Kelley Stewart, half-owner of HarborQue, waits for customers Photo by Jacqueline Watts

On Lawrence Street, in that little seam between trendy Federal Hill and trendy Locust Point, there is a barbecue shack. It’s called HarborQue, and it serves a pulled pork sandwich that might just give you a drawl. Good thing that’s trendy these days.

It’s good, old-fashioned North Carolina (pronounced Nawth Cow-lyna) eastern region barbecue. The pork shoulder is smoked for 14 to 17 hours, till it’s to the falling-apart point with a smoky dark crust. It is also mopped occasionally with a tart, hot, thin vinegar sauce that is characteristic of eastern Carolina.

The result is a soft, smoky, spicy mound of porky delight, which is then piled on a soft sesame seed roll, topped with a little slaw by request and served to a happy public for $6.45.

Most people will opt for the platter, however, because sides make the meal. [Read more...]

Ding How, at the corner of Broadway and Aliceanna St. in Fells Point, is a Chinese restaurant with a comprehensive menu. All of the usual suspects are here, from sweet and sour chicken to moo shu pork to chow mein, Peking duck to whole crispy fish, but the restaurant absolutely excels at Szechuan flavors and noodles.

Ding How
631-37 S. Broadway
410-327-8888
Open daily for lunch and dinner
Carryout and delivery available

A whole crowd of us descended on Ding How a few weeks ago for a celebration dinner, and the management thoughtfully set us up with a table for 12 in advance. For 21 years, Henry Chen, Ronnie Shi and Ching Ling Fan have offered friendly, thoughtful service and a familiar menu of classics and exotic, innovative dishes—make sure to check the specials for those.

Start with the hot and sour soup, a spicy, heady, slightly thick brew with shredded pork, green onion and tofu. The soup is guaranteed to get your blood moving on a cold day, and the spice is refreshing on a hot day. The won ton soup is good too, a briny clear soup with a single dumpling and garnished with crisp scallion slices. There are many people [Read more...]

Manhattan Dan

We were finishing up a delightful lunch at Langermann’s, 2400 Boston Street at the Can Company, when the skies opened and several hundred thousand gallons of water fell all at once, accompanied by a symphony of thunder and lightning. So we stayed for dessert.

Serendipity!

The food at Langermann’s is good, but the desserts are downright decadent.

Like the berry cobbler, served under a lattice crust in its own little ramekin. It’s a mix of blueberries, strawberries, blackberries and raspberries, sweetened just so—not too much—and topped with a pretty little scoop of vanilla ice cream which melts atop the warm cobbler, sending tendrils of creamy goodness into the molten berries. Oh, boy.

But if I could have only one dessert for my last meal, I would tell the governor to put off my execution till I could have a slice of the sweet potato praline pie, which is a sweet, smooth, custardy, nutty, spicy, maple-y little slice of wickedness compounded by a scoop of buttery caramel ice cream. [Read more...]

A delicious Cobb Salad from Nick's Fish House

We stopped by Nick’s Fish House, at the end of Insulator Drive overlooking the Hanover Street Bridge, on one of our usual (these days) mid-90s afternoons. We were going to sit in the cool, dark, air-conditioned dining room, but it was packed and noisy, so we sauntered out to the deck, a good move.

It was very comfortable on the deck. It’s shady, there is a nice breeze, and we sat right at the deck’s edge by the Baltimore Yacht Basin marina, which is full of sailboats we can’t afford. One of the sailboats had a sure-footed little dog aboard.

To our right there was an honor citation party from the Coast Guard yard, and to our left there was a flocklet of female mallards waiting to help us with the leftovers.

Unfortunately for the ducks, there weren’t any. We perused the menu and were tempted by the multitude of appetizers, salads, sandwiches and more.

The Seafood Cobb Salad ($14.98) was delicious. A Cobb salad has a little bit of everything, and this one had (clockwise from the top) tomatoes, corn, cucumber, onion, bacon, shrimp and crabmeat arranged clockwise around a mound of frisee and field greens, topped with chopped boiled egg and avocado slices. It was lightly tossed with Louis dressing, which is very similar to Russian dressing but a wee bit spicier.

