Hello, fellow GFers!

I got a couple of comments on the Gluten Free reveal, so hello to you!  But best of all was Shannon pointing out that Moxie (new bakery on N. Market that I was feeling bitter about not being able to sample) sometimes has GF goodies.  I also hear tell that La Dolce Vita over on Carroll Creek does, too, and even sometimes has GF buns for their sandwiches.  Woo!  I’ve eaten at both Volt and Isabella’s with my new diagnosis and found it easy to dine.  At Volt I was getting the express menu, so I just asked for things w/o bread or croutons or what have you.  no trouble.

This weekend, I was near Berkeley Springs, WV with some friends and we went to Panorama at the Peak Restaurant.  First–the VIEW!  Holy moly.  I live on top of Braddock Mountain and I have a pretty nice view of the Middletown valley from my back porch, but it’s like a view of a brick wall compared to what you see from Panorama.  The menu at this time of year is about 90% local.  Entrees were in the 17-30 dollar range for dinner, but there were sandwiches earlier in the day that looked good.  It’s very cozy (the weather was cold and wet, so that fireplace was welcome) and seemed to be pretty popular.  GF items are clearly labeled, woo!  The food was very good.  Not Volt-good (or, honestly, Isabellas-good), and probably not worth the prices, but a nice treat nonetheless.  I was only feeding myself, so it wasn’t that big of a deal.  If I’d had my family along, I’d likely have…well, I”d have left when I saw the prices.  Can’t feed a family of 5 there.  I’d try it again if in the area and either alone or with my husband.

So, fellow shunners of the Evil Gluten–where else to you eat around town?  Not being able to eat Asian foods is KILLING me.  know of anyplace in the DC or B-more area that’s using tamari instead of soy sauce?

More good Middletown eats

I had lunch at The Main Cup in Middletown today.  I’ve eaten there several times and it’s been consistently good.  Last week I had a great salad with goat cheese and candied nuts.  Today I had the grilled veggies on cibatta bread–super yum.  The pasta salad I got on the side had a good flavor, but the texture was off…gummy somehow.  I’ve gotten the “build your own bruschetta” before and it was enough for a light meal on its own.  There are loads of veggie options, the prices are good, the atmosphere is charming.  Patio dining!  It’s not fast food, so if you’re in a hurry, it might not be your best bet, but it’s not unreasonably slow for made-to-order food.

If your dining partner swings both ways, my husband said the fish and chips was the best he’s had in Frederick County.

check it out!

Aleko’s–Great Greek for Vegetarians!

Oh happy discovery!  Aleko’s Village Cafe has opened in Middletown.  It’s inside the Fountaindale Sunoco, where there used to just be subs and ice cream.  There are still subs and ice cream, but they no longer matter at all b/c there’s super yummy vegetarian food…and baklava (insert Homer Simpson drooling noise).

Owned and operated by the Tsinonis family (the NICEST people), Aleko’s offers plenty of standard carnivore fare (well, it might be fantastic, but I don’t need to care about that) as well as the spanikoptia and Tiropita that we veggies turn to, but the big difference here is Vegetarian Gyros.  They’re made with Morningstar Farms steak strips, which are pretty processed and far from actual food, but oh the yum!  It’s the real deal (except for the absence of lamb…the silence of the lamb…sorry), tasty strips, tzatziki, feta, lettuce tomato, onion, and french fries–yes, french fries, as god intended.  So good.

I popped in for lunch today and got a gyro and some sweets.  There are several kinds of cookie and mini baklava, as well as big ol’ baklava and rice pudding.  This afternoon, I tried the Melomakarona (honey cookies), the Koulouraki (Butter Cookies), and Kourambides (wedding cookies).  The gyro, as mentioned, was great.  The honey cookies were good, they tasted like gingerbread soaked in honey.  Crazy sweet.  The butter cookies were just barely sweet, with a dry crumbly texture that called out for a cup of coffee to go with them.  The wedding cookies were that cookie that every culture seems to have–Russian teacake, Mexican Wedding cake, Shortbread–these are almond instead of the pecan that often turns up, and are good.  Covered in powdered sugar, though, so be prepared to dust off.

