New Years Nibbles Part 3: FENNEL CANTALOUPE SALAD

[you see dis? now make dis.]

This is the third in a series of guest blog-posts from the folks who attended our New Years Eve Iron Chef-style cookoff at Hickory House. There was one rule: you had to use exactly 9 (as in, 2009) ingredients. The results were so delicious that no winner was determined, and I felt compelled to post the recipes on here. Today's guest blogger-chef is Margot, who is famous for being the subject of a hilarious marijuana-related duping scheme run by the University of Pittsburgh's young republicans, and for saying, on national TV, "I still think Kerry's a douche, but I voted against Bush."

FENNEL CANTALOUPE SALAD, Or, a Salad of Cantaloupe and Fennel

1. Fennel, 2 bulbs
2. Cantaloupe, 1
3. Lime, juice of several, to taste
4. Olive Oil, a healthy drizzle
5. Salt, to taste
6. Pistachios, a healthy handful
7. Bleu cheese, another healthy handful, crumbled
8. Tarragon, one bunch, coursely chopped
9. Love- the most important ingredient! I guess I miscounted my corporeal ingredients so I'm including this oft neglected one.

Slice the fennel bulbs thinly on the diagonal and place in a bowl. Halve the cantaloupe and carve out thin concave bits with a spoon into the fennel bowl. Squeeze the limes over the whole thing until everything's good and limey. You can add salt and olive oil here and let it sit for a little while to meld. Before serving, toss with the tarragon, pistachios and bleu cheese.

TWO WORDS: NUMBER ONE

Oh dear lord yes

New Years Nibbles Part 2: BNUTSQSH BALLS

[another day, another batch o' balls]

This is the second in a series of guest blog-posts from the folks who attended our New Years Eve Iron Chef-style cookoff at Hickory House. There was one rule: you had to use exactly 9 (as in, 2009) ingredients. The results were so delicious that no winner was determined, and I felt compelled to post the recipes on here. Today's guest blogger-chef is Becca, who is famous for being the last person under 45 to watch CBS.

RESOLUTIONLESS BNUTSQSH BALLS, Or Butternut Squash gnocchi with sage, toasted walnuts, and gruyere

1) Butternut squash (1--halved, cooked, scraped, mashed)
2) Flour (a bunch)
3) Olive Oil (enough)
4) Sage (1 tsp? - fresh, minced, and then about 2 tbsp scattered whole leaves)
5) Onion (1-chopped)
6) Walnuts (handfuls, the more the nuttier)
7) Gruyere (the stankier the better, enough to cover gnocchi with dank cheesey layer)
8) Egg (1, beated)
9) Salt (filler ingredient, to taste)


Bake butternut squash in the oven until cooked thoroughly (about 40 minutes? an hour? Long enough for a sufficient pre-new years nap).

While the bnutsh is baking, heat a largeish circle of olive oil in frying pan, and add onion. Sautee onion until translucent, add sage leaves, relish aroma. Set aside, nap.

Remove baked bnutsh, and once cool enough to handle, scoop out contents into large bowl. Add onion/sage mixture, egg, and a good mess of flour. Mash with hands, adding flour until the mash reaches doughy consistancy. Salt.

Sous chef: While chef is mashing, sautee walnuts in a pan (use the same pan the onions were cooked in, don't rinse) with olive oil and whole sage leaves. Sautee until nuts become golden brown and crunchy.

Form bnutsqsh mixture into evenly sized balls, roll in a plate of flour to coat.

Bring a large pot of water to boil (adding salt, duh). Add bnutsqsh balls. They are cooked when they rise to the top. Remove with a slotted spoon, and place in pan with walnuts, simmering, stirring until coated.

Spread contents of pan on an oiled cookie sheet, and sprinkle with shredded cheese. Bake until cheese melts.

Serve with champagne. No resolutions necessary.

New Years Nibbles Part One - KIBBEH

[everyone wants to hold Jon's balls]

This is the first in a series of guest blog-posts from the folks who attended our New Years Eve Iron Chef-style cookoff at Hickory House. There was one rule: you had to use exactly 9 (as in, 2009) ingredients. The results were so delicious that no winner was determined, and I felt compelled to post the recipes on here. Today's guest blogger-chef is Jon, who is famous for keeping it simple.

KIBBEH, Or, delicious beef balls wrapped in beef dough and deep fried--mmmmmm

1) 2 lbs delicious beef

2) pine nuts, a bunch of 'em

3) 2 onions, medium size

4) some salt

5) some pepper

6) bunch o allspice

7) bunch o cumin

8) 1/2 pound or so of cracked bulghur wheat

9) oil -- lots of it

first slice up onion#1 all nice and tiny and cook it in a pan with some oil. take the first pound of ground beef and throw it in there, and be sure to break up the beef as much as possible. add toasted pine nuts (can't find toasted pine nuts? toast 'em yourself!), salt, pepper, bunch
o allspice and bunch o cumin. cook until it is very light brown and still nice and juicy (juicy juicy beef).

in the meantime you shouldve been soaking that cracked bulghur wheat in water for an hour. drain it and squeeze out all the excess water before adding the other onion, cut up nice and tiny, as well as the other pound of beef. add salt and pepper and beat the f*$k out of that beef bulghur mixture until it becomes like a delicious beef dough. you really can't tell there is beef in there anymore!!

now grab a ball of the beef dough, roll it around all nice and pretty, then poke a hole and stuff it with your beef mixture (you know, the one you made first). pinch it off and deepfry it in some hot oil for about a minute or two, tops, until it is golden brown and just slightly crispy on the outside.

there you have it.

