth switching from Asian Court. I am looking forward to the upcoming dim sum and only worry that the many partitions that divide up the space might hinder the progress of the carts. Thus hindering the progress of the food to ME. Has anyone else been there?

I've read the boards here from time to time but have only recently joined this forum. I'm from Baltimore and have been writing a food blog for almost 5 years now. Minxeats chronicles my obsession with food and offers my thoughts on restaurants (local and otherwise) and recipes. I also do humorous recaps of Top Chef and occasionally rant about other food-related topics. Please to enjoy.