Lunch was good enough that I decided to get take-out for dinner (Oh, really there can only be take-out.  In nice weather, you can sit at the picnic tables outside, but there is no inside seating) since I run a 4-H meeting on Wednesdays and don’t have time to cook dinner.  I called ahead for 2 Spankakopita, 2 Tiropita, one Veg. Gyro, and an order of Feta Fries.  When I got there, the owner (lovely woman) told me that they had run out of Spanakopita but she had more in the oven.  She offered to have someone drive it to my house, but didn’t think it would get there before 8.  Since I was feeding 3 kids, I said I’d pass, but then she suggested I could just finish baking it at home.  Brilliant!  I also grabbed some rice pudding (made, apparently, by the owner’s son) and a slab of the big baklava as well as one each of the wee ones.

While the spanakopita baked and the tiropita warmed, we ate the feta fries–they’re boardwalk-style, which isn’t my favorite, but the feta made them worth eating.  The kids hoovered them.  The tiropita was a huge hit with the kids and I’d be quite happy to eat it again.  The filo is super flakey and not at all greasy.  The spanakopita was still baking, so we took a sweets break: The baklava–available by the mini pan or by the slice–made my eyes roll back in my head.  Buttery, honey-y, nutty yum.  The minis are available by the pound.  They were good, but after the big baklava…no contest.  Then the long-awaited spanakopita was done.  It was a bit too spinach-y for the kids.  I thought it was fantastic, as I usually don’t think there’s enough spinach in my spinach pie.  It isn’t at all heavy, which is a nice change.  The rice pudding was our end note.  Delicious, good old-fashioned kind.  This is not Kozy Shack (not that I won’t eat that by the vat, too), but a product that clearly contains rice.  The kids were licking the bowls, so I’m thinking they approved, too.

When I mentioned to the owner that vegetarians were going to be so excited to find the meatless gyros, she exclaimed over how many vegetarians she’d seen.  Then she said, “I can make lots of other vegetarian things, just ask next time.  So I’ll be back. Oh yes.

The Village Green Grill

I’ve lived in Frederick since July of 95 and I hadn’t ever even gone into The Village Green Grill.  The “Fresh Pitas” sign was always enticing, but it didn’t strike me as a vegetarian sammich place, so I hadn’t gone in.  Plus, well, it’s in kind of an ugly location.  The Giant Eagle there is my grocery store of choice (when I’m not hitting The Common Market and MOMs, of course), but it is just the saddest strip mall.  There’s that empty, trashed building in the middle of the lot that used to be the fabulous and lamented Mongolian Grill.  Dollar General never classes up a joint.  The SuperPets is the most depressing pet store ever.  It’s not a location that inspires me to eat.

Once again, however, Steve and I tried to go out to lunch on a Monday and were confounded by closures, so we ended up giving it a try.  I had the vegetable skewers.  The service was…European, but the waitress told us that the fryer was down and that was slowing everything.  My vegetables were cooked well enough, but I’m always a bit bummed when I get green pepper on my plate. It came on a bed of well-cooked white basmati rice.  There was a wee “greek” salad on the plate as well.  You can tell it’s greek b/c there’s a dice of feta and one black olive.  The pita was, in fact, tasty, but the dish was not one to bring me back.   They have an all-day breakfast menu, but we’re unlikely to abandon our beloved Mountain View for breakfast foods.  The only other veggie options were grilled cheese and salad.

I’m hoping to try the little greek stand that opened in Middletown this week–vegetarian gyros!

What does Vietnam smell like?

According to my war-vet Dad, it smells like cilantro and fish sauce.  What moves a person to name a restaurant Viet Aroma?  And Frederick just got a Greek place with Aroma in the name too, didn’t we?  It just seems to be begging for jokes.  But anyway, the food was good.  And while there was cilantro whiff in the place, mostly it smelled like pho.  Steve is a big pho phan, so he goes there so often that they don’t even take his order, they just bring him what he always orders.  He was surprised to find they even HAD menus.  But I was glad, since soup is seldom a good bet for a vegetarian in a non-veg restaurant.  They had a good selection of vegetarian dishes, I got a coconut curry.  I opened with summer rolls.  I’d asked for them to be meatless, but they came with some manner of critter inside.  I just plucked it out, since I’m not THAT strict about what has touched my food. But it left the roll kind of sad.  An Loi (over on TJ) used to have SUCH good summer rolls.  I miss that place.  The curry was really good, though.  Sweet but not cloying, nice mix of crunchy veg.  Just very lightly steamed, the way I like it.  I had a similar dish at the new Vietnamese place over on Rosemont…cannot recall the name, but it’s in the old 7-11 that was Lillies for a while–and this one was better.  I haven’t been to Lucky Corner in a long time…I should pop back in there.  Now I’m hungry.