Shawarma King, Columbia Heights

[fries n sumac]

So one of the New Years resolutions I was tricked into was that for the month of January, KB and I are going to be vegetarians. Don't ask me why; I don't know. It's healthy? It's less morally repugnant? Before you jump on me for capitulating to a lifestyle I find silly and reprehensible, please understand that I made several other New Year's resolutions that I neither understand nor would ever commit to on my own. For example, I've agreed to run a full marathon this year. WTF?

Anyway, one thing I've noticed is, when you're eating vegetarian, you never get full. Definitely not off of one meal, anyway. (Why do I feel like I'm talking about drugs -- "Maaaan, when you ain't on smack, you can't never get hiiiiigh!!"). I was talking to friend A., a long-time vegemite who now eats meat, the other day about this, and he agreed, and said that when he only ate non-meat, he was grazing all the time and never really satisfied. Now that he eats steak, he can get full! (Wait, now it feels like I'm writing a column for Cosmo -- "Before I let go of all my hangups about my body, I could never climax...").

So on Friday night I was out drinking at Marx Cafe in DC, after the Gogol Bordello show, and I got them drinkin' hungries, and KB told me that on Columbia Ave near her house a new falafel/shawarma place had opened up one week ago, called Shawarma King. It was indeed open at 2 am, and I enjoyed an excellent falafel -- one that competes admirably with Amsterdam Falafel on 18th Street in Adams-Morgan, and MUCH cheaper ($3.99 for a falafel).


['lafel]

The two best things about this falafel -- which was, admittedly, unremarkable as far as the taste of its deep-friend-chick-pea balls, which was fine, but not unbelievable or anything -- were the toppings bar, and the SUMAC. Like Amsterdam, King has serve-your-own toppings including beets, pickles, hummus, tahini, lettuce, tomato, and a highly-citrused Israeli salad of tomato and cucumber. On the extra side, they have a creamy white garlic spread and a mildly-spicy red hots spread that were deliciously thick in flavor (I went back for seconds on my bottom layer).

Then, sitting atop the toppings buffet, they had this pizza-shaker full of ground red sumac powder, something that I had (call me ignorant) never seen before. I shook it liberally onto my falafel but also my fries, which were limp and not that good, and it gave everything this really awesome smoky, savory taste that was really interesting. I was asking the folks who own the shop, who were Palestinians from Bethlehem, which part of the sumac tree it came from, but there was a communication barrier that I wasn't able to overcome. Anyway, some guy who was in there said something about how a lot of Middle Eastern food, especially Iranian food, has sumac as a topping. It's no Old Bay, but it's a start.

Baltimore Round Robin, Feet Night

For a full album of Feet Night pictures, click here.

So I'm finally getting around to finishing my review of Wham City's Baltimore Round Robin tour. A few things, namely Christmas, New Years, and a long weekend in DC got me off track, but I think I'm back now. At least, I'm in Baltimore, it's 8:30 am, I've been up since 5:50, and I have a triple-shot of espresso in a cup nearby (why did I buy that?), so I'm reasonably sure.

Night two of the big Wham City party at Sonar a few weeks back, which was supposedly about bands that make you move, and it was indeed partly about that, but what that means is it was roughly equally split between weird electro-art projects like Dan Deacon and Adventure, extraordinarily loud hardcore bands like Double Dagger and Thank You, and just plain bizarre acts like the disco-punk outfit Future Islands and Nuclear Power Pants, a hard-funk band featuring Eyes Night comedian(?) Show Beast on vox, and guitarist and bassist wearing enormou shark-like costumes. Here's what I thought of the bands:

Thank You: Nothing against what these guys were trying to do -- noisy mosh-punk -- I just didn't think they were terribly interesting. Without the stage presence or interesting instrumental approach of a band like DD, I sort of lose interest relatively fast in all the screaming and smashing around. Online, they're a bit more interesting -- an exercise in tension-building through repetition and the addition of constituent instrumental parts, not to mention some pretty awesome freak-out drum work, but still not that good.

Double Dagger: It's been about six months, I think, since I've heard "Luxury Condos for the Poor" performed live, and since I heard it here, I've had a heightened awareness for the "now available for lease" signs tacked onto to every hoity-toity, glass-walled residential complex from Harbor East to Logan Circle (which I saw yesterday, incidentally). There's something about the subtlety of the line "They're building a Ghost Town," which singer Nolan Strahls repeats over and over again atop the layered, heady, and ultimately really impressive bass playing of Bruce Willen, when compared to the callousness of the cymbal-and-shrieks chorus ("They're building luxury condos for the poor!") that makes it seem more brilliant than it is. But for some reason I just really adore the idea of what is certainly a rather elitist punk band (the two front men are both graphic designers who run a company called "Post-Typography". I mean, come on.) writing songs about things that I see and notice every day, about cities changing, and about ideas that people I know spend a good deal of time trying to analyze in print, and having their version come out more eloquent for its simplicity. Oh, yeah, and having the song effing rock.

Height: Besides that song from "The Woods" (best lines in film: "The doctor says that I'm hyphy and I have the Bubonic Plague" and "A fever of 96? That's so hot!"), which Show Beast showed on "Eyes Night," I don't find Height's work as an MC or a producer that compelling. The gal from A.K. Slaughter and a few others were on stage, which gave Height's songs the feel of a hipster hip-hop collective, which wasn't that cool because why, exactly, should I care? I hardly care when Spank Rock assembles these huge crews of foul-mouthed rappers for shows, and I generally know his tunes before I see them.

