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What: Chicken Noodle Soup, Roast Beef with everything
Where: Bouillabaisse Cafe (316 Park Avenue, Downtown) How Much: $6.50 Synopsis: Bouillabaisse Cafe is a tiny little place tucked away in an area of the city that you’d probably never walk through on purpose, but JESUS for $6.50 you’ll get some of the best soup around and any small sandwich on their menu – and they have some wonderful food. A friend of mine had a cream of crab (for $4.50!!!) and it was tremendously good. If you work anywhere near this place, have lunch there. |
The City That Feeds
The Baltimore culinary landscape – without big words.
Hey remember Coolio? Me neither! And for some reason now he has a cookbook AND a cooking “show” on the internet! Behold an example episode in which he essentially doesn’t teach you anything about how to cook a spring roll (aka Soul Roll):
His cookbook, Cookin’ with Coolio: 5 Star Meals at a 1 Star Price
This easier than hell to prepare seafood soup provides a broth so explosively flavorful it should be outlawed by science. If you couldn’t care less about having the full on soup, I’d recommend just preparing the broth and using it to steam rice. It’s really quite good.
Ingredients
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Prepping the Broth
- Peel and devein the medium shrimp and set aside the shells. In a large pot, heat the oil over high heat – then add the shrimp shells, serranos, lime zest and lemongrass, cook for about a minute or two.
- Then, add the chicken stock and simmer for at least 20 minutes. All of the flavors from your ingredients will impart their awesomeness to the broth.
- Strain the broth using a sieve and either keep for later use, or move onto the next step.
Finishing the Soup
- Bring the broth to a low boil and add shrimp, lime juice and fish sauce. Simmer until shrimp are pink – about 2-3 minutes.
- Sprinkle on cilantro, scallions and sliced chiles and serve HOTTER THAN HELL.
- Enjoy.
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The City That Breeds had a baby. A food baby. Most (all) food posts currently seen on TCTB will be mirrored here indefinitely on the backend, and all new food posts will appear here. Prepare for THE HUNGER, folks.
(and no, this will not be some sort of urban-based vampire fansite, either.)
Po Boys, Po Boys, Po Boys
Chances are pretty high that if you’re going to New Orleans and someone you know has already been there and you’re talking to them about New Orleans, they will say something to the effect of “OMG OMG G O JOMGOGMGOMG PO BOYS DDROOOOL.” Sure enough, New Orleans is awash (hehehe) in Po Boys, their version of a Hoagie/Grinder/Sub/Whatever. From reading entirely too much on the matter, I came to find that the only functional difference between a Po Boy and any other sandwich/sub on Earth is the use of French bread – which is actually great, since the crust is nice and crisp while the inside is soft. Wonderful for sandwiches without a lot of runny toppings, but in the event that you throw on some gravy fries (as I did) onto your sandwich, you’re gonna end up with a really soggy mess on the bottom.
| Case in point: the Ferdi. This rather famous sandwich prepared by Mother’s Restaurant comes on French bread with baked ham, roast beef, debris (in gravy), shredded cabbage, creole mustard and mayo. To be certain, it’s one of the best sandwiches ever and I’d eat an entire plate of debris by itself. But the gravy goes straight to the bottom of the bread and causes it to disintegrate, leaving you with a pile of stuff to eat. |  |
Then again, if you’re like me you’ll eat the whole thing in 2 minutes flat and not have to worry about it. Yeaaaah buddy.
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Furthermore, it also seems like the most popular thing to do for 99% of all restaurants serving Po Boys around town is to pile them to the ceiling with fried seafood. Fried oysters, fried shrimp, fried gator tails, fried catfish, fried crawdads, fried fries, it goes on like that for a while (but no fired clams, surprisingly!). It actually begs the question: Why doesn’t Baltimore do this? We’re pretty obsessed with seafood on the whole and I rarely see fried insert seafood here subs around town. Come to think of it, a lake trout Po Boy would be pretty awesome… |
To the point, you can’t go anywhere in New Orleans without tripping over a Po Boy. They’re everywhere. Most places do a serviceable job of putting together a nice sandwich for you but real trick is finding the best ones – much like finding a decent deli pretty much anywhere, anymore. So if you go, try Domilese’s, Mother’s, or Sugar Shack. You won’t be disappointed!
