For those who are interested and hungry, I’ll be headed to Country Boy’s BBQ in Louisa VA on Friday, arriving a bit before noon, kick wood. I welcome company.
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Too bad, I’d love to go but I’m headed up to Baltimore for a coin show with a friend.
Where do you plan to eat?
I haven’t decided yet. The friend who goes with me to coin shows is a good eater, so we’ve eaten pretty well over the years in Baltimore and at places between DC and Baltimore. The last show, we ate at Sal & Son’s, a tremendous counter service seafood place with very reasonable prices. Other recent meals have included Chap’s Pit Beef (my friend loved it, I was a touch disappointed) and Ekiben (a pan-Asian bun and rice bowl counter service place with good, interesting food but insanely loud music).
I feel like it’s hard to get much reliable information on Baltimore restaurants. Steve Siegel knows a lot about them (I think he might have worked in Baltimore for a while?), but hasn’t posted much about them in a long time.
One real option for tomorrow is Mona’s Gourmet Carryout in Odenton, near Fort Meade. It’s a Korean-American counter service place, with a really good bulgogi sub. It’s a family-owned business run by the Korean-American wife of a former Army guy. My impression is there are a lot of these kind of places near American army bases all over the country. The day we were there, a grandson was working the counter. When we had questions about the menu, he’d ask his grandmom, who would answer in Korean, and then he’d translate it for us. It was charming.
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I get up to Bawlmer a few times a year for JHU events but my local intel has waned since my in-laws moved down to Reston and I had to end a long friendship with a Bawlmer guy. Ah well.
The new place in Cross Keys is solid (Easy Like Sunday)
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Thanks, Bob. For this trip, I don’t think their hours are going to work for us.
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Four Baltimore experiences you can’t get in the DC area, all top of the line:
You can’t get a cemita in this area, so I suggest hitting Cinco de Mayo Taqueria at 408 S. Highland Ave in Baltimore. Milanesa de pollo cemita is the classic version. Very awesome. There is a small counter you can eat at.
Next up you might try Big Bean Theory, located on the lower level inside the Harlem Garden Apartments. It should be open tomorrow or there will be other folks there who can serve you a fried fish sandwich or fried chicken wings with Eula’s Bean Sauce. 1700 Edmonson Ave, though the entrance is around the corner, downstairs on Fulton St. If Eula is there, then ask about her black eyed pea soup with smoked turkey. Carry out only.
Next is the Polish food at Sophia’s Place inside the Broadway Market in Fells Point. Plump stuffed cabbage in a pink sauce and borscht. There is seating.
And finally, of course Chap’s is nothing special, you need to go to Pioneer Pit Beef, literally a shack underneath the highway. No doubt you can get a sandwich, medium rare with onions and tiger sauce, but the best way to order this piece of heaven is just to order the pit beef, medium rare, by the pound. Eating does not get better than this.
And if you’re talking Odenton, the fish noodles at Grace Garden are still the bomb.
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Thank you, Steve. (By the way, you’ve met the friend I’ll be going with. He was with us at Los Chamacos.)
Didn’t Grace Garden close for a while and then reopen? Is it the same kitchen now? I only ate there once, but it was superb.
Pioneer Pit Beef is a great idea. It’s been on my “must try” list for a long time now.
Cinco de Mayo Taqueria sounds good, but unfortunately my lactose intolerance probably rules out the Milanesa de pollo cemita. From googling, it looks like a boatload of string cheese is an essential ingredient.
From their website, it looks like Big Bean Theory is now vegan and vegetarian. https://cllctivly.org/listing/big-bean-theory/
I’ve had the borscht and the kabanosy from Sophia’s. Both were real good.
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The chef/owner sold Grace Garden and the new owner made a commitment to much of the old menu, though there is only one ‘order in advance’ item left on the menu, the tea-smoked duck, which is superb.
The fish noodles are almost 100% the same as before. I can’t claim the same about the rest of the menu, but a group of us ate there a while back and very much enjoyed everything we ordered. My second favorite item to order, the taiwanese fish, I did not try.
The cemita is packed with a lot of ingredients and the cheese is definitely not essential. In fact, I would have been hard pressed to tell you there was any cheese on it. So have them leave it off.
In terms of the Big Bean Theory, you can’t go by that webpage, which lists every day as a day off. The space inside the Harlem Garden Apartments is not a dedicated space. Other people cook and serve food when Eula is not there, which is most of the time, and it is definitely not vegetarian. However, it’s been a year since I’ve been and I can’t guarantee what the situation is right now. So like an adventure, there is no guarantee of the outcome.
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Three folks finally got around to trying Odd BBQ in Chantilly, and we were all very impressed. For me, it was one of the great bbq meals I’ve had in a very long time, and the best entire bbq meal I’ve ever had in the DC area.
Sure, there are individual items elsewhere (like the smoked pastrami at Silver and Sons or the burnt ends at the Federalist Pig Food Truck) that are spectacular. But this meal from start to finish is my number one bbq meal in many years.
We ordered a big platter that had four meat, two large sides, and four enormous cheese biscuits. We also added two small sides. The meats were chopped pork, spare ribs, korean spicy pork belly and smoked chicken thighs.