Adventure: After reading this Michael Byrne profile of this dude, I had exactly zero interest in seeing him live, but was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed his performance and how little I cringed when it was his turn to perform in the Round Robin. I was expecting something a little more akin to Elf Power in the video game sense, but the cheap Nintendo themes were hardly discernable and present mostly in an aesthetic, rather than literal sense. Also, he played some keyboard lines live, over beats that were eminently danceable.

Smart Growth: As an inconsistent-at-best fan of electronic music, this is another act that I was surprised to find myself enjoying, and even dancing pretty hard to. It had most of what I remember liking about all that Big Beat and Happy Hardcore techno that I occasionally checked out in high school, but with less-annoying samples and none of the stupid over-repetition. The mood was only spoiled a little bit when DJ-man Denny Bowen (also, incidentally, drummer for Double Dagger) paused his act for a minute to chastise the audience for crowding him, despite the fact that he was on a small scaffolding and from where I stood, in no apparent danger. "I've performed for a lot of people a lot of times and never felt like I was going to die," he told them. And then for the rest of the night, every time he played, he had two really weak-looking hipsters acting as bodyguards, standing in front of him and blocking everyone's view. Lame.

Lizz King: is not funny. She's a solo act, and she performs white-girl rap songs and some folk songs and she looks a lot like Sarah Silverman. But she's all shtick, her music is unlistenable, and her cover of Rihanna's "Umbrella" is insufferable. No wonder she allegedly got naked at Whartscape last year.

Future Islands:is funny. The band plays sorta theatrical electro-rock, like Meat Loaf meets Roxy Music fronted by Jack Black. I really enjoyed this band, although I can't be sure what the names of any of their songs were. Listen here; it's really good.

Dan Deacon: was meh. I mean, I've seen this guy like 6 times now, and it rarely gets any more interesting. He started with "The Crystal Cat," which is a good song, and went on to play some new stuff, but I just have a hard time getting into Mr. Deacon these days. This is possibly because 95% of the crowd at "Feet Night" was under-18 and annoying and thrashing around giddily, as though they'd been let out of the house just once a month and needed to make the most of it. During one of his songs, some drunken high schooler came up to me and asked me if I was in one of the band, and I foolishly told her no, at which point she went over and started flirting with Denny Bowen. Afterwards I grabbed her and asked what her next question would have been, had I said yes. She told me she was looking for weed, which was certainly a lie, but it was a funny-ish illustration of what the crowd was like: pubescent teens looking to score at the after-party. This is how classy Baltimore is.

Blood Baby: was playing so loud that I could hardly hear anything, but I really liked it. Peter O'Meara, the (former) guitarist from the Death Set (who incidentally, moved to Philly, which sucks, but may be part of a fiendishly clever business plan to move from one post-industrial town to another building hipster fan base, until Jonny Siera takes over the world), is in this band, and you can totally hear his mark on it. Electro-spaz-punk that really gets you going if you know it well enough to shout along.

I am sure I missed some other bands that played here, but I was probably too busy having a staring contest with funny clown (he won) and mourning the absence of the Death Set, even though they were listed on the posters. My overall thoughts are: successful endeavour, this. I've never heard of a set-up quite like it, with each band taking turns performing one song each and the audience dutifully running from one stage to the next, turning their heads in unison. Not all the bands were good, but what can you expect? Also, for all their childish screwing around, hipster self-consciousness and infuriating wannabes, it is really nice to see that Wham City still exists, and that DIY projects are being done, even if not in DIY spaces (by the way, I heard about a new one just now, which I plan on visiting next week). It's good to keep up appearances and make Baltimore seem like a new model of your typical city in the midst of an artistic flowering -- Bohemian Prague or Paris between the wars, only in the American post-industrial world -- you know, Kokoschka and Picasso, only with video games.

Round Robin, Eyes Night

[lexies]

See a full album of photos from the night here .

Surprisingly, I have not yet seen one single review of Thursday and Friday night's Baltimore Round Robin tour shows at Sonar. Not on SENBaltimore, not on City Paper's website/blog -- and only the usual snarkily-captioned photos on Beatbots. So here's what I thought of the bands I saw (and recognized, by name) at Night One ("Eyes Night") of the Baltimore Round Robin tour, a two-night showcase of Baltimore's indie-est, and an event that has received enthusiastic plaudits from extremely well-regarded sources across the board.

TEETH MOUNTAIN: One of those wall-of-noise indie bands that use real instruments (sax, violin, guitar, bass, drums) to make droning, atmospheric squawkings. This one I thought was quite interesting, actually, as though they were moving in some sort of unified maneuvers, and underpinned by tribal-ish rhythms. The real striking thing about them, though, is that they have this very young feel to the group. First, they all look about 17, and the gal banging on the floor toms in the picture above, mainly because she was the only female in the group, gave me a sort of "I-just-got-to-Art-School-and-found-my-true-self" vibe, as if she had only recently discovered the appeal to some people of a girl wearing a smock dress over dark tights going ape-shit on a bunch of drums, or that others find such a spectacle appealing. Teeth Mountain was, for me, a great first signal that this night was going to emphasize the DaDa of Wham City, the ubiquitous Baltimore art collective that organized this event.