Restaurant–Lotus

I went out to dinner at Lotus for the first time in…probably close to 10 years.  We’d eaten there a few times when we first moved to Frederick, but abandoned it for Hunan Gourmet’s more extensive vegetarian selection.  I found it wholly unchanged.  I ordered the Yellow Bird, a dish made by wrapping sauteed veg in yuba (a tofu skin).  It was okay.  Not bad at all, but heavy of sauce and just uninspired.  The sauce tasted like whatever brown sauce Chinese restaurants buy from whatever is the Chinese restaurant equivalent of SYSCO.  meh.  My dinner mate ordered the curried vegetables and it tasted like SYSCO yellow sauce.  Fine, but workmanlike.  No vegetarian soups on menu.  I can’t say it’s worth the trip for a meat-free dinner.

Update: Nola

Okay, twice now I’ve gone to Nola and gotten HORRIBLE service.  Today we went in and saw the sign that said “Wait to be seated.”  It didn’t specify how long, but after a couple of minutes we went up to the bar register and asked for menus.  We sat down, figured out what we wanted.  And sat.  And watched a waitres attend to one of the other TWO tables that were occupied.  Then she sidled away, with her back to me, not making eye contact.  Steve went back to the bar and placed our order and paid.  Mistake.  Because if he hadn’t paid upfront we’d have left when our sandwiches did not arrive for 15 min.  It was a grilled cheese and a baked tofu and there were more staff than patrons.  Put the bong down, Maynard, and bring me my food.

Restaurant review–Volt

Steve and I had our 15th anniversary yesterday and we celebrated by giving Volt all of our money.  I’ve been dying to try it after reading all these great reviews and seeing the chef at the Farmer’s Market so often.  We got a chef’s table so that we could get a tasting menu.  As I mentioned before, I just love little bits of lots of things.  I was so thrilled that there was a vegetarian tasting menu–how rare it is for an upscale restaurant to offer more than a cursory veggie dish!  I’ve just finished Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential and he couldn’t have more scorn for the herbivores.  But he clearly hasn’t had THIS food.

The chef’s dining room looks like it seats about 20.  Steve and I were given a 4-top, and we sat side-by-side so we could both watch the kitchen.  The room is clean and elegant–clearly refined, but not at all stuffy.  When we were seated, we were offered a cocktail menu.  I got a Negroni (which was served on ice, a no-no in my book) and Steve turned into a girl and ordered the cantelope mojito that the server recommended (“How about *I* order your Negroni and you order the mojito?”  “Oh no, if you want a girly drink, you have to OWN it.  Sure you wouldn’t rather have a Fuzzy Navel?”  “Or an Appletini?”).  We were brought house-made breadsticks brushed with olive oil and fennel pollen (“Did she just say ‘fennel pollen?’”  “Yes, I believe she did.”  “I call bullshit.”).  For the record–I tasted nothing that suggested fennel pollen to me.  But it was a perfectly lovely breadstick.

Our meal opened with canapes from the chef–a demitasse of creamed celery soup with white truffle oil (yum!), a cube of “compressed watermelon” with something balsamic on it (good, but kind of silly), and a “beet macaroon” stuffed with a goat cheese mousse.  Ho.ly. cow.  I have no idea how this beet thing was made, but it looked like a wee beet sitting on its head in a soup spoon.  But it was as light as air, it was some kind of beet meringue…I don’t know, but it was weird and delicious and interesting.  The beet part collapsed in my mouth, almost like cotton candy.  I could have eaten a box of those guys.  I dreamed about beet bon-bons while we tried to figure our how one compresses a watermelon.  I think it’s a big industrial press that goes really slowly.  Steve thinks they give the watermelon a high-stress job and a demanding family and then hound in until it collapses under the pressure.

The bread lady showed up (is there a fancy term for the bread lady, like sommelier for the wine dude?) and offered us a selection of breads.  I went with the french and it was so good I didn’t venture to the other sorts.  The butter was sublime and I think I saw the wrapper in the kitchen, confirming my suspicion that it was Vermont Butter and Cheese company butter, the kind that has sea salt chunks in it.  mmmmm.

