B&O American Brasserie

The newly opened B&O American Brasserie at the Hotel Monaco-Baltimore has a great happy hour. It’s $3 for some of their beers, white and red wines and champagne. They have a small bar menu that you can get some little plates from, as well as burgers and flat bread pizzas.

Chef Cat and I both had been interested in seeing this place, so while Chef Dawg was working late, we went over. Valet parking is $5, so that’s a good start. The building is the old B&O Railroad headquarters and it’s amazing. (You can read more about it here.)

We started out with a glass of champagne each and got a chicken liver pate with fig jam and brioche toast as an appetizer. There were only four tiny brioche toast fingers and so we had to ask for more. I always wonder what the kitchen is thinking when you get a lot of spread or cheese or pate and only two pieces of bread. The pate was mousse-like and very light, and the brioche fingers were buttery, but the fig jam didn’t have much flavour, which was a shame. It was sweet, but didn’t have the taste of figs.

We ordered a flatbread with cheese, asparagus, arugula and a fried egg on top. It was very good and Chef Cat ate the egg. There were fava beans in there as well, but I picked them out. I don’t like beans much. We also got some meatballs, which were well-seasoned and came in a nice tomato sauce. Kinda hard to tell what they are from the picture, but they were served in a little iron pot. Since Chef Cat’s a pastry chef, we HAD to order dessert. The menu was interesting for early fall, with some non-seasonal items like a rhubarb-strawberry cobbler. There was a cheese plate, which I totally understand, but there was also a charcuterie plate, which I totally didn’t understand, especially since it wasn’t listed on the bar menu as an appetizer. Really, do you want meat for dessert?

Chef ordered the rustic apple tart and I ordered the butterscotch pudding. If you know me, you know I love sweets. But the pudding was gross. It had no discernable butterscotch taste and a really odd texture. Chef Cat said it had a raw corn-starch flavour, but I didn’t even get that. It certainly wasn’t a pudding, because it didn’t seem like it had either milk or cream in it. Maybe a pastry cream? It was served in an 8-10 oz. glass with a garnish of a ginger cookie. I ate about three bites and left the rest.

When Chef Cat cut into the steaming rustic apple tart, she realized that the apples weren’t cooked. So she took the pastry top off of the tart and looked at the apples. Not only weren’t they cooked, they were brown because someone didn’t know enough to put them in acidulated water to keep them fresh and white. The pastry top was not quite cooked through and was raw on the inside. While we liked the restaurant, and the service was very friendly and good (if a little slow), the desserts were a huge failing and really brought the meal down. They were basically inedible.

We’ll go back for happy hour though!

Sunday Market - September 20

It's been a busy last few weeks and although I've been to the market, I haven't gotten too many pictures.
It's really beginning to look a lot like fall at the market with loads of varieties of apples and pumpkins and the changing light. Although I keep hearing that this has been a banner season for figs, I've yet to see any at the market. Here are some of the things we saw at Sunday's Market.


Walnuts
Pumpkins of all sorts
Teeny, tiny tomatoes
Lotus flower pods The gang at the Hummus stall were celebrating International Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day. Ahoy, Captain Cook!
See you next week!

Flushing, Queens

Sometime blogger, Julie, and I took the Bolt Bus to NYC yesterday and then hopped on the F Train out to Flushing, Queens to do some exploring. Ever since she saw this article about this area of the city a year ago, Julie has wanted to visit.
When we got off the train, along with a mass of humanity, we wandered around a little bit, getting our bearings along Roosevelt Avenue and Main Street, and figured out where we wanted to have lunch. We ended stopping at a noodle restaurant on Roosevelt, just around the corner from the train station. We sat for a while contemplating the menu with more than 200 dishes on it! Luckily, a chic young Chinese woman next to us offered us some guidance on what to get.
I lucked out with a dish of crispy noodles with roast pork and bok choy with a sauce and Julie had a roast pork and wide noodle soup. Both were excellent. After lunch, and at the suggestion of our lunchmate, we headed up to Honk Kong Market, a huge store with food and kitchen items. Both of us were agog at the selection of fruits, vegetables, meats, fish and more. We were a little taken aback at the tubs with huge live hardshell and soft shell turtles and LIVE FROGS! We also had a good laugh at the labeling on some of the products, including Gourmet Powder (MSG) and Indispensible Condiment (also probably MSG).
Here are some other pictures of what we saw:


Dragon Fruit or Pitaya
Seaweed knots. I am not sure why they're knotted, but the whole bin was like this and you can find recipes for seaweed knots on the intertubes. These were some sort of dried radishes. They look like... well, I'll let you think of what they look like. Flat fried duck.
Miss Bong Crab Fingers. These were 60% mackeral and 40% crab. Obviously not Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab. They were in little brown tubes. We couldn't bring ourselves to buy them. Not so sure what this is, but we thought it was funny enough to take a picture of.Conch. Tastes like rubber. Chewing rubber bands. Check my other blog for pictures of Little India.

Sunday Market - August 30

Somehow, everything at the market that I wanted to photograph, just looked the same as every other week. I decided not to take pictures of the sartorial mistakes, and only shot about six pictures. Here are my two favourites.

The guy from Zeke's coffee had a portable coffee dispenser on his back. If you look at his left side, you can see the sleeve of cups, too. I guess you have to take the coffee black.
I think this little guy is adorable. His stuffed bear/rabbit is almost as big as he is. He's carrying a bag of raspberries! Yum.

RIP Brass Elephant

I was shattered to find out that the Brass Elephant has closed its doors. There was a good article in the Sun today, in which I am quoted, about the high-end restaurants that are shuttering in the economy.  I loved the Elephant. We spent many happy times there. Here’s a little story:

Before I moved to England, my final celebration meal was at the Elephant, and when I came back to Baltimore, one of my first outings was there again. That's the one event that stands out in my mind the most.

For several years, during the lighting of the Washington Monument, Jack Elsby, the Elephant’s manager and I would serve cocoa to all the visitors in the park. It was free to everyone and we were happy to do it. It was a little pre-Christmas, small-town celebration. Then the city decided that the vendors had to charge for their food/drinks, so Jack stopped doing it. But at the lighting, I'd always stop by the restaurant for a quick hello and a drink.

Late in 2005, I had to come back to Baltimore unexpectedly, and not many people knew I was coming home. It was right before the Monument Lighting, so I met up with the Blonde and the Redhead. We watched the lighting and then headed up to the Elephant. It was crowded, as usual, and Jack was running around.

I spotted him through a crowd of people and just grinned. He looked up and saw me and he just lit up. We made our way over to each other and hugged. He told me that he'd been thinking about me all day because of our tradition of serving cocoa, and then he looked up and I was there.

It was a tiny personal moment in hundreds of happy moments that I've spent at the Elephant, and one that I will never, ever forget.

I hope that everyone associated with the Brass Elephant can find another job. RIP.

No Market....

I have in my care this week, a 10-month old puppy. We thought he was a chocolate lab, but when the DNA testing was done, it turned out he's part greyhound, part airedale and part Germand short-haired pointer. He has two speeds: zoom and zero. My dog has two speeds: slow and sleep.I was scared to leave him home with my dog, so I skipped the Farmers Market.

Here's a picture from a previous market.

Next week, though!

Sunday Market - August 16

The market seemed a little more crowded this week, not really sure why, but we both noticed it. I was focusing this week on tomatoes. Not your "garden variety" tomatoes, but on the heirloom varities. I hate the look of some of these, they're all knobby and anatomical-looking. Not attractive to me at all.

I should have paid more attention to the names, but here's a sampling of what I saw.

Lovely orange cocktail tomatoes.
Next week, I think I might take pictures of people who should have looked in a mirror before they left home... Consider yourself warned!