The Fish & Chips ($14.98) offered two fillets of cod dipped in Smithwick’s Irish ale and deep fried. You can really taste the beer in the crust, and it’s delicious. The fish is perfectly cooked, firm and flaky, beery and salty. The fries are crisp and hand-cut. You can also get sweet potato fries, or substitute any of the sides on the menu.

We turned up our noses at the kettle-cooked fries and the proffered cole slaw (made with Hellman’s, according to the menu) and went for the Carolina goat cheese grits. It was a worthy substitute: creamy and just rich enough for a summer afternoon.

You don’t have to get fish at Nick’s Fish House—there is steak and poultry also on the menu, but vegetarians are pretty much limited to sides, the garden salad and a vegetable pasta. On the other hand, why a gaggle of vegetarians would go to a place called “Fish House” is beyond us; it would be like a bunch of hungry beef eaters descending on Buddha’s Garden.

There is a raw bar and crab shack that opens in the evenings, and every Friday there is a deck party featuring music by DJ Yummy. We figure it’s a great deck party, because Nick’s Fish House is about the closest thing we have seen to Margaritaville in town, and there is room for about 200 people to thoroughly unwind.

Coming up on the deck, Nick’s Fish House will host tailgate parties starting three hours before every Ravens game, home or away, serving burgers, hot dogs, pit beef and pit turkey plus, of course, plenty of beer and cocktails. For home games, there’s a $5 shuttle to M&T Stadium, available with any food or drink purchase.

There is also a Sunday brunch, $24.95 adults, $10.95 kids 10 and under. It’s a little lighter on the seafood, featuring eggs, waffles and a carving station. We’re thinking eggs would be a good match with the grits.

There is an extensive wine and beer list, and we hear the Bloody Marys are dang good and the juice for the Mimosas is fresh-squeezed. We didn’t try the bar, and paid $36.13 for the salad, fish and chips and a couple of Diet Cokes, including the tax but not the tip.

Nick’s Fish House

2600 Insulator Drive

410-347-4123

Entrees $15-$23

Appetizers, sandwiches $7-$14

Open daily for lunch and dinner

BY JACQUELINE WATTS
editor@baltimoreguide.com

Ruben’s Crêpes, at 1043 S. Charles St., is tiny, but it’s bigger than the lunch wagon from which Ruben Romero serves crepes to a very long line of devotees at the Fallsway Farmers Market on Sundays.

While not exactly spacious, Ruben’s Crêpes has two small tables, one right in the bay window, and you can watch the world, or at least South Baltimore, pass by. It is comfortably air conditioned, which is important these days, and you can watch Ruben make your crêpe, a showy procedure involving a big hot flat round griddle, a very long baker’s spatula and the dexterity of a shortstop who cracks safes on the side.

If you have ever made crêpes, you know what I mean. If you have never made crêpes, go to Ruben’s. It is so much simpler, it’s delicious and it’s reasonably priced.

The #13—egg, artichoke, Gruyere cheese, fresh spinach, onions and mushroom crepe—is the most popular at Fallsway. [Read more...]

Screwballs has a friendly staff.

Oh, come on. You know you’ve angled your head sideways while you were walking, sticking your tongue out like a lizard to catch all the drops sliding down your knuckles. And maybe you thought, because so many treats now come to you compliments of your grocer’s freezer section, that the experience of going to the neighborhood ice cream shop for an icy-cold treat was lost and gone forever.

Rest assured, it’s alive and well in Locust Point, at Screwball’s. (Note to all those Southeast residents who are ready to come to the defense of their own local place: put the phone down. We’re going to get there.) Chill.

This week, it’s all about the new kids on the block: Irene Bain and Kathy Fleming. Lifelong friends who found themselves antsy after four years of retirement, they purchased a long-shuttered sub shop at the corner of Towson and Clement streets and decided to transform it into a snowball stand. And then they got a shock. “Some of the people who had lived around here for years started coming in, and they told us it used to be an ice cream store about 40 years ago.” [Read more...]