Zaman, which opened in the corner of an Elkridge shopping center about six months ago, is owned and operated by Palestinians—longtime Marylanders who wanted to bring a taste of their country’s food here—and has a veteran Palestinian chef who moved to Maryland about a year ago. The menu has classic food of the region: hummus, tabbouleh, falafel, fattoush, grilled kebabs and kofta, and shawarma (all the meat is halal) from two hefty rotisserie grills in the big, light-filled kitchen in the back.

There are also harder-to-find dishes, like the roasted red-pepper dip muhammara; bowls of foul, or stewed fava beans, swirled with olive oil; and shish tawook, skewers of marinated chicken. And on weekend mornings, there is masbahah—a breakfast dish of chickpeas “swimming” in tahini that famed cookbook author Paula Wolfert once described as “deconstructed hummus”—and shakshuka, an addictive dish of stewed, spiced tomato sauce topped with poached eggs and a confetti of fresh herbs.

The must-order muhammara is finely ground and zapped with pomegranate molasses, while the tabbouleh is a brilliant green collage of parsley, mint, bulgur, and tomatoes. It’s more herb garden than salad, making it a terrific accompaniment to the meats.

The kabobs are deeply flavorful and excellently cooked—particularly the lamb kabobs and kofta—and paired with roasted tomatoes, onions, and more herb confetti, as well as the thick garlic sauce called toum. (Ask for extra, and if you have leftovers, make sure you get more to-go, as the stuff elevates pretty much anything.) The pita, however, comes in anemic, store-bought stacks, so maybe spring for an order of pita chips, which arrive loaded with an extremely generous amount of za’atar.

Outside the small dining room fronting the counter, there’s an even larger space—an enclosed, windowed patio that is an excellent place to enjoy your feast during warmer weather.

Zaman does a strong takeout business, but it’s more fun to eat there and chat with the young man helming the counter—the son of one of the owners, who translated questions into Arabic for the Palestinian chef who makes the hummus.

Why is the hummus so good, we wanted to know. He pointed toward a counter in the back of the kitchen, past cooks working the rotisseries, upon which sat a machine about the size of a large crockpot. It was a $6,000 blender that could mix at a speed of about 4,500 spins per minute. It was this that produced the hummus, mixing only four ingredients—chickpeas, Lebanese tahini, lemon juice, and salt—into a finely textured, impossibly smooth paste. The garlic and olive oil went not into the fancy blender, but into the well spooned center of the finished hummus.

Hummus is one of those dishes that is ubiquitous, found in every Middle-Eastern restaurant, stocking whole aisles in grocery stores, but it is often only mediocre, even if you go to the trouble of boiling dry chickpeas yourself to make it at home. I have done this, but now I’ll just drive to Elkridge.

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Masala Kitchen and Bazaar, a sprawling market which is owned by a Bangladeshi couple and features Bangladeshi food on Thursdays, is itself very easy to miss—tucked into a 10,000-square-foot former warehouse along a Columbia side avenue. But it’s worth seeking out, not only for its rows of grocery items, fresh produce, and halal meats, but for the buffet of excellent dishes that emerge from its kitchen.

Azad and Mona Shah opened Masala over a decade ago, stocking their shelves with regional pantry items, aisles of frozen foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, and a butcher’s section featuring hard-to-find halal meats such as whole sides of goat.

There’s a massive kitchen in the back, with a London-made tandoori oven where the two cooks—one Punjabi, one Bangladeshi—bake excellent, made-to-order naan the traditional way. Vats of curry bubble on the stoves near the oven, and a walk-in refrigerator the size of a loading dock runs the length of one wall.

The kitchen turns out dishes that load the buffet: hotel pans of biryani, chicken tikka masala, pakora, madrashi chicken, goat curry, dal tadka, butter chicken, beef curry, and more. On Thursdays in particular, there are more Bangladeshi dishes, including a terrific fish curry in the form of rohu (a kind of carp) painted dark yellow by turmeric, then fried, and bathed in a blissful curry sauce.

“More flavors. More spices,” Azad Shah said, when asked to explain the difference between Bangladeshi and Indian cuisines.

Bangladeshi food also tends to favor fish and more meats than the vegetarian-focused dishes of many parts of India. It also leans more toward rice than bread, as well as more spices—but these are huge, incredibly diverse countries and rough explanations tend to be overly generalized.

Masala’s curries are flavorful as they come, but the spice quotient was upped when Shah brought over a little plate of fresh and fried chiles, lime slices, fresh ginger, slivers of red onions, and a vibrant gooseberry sauce to add to the meal.

“Now you’re eating like a Bangladeshi,” he said, noting that he sells jars of the gooseberry jam, but tweaks the recipe himself before serving it.

Masala’s buffet is either all-you-can-eat or take-away, and comes with either rice or naan. If you choose the latter, expect hot, crispy, chewy breads with holes made from the long fork that’s used to lift them from the tandoor oven’s circular wall. As the biryani is excellent—flavored with fresh bay leaves and myriad spices—I’d opt for the truly stellar naan. There’s also a condiment tray, with raita, tamarind and cilantro sauces, so you can bathe your lunch with even more flavors.

If you choose to go AYCE—and you should—you’ll be ushered into a massive back room that’s outfitted rather like a hotel conference room, with long banquet tables, chairs, and a sectional. You’ll trek through the market to load up on more fish, curry, and dal, and that enables you to browse the aisles filled with English chocolate, tubs of ghee, spices, cookware, and 20-lb. bags of basmati.