JANA HUNTER: Looked like Janis Joplin, sounded very West End of London, 1968. But erring on the more Kinks-y side of things, rather than the truly drugged-out psych-rock side. Hunter has a great voice, plays fairly uninteresting guitar, but write songs that aren't quite symmetrical and felt to me like they'd be equally welcome accompaniment in a movie about a road trip across Death Valley as a scene on a foggy pier out in the Thames at night.

CREEPERS: Alright, further down the DaDa rabbit hole, then. These guys were a duo, with one playing a casio keyboard and singing high, the other (on the left in the pic) mirroring his vocals an octave or two lower. All of their songs sounded like demented Broadway numbers, but one was particularly hilarious. Didn't get the name, but the lyrics went something like, "That sting you feel, that's part of love / Relax, you're doing fine / I'm very pleased with you." Talk about Creepy, but so funny.

SANTA DADS: A guy (the guy from Creepers) in tiger pajamas playing trumpet; his comrade in a dress, strumming a ukulele; a girl in between them adding nothing to the act save for some epileptic dance moves and the vigorous shaking of a giant, bewhiskered, stuffed catfish--now we are safely here, in the 21st century Baltimore absurdist movement. I don't dig this band that much musically (plus, where was "Where You Gonna Hang Your Leg"??) but I get that they are, to a certain extent part of a troupe, and purveyors of an art joke that you basically have to immerse yourself in to really understand. We're talking about reliving childhood here, but with all the hormones and awkwardness and nervous obsession that came with puberty mixed in. There's nothing intellectual about Santa Dads, but that's okay, because that's not the point.

BEACH HOUSE: The most-talked-about Baltimore band this year, blah, blah, blah, Devotion, even Baltimore Magazine readers can appreciate them, blah, blah, blah, Victoria Legrand's dad is some sort of French new-wave film star, blah blah bleccchh. When I heard Beach House's record, and a few earlier tracks, and especially when I watched director Skizz Cyzyk's cinematic take on their song "You Came To Me," I decided that I don't really like this band. But that was before I saw them live, and heard Victoria LeGrand's really quite epic cat-like yawl through a proper sound system. If this is the new cool, I'm at this point okay with that.

FUNNY CLOWN: In the middle of his stand-up act, Funny Clown, AKA Joshua Kelberman of Wham City, said, "I need a volunteer from the audience..." and when a bunch of hands shot up, said, "Which one of you wants to die?" That was pretty hilarious. Almost as funny was when he asked the eventual volunteer he selected, a college student, what he studied, and when the kid answered "economics," he asked--"What kind of economics." The kid said, "financial economics," and Funny Clown tilted up his chin scanned the crowd, gave a flourish of his hand, and said, dramatically, "Is there any other kind??" That was pretty funny too.

LEXIE MOUNTAIN BOYS: To start, I have a very hard time describing, when I'm talking about it, why I think this group of grunting, groaning, men's briefs-wearing women are so f-ing brilliant. So I'll give it a try in print. For those who don't know, LMB basically gets on stage in really strange costumes, which sometimes emphasize their sexuality (body paint, torn clothing, busty tops) and sometimes satirize it (fake beards, men's undies over their pants, etc) and has a seance-like vocal jam sessions that consists of (sorta) tuneless grunts, groans, moans, stomps, handclaps, and various gutteral warbling. It's certainly not "music" as most people know it. But I hear strains of pre-war gospel, soulful moments that reference old blues, negro spirituals, and shape-note singing. At the same time, all the other "boys" seem to gather around Lexie and draw energy from her, clutching at her wrists and clothing like a prophet, as she raises her eyes to the sky and seems to feed off of their energy as well. Accordingly, the cadence of each song rises from the calm to the frantic, with the girls throwing their heads back and howling, then humming, then cooing. In doing so, I think they tap into some of the same ideas about song structure, tension and passion that romantic composers reach, while working in roughly the same format as the neo-primitivists of the 70s like John Fahey and Peter Lang. They need to be seen live to be understood, and they make me smile from ear to ear whenever I see them.

LESSER GONZALEZ ALVAREZ: Channeled Jackson Browne, Jeff Buckley, and Nick Drake in equal parts. He dressed in earthy, tweedy prep-tones and played deep, rich-sounding accompaniments to his folk songs on a crystal-clear Fender Telecaster. Enjoyed him, but need to spend more time with him.

Rub

[gobble]

So I promised a review of the barbecue place that Dana and I found on our bike trip through South Baltimore, and here goes. I don't understand what Richard Gorelick is talking about here, when he says that Rub makes brisket that is "very tender and a little bit beautiful" or turkey that is "a marvel of modest flavor." Both are simply untrue.

Let me instead chance an analogy that better suits the quality, originality and general ethos of Rub -- how easily Gorelick was seduced by the Walker Evans photo qualities of the landscape, the six-pack cartons as condiment holders (wee!) and everything else Rub tried to sell him as "authentic feelings about Texas and the good food that Texans make for each other"! -- and that is, Rub is to barbecue as whiskey is to Jim Beam, and there were at least 2 dozen Beam bottles lined up on a mantlepiece behind the bar. In fact, almost all the house cocktails, like the Lone Star lemonade, are bastardized whiskey sours made with Beam, and Beam is held up in this place as the most Texas, most appropriate accompaniment for slow-smoked meat, and the fact is, Jim Beam is disgusting and a whiskey that rests only on its strong branding.