Of those, I would not want any thing like bread or even a drop of sauce to compete with the wonderful flavor of the chopped pork or ribs. The pork was luxuriously rich with some nice fatty and crispy bits mixed in. The ribs had a gentle flavor with a nice bark and supple texture. Both excellent. The spicy pork belly is smoked then marinated and comes in its own sauce. Not really spicy, but gorgeous flavor and a beautiful soft texture, the cubes of belly just the right size to appreciate the richness yet not be overwhelmed by it. Bravo. The one thing that needs some kind of sauce is the chicken thighs which are a kind of toss off, maybe for folks who don’t eat pork. It’s the kind of order I’d normally avoid at a bbq place.
The sides were all knockouts: a super creamy mac n cheese, furikake-seasoned rice, beer brined pickles (so important to cut the richness of the meat, a MUST ORDER), and ginger sesame slaw. The biscuits here are enormous and rich with cheese. I didn’t think I’d finish one, but after the meal there was no evidence it was ever put in front of me.
Thanks so much to @FlemSnopes for encouraging us to go.
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I’m really glad that you liked Odd BBQ. Their food is really good. You rate it a touch higher than me, but every day at a barbecue place is going to be different. And I’m sadly disqualified from commenting on the cheese biscuits.
I’m curious about whether you’ve eaten at 2Fifty Texas. To me, 2Fifty Texas is in a league above Odd BBQ (which, don’t get me wrong, I think is really excellent barbecue). That, in part, is because 2Fifty Texas does a superb job with brisket, which Odd BBQ does not even attempt.
If you haven’t tried 2Fifty Texas, maybe we can coordinate a trip up there together at some point? Toni and I are planning a staycation for June, July, and half of August before we head to Bed-Stuy in mid-August for another month of NYC eating. So my availability should be pretty good.
Due to traffic considerations, we ended up eliminating the Baltimore options and heading to Odenton. My friend felt more in the mood for Korean than Chinese, so we went to Mona’s. Once again, the bulgogi sub was spectacular (it’s not on the menu, but they make it without hesitation).
The family atmosphere and history at Mona’s is fascinating and they are over-the-top friendly (unlike Odd BBQ). I’m not going to tell you that Mona’s has better food than Odd BBQ, but it is really good and perhaps overall a more pleasant experience.
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If I can tear myself away from Grace Garden, I will try Mona’s.
All three of us were perplexed about the criticism of unfriendliness at Odd BBQ. We took a long time deciding what to order, and the guy behind the counter was helpful.
I have been to 2Fifty Texas once. The brisket is serious. I can’t say it’s better than Texas Jack’s which is a lot closer for me. Also, I am up near Waghsal’s a lot, and the brisket sandwich on rye with a touch of mustard makes me swoon. It’s a different animal as it is sliced thin like most deli sandwiches, but the smokiness is wonderful.
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For the record, Country Boys was pretty good. They’re working on approval for a vinegar-pepper sauce, which will help the pork a lot. For some reason it costs $1200 to get a barbecue sauce approved in Virginia. That brings out my anarcho-syndicalist side
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Ah! We’ve differed over pickles before. I can’t abide sugar in pickles, but it’s a free country, and I know people who put ketchup and sweet relish on hot dogs and even bratwurst. As I note in my blog post, I think their pork is one of the better versions in the area, and that slaw is sensational. And those cheese biscuits are hard to put down.
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That kooks like a huge sandwich! I’m a big fan of bulgoki – and everything else that has too much garlic
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I have never heard of having to get approval for a dish in a restaurant. Is this a bottled, shelf stable product?
Dean, this didn’t seem plausible to me either. So I took a look at Virginia’s restaurant regulations (link below) and there’s nothing there that would require approval of a restaurant’s making a vinegar-pepper barbecue sauce to serve in its restaurant. (I know it may seem like I don’t have much of a life to be reading restaurant regulations, and there is some truth to that, but in my partial defense I am a recently retired lawyer and I miss legal research.)
I can think of three possible explanations:
(1) As you suggest, maybe they are planning to manufacture sauce for sale to supermarkets. That would trigger different regulations, which I haven’t read. But this would not stop the restaurant from serving a vinegar-pepper sauce in the restaurant itself.
(2) It could be that the restaurant wants to make the sauce in a home kitchen or elsewhere off-site. That would require a safety inspection of the offsite kitchen. But again the restaurant could make the vinegar-pepper sauce onsite, with no approval required.
(3) They were pulling John’s leg.
https://law.lis.virginia.gov/admincodefull/title12/agency5/chapter421/
Had a super lunch at Odd Bbq with Steve and Sarah! We got a combo meal and it rocked. The ribs and pork belly were mwah! The Mac cheese — so creamy good. The cheddar cheese biscuit (I took mine home and heated it up later) was truly awesome. No clunkers in this feast.
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I wouldn’t want to overdo the criticism of Odd BBQ’s staff’s lack of friendliness.
Other than one egregious instance of rudeness (and a history of flame wars by the owner on Yelp), I’d just say the staff doesn’t smile much and can be curt. The main guy at the counter all three times I’ve been there (the guy with the knit hat) has always answered my direct questions adequately, if not at length.
In a Manhattan soup restaurant (say), the manner of customer interaction at Odd BBQ would not stand out. But in a barbecue place it does.