…and for an honorable mention try Tomatillo’s for their “niño pobre,” which is basically just a wrap but they were pretty awesome folks and have live music (including a rockabilly version of “When The Saints go Marching In”) often times.
A week or so ago I had the pain/pleasure of spending some time in New Orleans during what must have been the coldest four day period in the history of New Orleans, with the exception of the last ice age (maybe). And since walking around the Garden District seemed less appealing in freezing rain, I ate. And ate and ate and ate. Here’s some of what I ate.
Breakfast in New Orleans
First and easiest of all, Cafe Du Monde. Every single tourist in the city can be found there every morning and it’s not hard to figure out why; they serve two things – coffee and doughnuts. I don’t know when the Cafe decided to start calling them beignets officially but I’m guessing it has something to do with the place being house within “The original French Market.” Regardless, I found photographic evidence that they did in fact used to just call them “Doughnuts.”
| All this aside, realistically beignets are remarkably similar in every way imaginable to one food thing in particular: FUNNEL CAKE. They taste the exact same and have the exact same consistency. So from now on, I will refer to Cafe Du Monde as “That funnel cake place.” And so should you. |  |
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Fortunately, if coffee and funnel cake isn’t your thing there are plenty of places to grab a full service breakfast in the Crescent City. My favorite place for a regular ol’ breakfast turned out to be Daisy Dukes, a 24/7 diner type place with a pretty awesome breakfast menu, including a cajun omelet (pictured, with sausage/onion/parsley/tomato/paprika/black pepper) with all the fixins for $8.95 – not too shabby. |
And of course, the holy grail of all breakfast experiences in New Orleans is the vaunted Jazz Brunch. There are numerous, numerous places to enjoy a decent Sunday brunch with some hoppin’ jazz music, but after much deliberation I settled on a place called Buffa’s Lounge, a fairly low key locals bar with a Jazz Brunch featuring a special menu every week. The folks there are super friendly and make some fantastic home cooked meals. For more PR, check out their video for a bit of the experience!
So that’s some of what you can expect from breakfast in New Orleans. Stay tuned for part 2!!
Most of you probably think that New England Clam Chowder is the be all and end all of chowders and blah blah blah there’s no other way to do it but GUESS WHAT I DON’T LIKE CREAM BASED SOUPS so without further ado I present to yall one of the greatest most amazing recipes for Manhattan Clam Chowder, presented by one of the most greatest most amazing grocery stores on Earth, Stew Leonard’s. It is delicious.
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INGREDIENTS : 6 slices chopped bacon 2 cups diced onions (about 2 large onions) 1 cup diced celery (about 2 stalks) 1 cup diced carrots (about 2 large carrots) 1 cup clam juice 2 cups diced tomatoes 2 cups tomato juice 1 teaspoon dried thyme 1 bay leaf 1 cup diced potatoes (about 2 medium potatoes) 28-ounce can of chopped clams Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste |
COOKING INSTRUCTIONS :
1. In a pan over medium-high heat, cook the bacon until it is crisp. Remove the bacon and drain the majority of the grease. Leave more or less, depending on how much you’re comfortable with (I usually leave a tablespoon or two at most).
2. Add the onions to the remaining grease and cook until golden. Add all of the
other ingredients except the clams and the potatoes and cook for
15 minutes, stirring frequently.
3. Add the potatoes and clams and simmer until the potatoes are tender. Add salt and freshly ground black pepper and taste.
(photo not by me coz my camera is horrible)
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What: Turkey Wrap
Where: Cafe Azafran (3700 San Martin Dr, Johns Hopkins Homewood) How Much: $8.50 Synopsis: It’s not often that I would use Mealtime! to disparage something I’m eating, but this turkey wrap – despite its decent flavor – was small and exceedingly expensive considering you could just as easily get the same thing one block away at a place like Hopkins Deli. I mean, daaaaayamn it’s expensive. Anybody else out there have an opinion on the matter? How much should a turkey wrap cost? |
Recent Recipe
Thai Shrimp Soup-
The Last Few