Likewise, Rub's barbecued meats are disappointing, and resting on the laurels of a bar with the kind of character that attracts fratty Federal Hill types. Why else would there be over a dozen flat screens showing ESPN, FSN, network football and even Gol friggin' TV? Real barbecue joints don't need to be sports bars, nor do they need to look pretty:


[gobble, 2]

But now, actually, that does look pretty. That's the turkey breast that came on the Lone Star platter. But don't be fooled! It was dry as a bone and served less-than-lukewarm. This was amateur barbecue, not slow-heat alchemy. Same goes for the brisket. This wasn't the type of meat that you don't want to bespoil with hickory sauce -- it was exactly the type of meat you want to smother in it. And we did, and it tasted fine, I guess, but not revelatory by any means. The chicken did fall off the bone, I guess, and the sausage was pretty delicious, but what kind of barbecue place can be judged on chicken and sausage? What's that you say? A Texas pit? Nay. Sausage is important to master -- it's like learning your Suzuki Method before trying the Shostakovich violin concerto. But for a Texas-style barbecue joint, your brisket is your Vocalise -- a penetrating, dreamy, melted-butter aria that can be made truly beautiful, or wholly forgettable. Rub is certainly not the former.

Our sides:


[m&c] [pomme-de-terre ensalat]

This were disappointing as well. Vanilla, mayo-based potato salad devoid of herbs, and M&C heavy on the cream, not the cheesy. Myeah.


[dosty]

FOOD: B-
A Texas barbecue place needs to focus on the essentials, videlicet, not poultry. The balance can't hang in the cradles arms of a mediocre mustard sauce. The ribs and brisket were not impressive, the "slow heat" not apparent, and the plate arrived half cold. You want Baltimore barbecue? Go to Big Bad Wolf.

DRINK: B-
Had a nondescript pale ale that I don't remember now because it was October. The cocktails all looked pretty frighteningly bad. Keep your Red Bull away from me.

AMBIENCE: B-
This place really bothered me (can you tell?) because it was so clearly a sports bar first, and a food purveyor second. I can't deal with barbecue places that don't give it their all. Get rid of the commercialized drink specials, the hordes of Ratbird fans, and the constant product placement, and then we'll talk.

Port Covington

[bet your life that your sweet wife is gonna catch more fish than you...]

Way back when in the not-as-chilly month of October, Dana and I went on a bike ride from (Hampden/Butcher's Hill to) downtown to Port Covington, the little V-shaped peninsula-ish strip south of Federal Hill, where the Hanover Street Bridge connects mainland Baltimore to the wilds of Brooklyn, Cherry Hill and Curtis Bay over the Middle Branch of the Patapsco. There's a Wal-Mart there, and the Baltimore Sun's printing facility, but mostly it's pretty barren.

We went mostly because the Middle Branch is allegedly the next (or maybe last?) big strip of waterfront property to be developed in the city, with all sorts of potential for that gospel idea that Bmore pols are looking for these days, referred-to alternately as Mixed Use, Live Where Work, Live Shop Work Play Eat, or First Floor Retail. Personally, I've not written a lot about Port Covington at my day job, but that just might be because it's so far down the city's wish list that not a lot is going to happen there in the next decade.

What we found was, there are some folks that prefer it that way.


[weeds]

The above is what the mouth of the Middle Branch looks like over the mess of weeds and chain-link at that very bottom tip of Port Covington. It's absolutely overgrown and filthy, with trash everywhere, but clear evidence that partying/bonfiring had been going on. It also looked like it ought to take about two seconds to bulldoze all the overgrowth and nonsense standing in the way of someone paving over paradise for a condo tower or whatever. But when we went further down to the water, we found a little square cement patio ("We could play foursquare here!" Dana said, predictably) with evidence of picknicking, and beyond that, a strip of riprap where we found this fellow:


[i'ma gon' fishin' too...]

This guy said his name was James, and he was fishing with grass shrimp bait for rockfish and bass. He told us he'd caught 45-inchers on this site before, which struck me as a slightly frightening prospect because of how close to, and bound-in by industrial pollution sites Port Covington is. He added that over the years the fish have dwindled, but he still fishes every Saturday. How postmodern, I thought -- the 21st century hobo, fishing outside the Wal-Mart.

What struck me mainly about Port Covington was not that it was such a terrible use of potentially beautiful waterfront property but that it was such a recent terrible use of waterfront property. Putting a remote, car-access-only big box retailer next to a big newspaper printing facility, all in a completely unwelcoming office park makes no sense to me in this day and age, and I think both buildings were built in the last 30 years. First of all, where's the market for the Wal Mart coming from? Across the bridge? Federal Hill? Second, aren't we in the age of What A Water View Can Do? In Baltimore especially, I'd expect this sort of parcel of land, if it was indeed bare and not occupied by troublesome factories or brownfields to be snatched up and developed as a people place shortly after the Inner Harbor was.

Anyway, that's what's happening slightly to the north in the southern part of Riverside, another stop on our bike ride. Except there's no water view (only a CSX rail yard). Cool place though.

The following buildings were side by side, and I shot them because the one on the right (which is where it appeared on the street) is the type of building that I really go for -- inornate, elegant, simple red-brick factory type deals that are built to last and full of character (KB would say -- "It's just a building, Robbie"), while the one staring it in the face across the street is a god-awful example of spaceship-from-hell modern low-budg architecture. The one on the right is luxury condos (obviously) while the one of the left was, I believe, a medical center. I don't get why developers, at least in this town, see no value in contextualizing architecture, especially in a place where you're trying to attract skilled or innovative workers and people with money, to live and work there. Doesn't anyone have any taste?