Our first official course was a tasting of beets.  I imagined a row of different sorts of beets, maybe with a fancy sauce each, but no!  The weird beet meringue was back, this time in a long cylinder.  There were also poached beets and raw beets and, I think a couple of turnip chunks.  It came with that goat cheese mousse and was just delicious.  It might have been our favorite course.  And it was beets, of all things, a vegetable I didn’t even like until this year.  It was a shining testament to the fact that simple food, prepared perfectly does not have to be fancy (okay, the fluffy beet tube was pretty fancy.  But the other beets were just…beets).  All the dishes were just beautiful, too, and we could see the chef placing everying Just So.

Next came a shitake mushroom veloute with a sabayon of pine nuts (translates to smooth buttery mushroom sauce/soup topped with a smooth fluffy pine nut sauce) served layered so that it looked a bit like a black and white cookie from Brooklyn.  It had the occasional bit of thai basil flower in it, creating these little bursts of anise flavor.  Pheonmenal.  I seriously wondered if anyone would notice if I licked the bowl.  Maybe I should have caused a distraction…”Hey!  Brad Pitt just went into the main dining room!  Hurry!” nom nom nom.

Third course: Fennel and Farro risotto.  I had to look this one up, as I didn’t know what farro was and was suprised when my RISotto appeared to be made of wheat berries.  Farro, it appears, is some sort of ancient wheat that turns up in Italian food.  So, you know, wheat berries.  Which is not to say it wasn’t yummy, because oh it was.  It was topped with beets (it’s what’s in season, and lord knows they work ‘em). and had a really rich, full flavor.  If I hadn’t been assured it was all vegetarian, I’d have sworn there was a meat base to the stock.

The final savoury course was an eggplant confit on cannelini beans.  Confit, it turns out, means that a food has been preserved in its own fat, more or less.  Clearly that was not the case here, but whatever it meant, it was the only time I’ve ever really enjoyed eggplant.  Not at all mushy or oily, it was toothy and flavorful.  There was a really nice smokey taste in there somewhere as well.  As will all the other dishes, each bit was delicious on its own, but really fablulous when eaten all together.

There was kind of a long wait for our final course, a tasting of apples.  I kind of thought they forgot to give it to us.  We got the madiera, we got coffee….then they brought us a little cake with a candle on top to wish us happy anniversary.  It was, of course, very yummy.  We’d only had a couple of bites when the apples arrived.  This was the only real bungle in the service, I’m not sure what order things were supposed to have gone in, but as it was we got madiera, a wait, then coffee, then a wait, then cake and then the final course right on top.  I’d have liked to have had the madiera and the apples and then the cake with coffee.  As a final touch we got a tray with a fruit square (more please!), biscotti, and some chocolates (meh.  AND I was full, but I left those alone after one bite).

Other stuff: We both had the wine pairing.  I wouldn’t bother in the future.  I’d never done a wine pairing before, so I was curious, but the fact is, I don’t like white wine.  I’d just get a nice pinot noir and be done with it.  Also, I’m pretty sure the sommelier is just making stuff up.  “This wine is from the Fredonian region of Provolone.  The terrior suggests a hint of manganese and the floral notes of acidopholus.  The winemaker only smokes clove cigarettes so that his ash can complement this vintage.”  Then he takes it to the next table and tells them it’s made by blind elves in the center of a hollow tree.  Sure, okay.  Steve was reasonably certain there’s just one big vat of white wine with a bunch of tubes leading out, each labeled with a different varietel.  But it’s all Franzia in a box to us.  The reds were really nice, though.  And I LOVED that Madeira.  I was the driver, so I was just having a sip or two of each wine.  I should have just mooched off of Steve and saved a bit of dough.

Service: Aside from the dessert glitch, the service was impeccable.  Efficient, polite, well-trained.  They never made me feel like a clodhopper.  Best of all?  I don’t know ANY of their names.  None of them told me.  Which is good because I. don’t care.  Our main waitress clearly watches Mad Men and gave us a Joan-like “of course” at every request.  It was pretty amusing.  Since I’d just read the Bourdain book and have a bit of a thing for Gordon Ramsay shows, I was expecting a foul-mouthed chef yelling at Central American cooks, but no.  It was all but silent, with the cooks working diligently. In fact, we became convinced that we were looking at a sham kitchen and somewhere in the back there’s a lot of yelling and clanging pots and sudden fires.  There wasn’t even anyone calling orders.  They just seem to know what to cook.

And they know how to cook.   Volt is one of the best restaurants I’ve visited.  I just wish I wasn’t going to need to squirrel away money for a year to go again.  We’ll go a la carte next time as Steve wants more of the steak and I would like a trough of soup and wheelbarrowfull of beety poofs.

