Our week of cheap eats in B-more
The not so chowish son is away with friends for a week, so I've been making some nice meals at home and the wife and I have been going out to eat at some inexpensive places that the boy wouldn't particularly care for. First stop: Nam Kang. My wife got the bi bim bop and I got the seafood pa jun. Hers was a very good beefy egg mixture, my pancake was tasty albeit greasy. With a couple good-sized sakes, about $35.
Next stop, Dizzy Issie's. A couple of very good burgers, one order of onion rings big enough for 2 (commercial Sysco stuff), 2 beers and a whiskey: about $25. Chinatown Cafe today for dim sum at lunch as we were both off work: only ones eating there at 12:30, several dim sum items unavailable, the Shanghai (soup) dumplings were mushy and not fresh, the sticky rice in lotus leaf was woefully over-cooked, but the shrimp and scallop dumplings were wonderful, turnip cake was good as were the clams in black bean sauce. With tea and some shrimp dumplings (decent), $22.
Still to come: hopefully Ras Doobie's (all props to Warthog on this one) and Lebanese Taverna. Before this week, we had only been to Chinatown Cafe and once to Nam Kang.
ko1
Apr 09, 2007 03:10PM
Nice tour. Good to hear that Chinatown Cafe is passible; I'll have to try it myself. One other place I'd also recommend is La Cazuela if you've not been.
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Yeah, I really like La Cazuela. As rumored elsewhere on the board, Chinatown Cafe is slipping.
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At Lebanese Taverna, I'd consider going with "mezze", which is sort of the middle eastern equivalent of tapas - lots of small dishes, rather than the standard one-entree-per-person. Assuming that the local outlet is on par with the DC outposts of Lebanese Taverna, putting yourself in the manager's hands for a good mix of mezze can be a delight.
Also, if you like any of the anise-flavored liquers, such as absinthe (the safe kind without the wormwood), Greek ouzo, etc., the Lebanese version is called arak, and is quite nice.
The biggest delight I've had at a L.T. location was going with a business colleague from out of town who is Lebanese. The group of us strolled in, Sam pulled the manger aside for a very animated discussion in Arabic (it sounded like they were first going through their respective family trees to see if they were relatives!), we sat down, and a parade of wonderful dishes I'd never seen before just kept on coming. Sam just grinned and said "You gotta know what to ask for!"
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