[a study in contrastualization]

To the west of these monsters, we've got the building that I recently learned is David Simon's favorite in building in Baltimore, for really predictable, pinko commie reasons about how it represents blue-collar workers undivorced from their product and its means of production (could he be any more obvious a Marxist?), the Pabst Castle. This is a dope building, I think, not because it evokes the dignity of Scotland or whatever Simon said, but because it looks so German to me, like a Gingerbread House in the Black Forest. And what could possibly go better with the whole ethos of PBR? It's a hipster beer, and hipsters long to return to their childhood fantasies of castles and forts and sweet-n-spicy cookies...



[the castle]


[the sign]

And finally, here's a picture of my bike, which I've dubbed Icey Smoove, because I really like my bike. It's a Belgian-made Flandria from the 80s that MacGruder Bernstein gave me this summer, and it's DOPE:


[icey smoove]

Coming up next, the little-known South Baltimore barbecue place where Dana and I ate!

Also, check out my latest review from El Papel de la Ciudad.

Andy Friedman @ El Rancho Grande

[country]

Sunday night, after the Steelers-Ravens TRIUMPH, I popped by my neighborhood coffeehouse, El Rancho Grande, to catch the better part of Andy Friedman and the Other Failures' set, played before about a dozen people from the corner of the corner of the hole in the wall. It was worth it.

This band is basically what I aspire to sound like in music -- very much rooted in a classic country tradition, complete with swingy beats and some very impressive telecaster lead playing overtop of a bare-bones rhythm section, but with a decidedly modern feel, lyrically. Hell, Friedman doesn't even have that great of a voice, but it's mediocre in the same way Ryan Adams's or Mac McCaughey's is--sort of abrasive and bleak, but suited to songs about failed road trips and stupid love affairs. Everything he played, as far as I could tell, was within the most basic of folk-song or 12-bar-blues formats, but the vibe was darker and more lo-fi than your average independent public radio equivalent. It reminded me of this Pittsburgh band I love called The Working Poor much more than, say, Langhorne Slim.

I can't say I got the names of any of Andy's songs, but he was handing out free copies of a two-song EP called Idaho, which was a really cool idea, and both songs on it, the title track and "Road-Tripping Daddy" are cool examples of the above description. Don't have too much more to say about it, because I haven't had the chance yet to really sit down and study this stuff. Plus I only have two songs plus Myspace.

Also notable is that Andy Friedman is a regular illustrator for such big-name pubs as the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine, (look at his work here) and he was selling some awesome music-related prints at the show. I bought this one of Levon Helm, but I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with it yet (hang it? give it as a gift?):

A Tale of Two Reubens

[Jay's]


[Tremont's]

For my money, the best cultural reference to the Reuben sandwich, which is, besides the Primanti’s Pastrami & Cheese, the greatest sandwich of all time (and definitely the greatest widely-known standard sandwich form out there) comes from the movie Quiz Show.

Richard Goodwin, the kind-faced FCC investigator played by Rob Morrow, and quite obviously a Jew, is eating a Reuben in Charles Van Doren’s country club dining room. Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes), who is being fed the correct answers to the questions on a carefully-orchestrated TV quiz show, is the subject of Goodwin’s investigation into fraud in TV.

The tension between them is palpable, down to their very physically opposing appearances, but Goodwin breaks it by quipping, between mouthfuls, of the restaurant -- “they have the sandwich but there doesn't seem to be any Reubens.” It’s maybe the best veiled joke about anti-Semitism I’ve heard in a film, but I bring it up just for the purpose of pointing out—Hey, that’s always the way it goes, isn’t it? It’s how I imagine Italian guys feel when they try to get pizza in a place like Baltimore. The product is there, but where the hell is the schlemiel what’s supposed to have invented it, huh?

A few weeks ago I was covering the design competition for the University of Baltimore’s new law school building (at the UB student center, of course), listening to all these world-class architects like Moshe Safdie and Dominque Perrault, and it was all really interesting, but MAN was I hung over. A not-so-frequently-seen old friend had been in town the night before, we’d gone to trivia night at Max’s, yadda yadda yadda, I drank a lot. On a weeknight. So sue me.

My prescription, which worked amazingly well, was to go to Jay’s Carryout on Charles Street, and eat a big plate of grease, and when I saw the Reuben on the menu, I said why not? This was a surprisingly passable sandwich (it’s the top one in the photos), with not too oily corned beef and tart, probably store-brought Russian dressing. The best part about it was the kraut, though, which definitely was not canned, although I can’t imagine a grease hole like Jay’s making its own cabbage products. Boar’s Head, maybe? The main problem with it, however, and what kept it from being good, was the lack of what Henry Hong would call “uniform meat distribution.” This specimen did not have it. I was choking on monster-size bites of corned with very little of anything else in them, and dammit, I didn’t like it.

Then, a few days ago, I decided to test a theory put forth by my colleague “Brendarita” Kearney, that the Reuben at the Tremont Grand hotel’s deli, which is right next to our office, is the best sandwich in the city. Now I have to admit, this was a good sandwich. It was crisply toasted, not limp and damp like a lot of Reubens, and it had some fine quality meat in it. My qualm was with the kraut. Way too briny, not enough pure vegetable flavor. And it cost me like $7.95, and for that kind of money, why am I not eating an Attman’s Nosh on Rye?

Who knows? Not me.