Lunch Downtown–two great options

I love to eat outside in the spring and fall.  Luckily lots more restaurants are providing outdoor seating.  When we lived downtown, it was Brewer’s Alley and diFrancesco’s.  That’s it.  I also love to eat lunch out.  It seems indulgent, since otherwise I’d be munching on a big salad while I sat at the computer.  But lunch out with a friend seems so…Ladies Who Lunch.  This Lady needs that lunch to be inexpensive and meatfree, however.

Lucky Lady!  In Downtown Frederick, there are many options for inexpensive, outdoor, meatfree dining.  I think my favorite remains Isabella’s.  That 3-for-10.99 lunch special is just great.  I go with another person, that’s 6 dishes to sample, and little makes me happier than little bits of lots of things (“instead of lots of one!” Thanks Cheese Council ads from the 70s…).  That Asparagus Frites dish is far, far yummier than it seems like it should be.  When I first saw it, I thought “In a champagne flute.  How twee.”  But they could serve it in a tiki mug and it would still rock.  Not greasy, just perfectly crisp.  And with a chili mayo–how can I not love that?  The patatas bravas are always yum, and again with the mayo.  The brie is our other must-get, and that leaves 3 dishes to rotate and try.  The baby green beans are delish.  Sometimes it’s a mushroomy day.  I’ve never had a dish there that I didn’t finish, and have had several that are just fantastic.

A newer lunch discovery is Cafe Nola.  I’d gone last spring with my kids and husband and had a great grilled cheese, but I didn’t recall the menu being SO veg-friendly.  I’d say it’s 1/3 vegetarian at this point, with some vegan.  The Grilled Cheesy is delicious, if a bit…non-dietetic.  The salads are really tasty too.  The menu at the link is not as extensive as the one we got last week…I know there was a salad that involved asparagus b/c that’s what my friend got.  I got the Nola Salad.  It nearly killed me having to choose just one.  See?  That’s why tapas rocks.  Some of us are severely taxed by food-based decsion making.

Family Favorites–Weaver’s

This is a new family favorite.  Like, we just developed an obsession this weekend.  I’d been there once before, passing through with friends, and remembered it as a nice family-style place with an awesome bakery.  Last weekend, we were headed to Ohiopyle, PA to do some camping, and were going to pass through Hancock, so I timed out trip so that we could lunch at Weaver’s.  It’s on the main street in Hancock (west of Hagerstown, it’s about 45 min- an hour from us, right where 70 hits 68), not a place to dash out for dinner, but a place to remember if you’re headed West.

It’s a total time warp restaurant.  It feels like all restaurants in small towns used to feel–perfectly clean, but a bit shabby, and you’re instantly a regular.  Now, as this IS a vegetarian blog, I must disclose that there is not much on the menu that is critter free.  But you’re here for pie, really, so just soldier on.  The grilled cheese is as good as that at Frederick Memorial, and that–believe it or not–is a supreme compliment.  I’d said I’d almost have another baby to get that grilled cheese.  The french fries are the kind that seems to have a light batter on them and are SUPER crispy.  in other words, the yummy kind.  But again, it doesn’t matter, because you’re here for pie.

On Friday, they were down to apple pie, lemon meringue, coconut creme, and chocolate creme.  We got all but the lemon.  Because who wants that?  Steve, who is a HUGE apple pie fan (but a very picky one) declared it The Best Apple Pie Ever.  Crispy, tart apples of the right quantity, fabulous dense but flaky crust.  The meringues were a marvel.  Four inches tall and perfectly cooked to be dry but not chewy.  The coconut and chocolate parts were equally great.  Pie heaven.  AND apparently there was some sort of hostage situation going down a few roads over.   Dinner and a show!

On the way back through, after camping, we stopped for lunch again.  This time I was so craving vegetables that I got the salad bar.  It was the salad bar one expects in such places, iceberg lettuce and cottage cheese, but there WAS some raw broccoli and cauliflower, so I replenished my stores of fiber and vitamins.  And then had pie.  This time there was “graham cracker pie”  which, as one might surmise, on a graham cracker crust.  It was a vanilla custard topped with that meringue.  Grand.  But I did miss the pastry crust.  On Sunday, the front pastry case was full of cookies and sticky buns and wee carrot cakes, but you know…pie.

So, if you’re passing through Hancock, MD, and you need to gain a couple of pounds, pull of the highway and stretch your legs and your stomach.   And don’t go into the archery or sporting good stores that are right next door…unless you really enjoy some taxidermy.