Cresap's War Video - 3 songs

Thanks to all who came out last night to hear Cresap's War open up for Macgregor Burns and the VCR and Arizona. The show was great, even though nobody had anywhere to sit. Above is a video of our first of 7 songs we played, shot by the lovely Bolivia, who we thank for her efforts. You can't see much, but the sound quality is decent. Two more songs follow. They are, together:

1. "Nothing's Gonna Be Alright" (Whelan), followed by:

2. "Heaven's Radio" (Carter Family)


3./4."Sleepwalkers" (Aumiller) / and a segment of "Remnants of Ellie" (Whelan)


Enjoy, and thanks again!

Come Hear My Band Tonight @ El Rancho Grande, Hampden!

Tonight is the debut show of Cresap's War, a new musical project by Rachel and me and our friends Alan and Jon.

We're performing our dear friends MacGregor Burns and the VCR, and a band called Arizona, who we're told are good people.

Details:

Cresap's War / MacGregor Burns and the VCR / Arizona
Tuesday, Nov. 11th, 9 pm
El Rancho Grande
3608 Falls Rd. - Hampden
Baltimore.

Why Haven't You Voted Yet?

What you doing reading this? When you know that you can vote however you like! Get going!

Watch MNF, Early and Often

I DON'T CARE WHERE YOU'RE FROM EVERYONE'S A STEELERS FAN TONIGHT!!

(7th paragraph: read careful-like)

Central Michel Richard

[pretty girl, ugly decor]

Once again, KB lured me to DC, on a Sunday no less, with a 4 o'clock Steelers game (I don't wanna talk about it, James Harrison) with promises of delicious burgers. Now, I've got nothing but respect for the DC burger tradition. I like 5 Guys a lot. Once I ate an entire double bacon cheeser there (all the way, plus BBQ sauce) then had a double waffle cone at Sylvan Beach up in Mt. Washington, IN THE SAME NIGHT, and it may have been the greatest culinary night of my life. So you can see why I was psyched, at the very least, for some quality ground beef. But KB didn't do her research, and both Ray's in Arlington and that fruit from Top Chef's place were closed, so we were left combing through "best burger" lists on DCist (the worst-ever website ) and Washingtonian, and we settled on Central Michel Richard, a shmancy dinner place near the White House with a slumming-it burger menu (read: $16 for the most basic of sandwiches).

My first reaction was, my God, why can't anyone in Washington make a restaurant that doesn't look like a morgue (see photo above)? But my second reaction was, Holy Hell Look At These Prices I'm Already In Debt! But then my third reaction was, Oh God That Looks Good upon seeing every entree that passed us by. And my fourth reaction, after drink orders (go Blusser over Mad Hatter) was to THIS:

[pure fat]

Sorry my picture sucks. That's a duck rieux appetizer, with a dish of faux gras chicken liver spread in the blurry, distant background. Each of these was like an entire stew in your mouth, generated by about .25 ounces of it spread on a piece of bread. Between bites, we cleansed with pickled gerkins and vinegarry pearl onions. I don't know much about pate or fois gras, so I'm not sure how able I am to rate these, but to me they were just amazing.

At some point in the meal we had to make a choice between splurging, making a date out of it, and ordering some dope entrees, which for sure would have catapulted our bill to somewhere around $130 total, but we decided to go with the original plan anywayz:

[ahhhhhhhhhhh!!!]

The burgers, for all their to-do about ginger mayo and other sauces, had surprisingly little flavor. I mean, I was wanting some ketchup by about 3 bites left. The bacon was near-perfect (crispy, a nice lean cut, etc), but it sort of overwhelmed the basic taste of the beef, which was relatively high quality, as I could tell by my bloody red rare version. There was also this thin potato wafer thingy that they put on top of these monsters that really blunted the meat taste. You had all this rich potential for flavoUr, with a capital U, that was offset by these salty starch buttresses whose purpose I can't pretend to understand. The fries were good, but not great.

I'd go back to this place, I guess, because it looked like they did a pretty mean ribeye, but come to think of it -- life's short. I mean, I guess if I were in DC again. For some reason... [sighs]. Grades:

FOOD: B

For reasons described above, I think these burgers have no place on "best of" lists of any kind. They were innocuous, at best. But all that bird giblet fat! Amazing! And everything we saw go buy was serious eye candy. Fish, meat, risotto, oysters, you name it. But alas, it was burger night.

BOOZE: B

I tried the Mad Hatter IPA first, which seemed like a good choice, but didn't arrive at all how I expected it to taste. I detected malts in it, and a serious top of the pallet flavor, unlike the low corners of the tongue thing that happens with a lot of really hoppy IPAs. Strangely, the waiter, when I ordered a new beer (a very pils-y and very good Blusser), said something like, "Yeah, it's really hoppy -- not a lot of people are used to it." KB's Malbec was tasty. I just could not order well that night.

AMBIENCE: B

Weird, extremely large video screens with slideshows of the food available at the restaurant greet you. Stuffy, claustrophobic dining room with glass paned walls separating you from the bar area, allowing bar-iers to spy on your dining experience. Bizarre art made of stacks of plates and more glass. Just not a place I'd like to be every night.

Old Fairfield

[tangly!]

I'm not entirely sure how many people know this about me, but I'm really into big, tangled masses of pipes, mechanical parts, and other sorts of crazy bits of metal. Yeah, that sounds weird, I know, but being in close proximity to large, powerful looking machinery with lots of exposed parts is something that I have, for most of my life, found really thrilling, even if I have no idea what the thing does (like the subject of the above picture) or how it works (like a car motor, a bicycle's gear-shifting apparatus, or my own liver). Maybe it's got something to do with growing up in Pittsburgh, where the old mills along the Mon sit and rust temptingly by the river on the way to Kennywood. Or maybe it's some innate male attraction to tinkering, the same place where Rube Goldberg devices come from: somewhere full of business and technicality but bereft of the reasoning or expertise that makes it real. 

Anyway, a few days ago, while working on a story, a local real estate attorney mentioned to me something about Fairfield, a port district in the oft-forgotten peninsula of industrial South Baltimore that sticks out into the Chesapeake, prickly with loading docks, sout of the Middle Branch, and Old Fairfield, a former residential area nearby. "Fairfield is one of my favorite places ever," he told me. "It's just pure heavy industry."

Really? I thought. Last time I was there it was just one parking lot filled with recently-offloaded cars after another, with some overgrown weedy lots in between. For me, I thought, it ranks somewhere between a courtyard in front of a municipal building and a public restroom on my list of favorite places. 

But then I was back there the other day working on a related story, this time in that soft light of the afternoon, and I actually stopped and looked at all the goddamn tangled masses of pipes and other things, and I ended up wasting a whole lot of time taking pictures, which are totally industrial-artsy-chic. And if you can't see the beauty in these, then you, sir, have no soul. 

[containment]

This are shipping containers, those ridged tin cans that are ubiquitous to any port city, and which Scuppies like to turn into elitist houses. These ones looked particularly depraved to me. 

[brewin' health tonicks]

This is a chemical manufacturing facility of some sort, belonging maybe to Condea Vista or Conoco Phillips or some such company, but all I know about it, really, is that they brew medicines in there, or at least the chemical compounds that become medicines the same way whiskey is distilled (now THAT caught my ear): on a large scale, at high heat, with lots of pressure. Sweeeeeet. 

[sniff sniff sniff]

The above monstrosity of a piece of equipment struck me because of how animal-like it seemed. Like it's scratching around for grubs to eat. Or something. 

[pwn3d.]

And then, oh glory of glories, the car-chewing machine. There were thousands of cars piled up at the Fairfield Scrap Yard, in huge, heaping, triumphant piles. Because they were compressed so thin, they all looked like 1960s Cadillacs, no matter what type of horrid wood-panelled wagons they were to begin with. It was like huge piles of Americana!

[the mighty chewer itself]

[crunch'd]

And this peekchurr I like because it reminds me of a Richard Estes painting I used to have hanging in my room in high school, after I became enamored of that guy's work in senior AP art history class and a field trip to the Met. 

[beauty.]

And then, just in time for Halloween, I found this creepy-ass church, which once provided a place of worship for the hideous vampires of Old Fairfield:

[brrrrr]

Cookin' Simple with Robbie & Jon: Dijon Chicken and Brie Open-Faced Sandwiches and a Succulent Hash

[the tools]

Welcome to a new interactive feature here at Whelan's Travels -- Cookin' Simple with Robbie and Jon! It's similar to earlier ventures of ours, like How to Play Piano Like a Blind Man or Playaz Goin' Places, in that you watch, look, listen and learn, and then you get to have a great time emulating us! Here's how it began: 

So last night I came home late from work with no dinner plans, and the house was empty, except for Jon, who was upstairs, shirtless of course, working on a grant proposal to go Burkina Faso or some other place that's hot and uncivilized, and it struck me that as winter descends, so does weather-induced depression. As the days get shorter, so does my desire to do anything productive, go on runs, do butterfly curls, shave my chest -- you know, the usual stuff we all do to stay positive. One of those things is eating well. And as we all know, our diets are windows to our souls. At least that's what Elizabeth Gilbert taught me, and she's a MILF. 

Anyway, Jon and I looked at our rations and decided to make a dinner that's easy and delicious. He's the one what mostly thunk it up, although the hash is a specialty of mine, but here's how with did it:

[toasty]

Slice some pumpernickel bread, put it in the oven with some brie on top of it. Toast that ass.

The lead picture above is of your toppings, so also slice some apples (I got mine at the farmer's market, and brought them home in my re-usable hemp Whole Foods shoulder bags -- Style Plus!!!) and grab one leafy green for each open-faced sandwich (lettuce came from my CSA -- Locavorianism Rules OMG!!!!). 

[sizzled]

Jon used butter (with my approval) to fry up two Trader Joe's chicken breasts (from one ofthose big bags), which he had sliced into long thin strips before hand, and spiced with a shitload of dijon mustard, with some added spicy brown and wasabi-raspberry mustard (we had three types of mustard in the fridge, but you can use whatever you want) and lots of black pepper. 

[misty]

I chopped one large sweet potato, one medium-sized regular potato, and half a medium-sized onion into 1/2-inch cubes, fried them in a skillet with olive oil, and spiced them with cumin, salt, pepper, cayenne, and cinnamon to make our succulent hash. Fry that shit for like 12-15 minutes until it's brown and tastes like the bomb and looks like this:

[crispy]

Then lay your leafy greens, then your apples (in rows) across your pumpernickel-brie toast, and then you best be sure to criss-cross the chicken with the apple rows, because that's just how it's done:

[criss-crossed]

The finished product (Jon has put on a shirt):

We then watched "The Office" and the Thursday night SNL special, and giggled together, our mouths full, our hearts fuller. What a night!

Keep it simple.