The Shahs, who came to Maryland from Bangladesh 35 years ago, cater a lot of weddings and other events. The range of items loading all those shelves showcase the options available not only to them, but to anyone else in need, from jalabi kits (with squeeze bottles!) to miniature jars of Nutella to your very own side of fresh goat to the crates of gorgeous mangoes near the door on a recent Thursday.

Though Masala is open every day, Thursdays are the days when you’ll find Bangladeshi dishes. Also, the best time to go is shortly after the place opens, at 11 a.m., as the food is just out of the kitchen.

And keep in mind that the first time you go, you’ll need to search the place out. Once you’ve found Red Branch Road, just look for the sign that says “God’s Remnant Assembly”—which reminds me of my all-time favorite Peter Cook skit—and turn east into the driveway.

Load up on mangoes, then settle in for a very long, curry-focused lunch.

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There, inside a cheery shop with walls painted the color of avocados, I found an impressively lengthy menu of tacos, tortas, sopas, antojitos, and more. They’re all made-to-order in an expansive kitchen behind a counter loaded with a bubbling aguas frescas dispenser atop a dessert case filled with flan and tres leches. The young woman running the counter was as cheerful as the restaurant; no one else was there.

Taqueria La Mexicana offers over a dozen kinds of tacos—quesabirria, lengua, barbacoa, al pastor (with the requisite pineapple), carnitas, chorizo, cabeza, and more—and all come, if you ask for them, on hand-made tortillas. This is impressive enough, as it seems that fewer and fewer taquerias make their own tortillas. But what’s even more unusual is that, on Tuesdays, the tacos are $1.99 each.

Though I spent a third of my life in Los Angeles, much of it back in the day when you could find excellent $1.25 tacos at trucks parked throughout the city, I can’t remember the last time I had a taco for under two bucks. A very good taco, that is.

The tradition of Taco Tuesdays is an old one, stretching back maybe even a century, and has long been a promotional tool for businesses, especially in California, Texas, and, oddly, New Jersey, where for a while a Jersey Shore restaurant trademarked the term. (It is no longer trademarked, thankfully, although LeBron James tried to trademark the phrase, too.) I tend to forget about Tuesdays as being a particular day to hunt for tacos, because I think of tacos most days anyway. But here it was, a Tuesday, and I got a three-taco lunch—replete with a basket of chips and cup of fresh salsa—all for considerably under $10.

I should also mention that La Mexicana has three kinds of hot sauce, including bottles of my favorite El Yucateca habanero sauce—about three shades of green darker than the paint job—on the tables, plus two additional cups of hot sauce, one red, one green, that come with your order. As the tacos are decorated with roasted jalapeños called chiles toreados, plus a roasted green onion, limes, and cucumbers, this surfeit of sauces isn’t strictly necessary. But then, you can never really have too much hot sauce.

Worth noting too is that there are other daily specials, including on Wednesdays, when pupusas are also $1.99. All this under a blue-and-white striped awning fronting a four-business complex also home to a pizza joint and a “Southern Kitchen” offering ribs, chicken, and that Baltimore specialty, fried lake trout. One could, in theory, never leave.

With everything else (stock markets, tariff policies) changing on a seemingly daily basis, it is beyond comforting to find a place where, on a Tuesday, the world seemed welcoming, even hopeful, in a restaurant that felt at once contemporary and a beautiful throwback.

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Hidden in a strip mall about 500 yards away from Costco’s concrete paradise, Spice n Curry is an Indian restaurant that’s been serving an excellent mash-up of Northern and Southern Indian, Nepalese, and Chinese dishes for a decade.

It’s a cozy spot, with art lining the walls, comfortable booths, a heady perfume of curries and incense, and a menu that features both expected and lesser-known food—all of which, including the various breads and sauces, are made on-site in the back kitchen.

This means that along with butter chicken and lamb vindaloo, the lengthy menu includes Southern specialties like biryanis, dosas, and the little steamed rice-flour cakes called idlis.

Dosas, crispy thin crepes made with a slightly fermented rice and lentil batter, are a standout here. They’re a welcome dish that’s harder to find in Baltimore than it should be, as the city tends to have Northern Indian restaurants more than those featuring Southern Indian food. You can order plain versions, which come with various chutneys, or filled, like the masala dosa, which is wrapped around soothing spiced potatoes studded with fresh curry leaves.

Another hard-to-find item that’s very good here are the Nepalese dumplings called momos. Thin dough pleated around generous fillings, the momos are steamed rather than fried, then arranged in a pretty circle around a small dish of sauce.

But maybe the best thing about Spice n Curry is the thali special, the traditional lunch meal that’s comprised of a series of small dishes arranged on a tray (thali means plate in Hindi) and accompanied by naan. Here, the thali comes in either vegetarian or non-vegetarian iterations—and it’s all-you-can-eat.

It’s a smarter, fresher variation on the AYCE Indian buffet, which mostly, thankfully, disappeared during the pandemic. Here, your server will refill the dishes of dal, curry, malai paneer, raita, rice, and other items for as long as you want—with the only caveat being that you can’t share your pretty plate with your dining companion, who must get their own. Not only is this a fantastic value, but you get to explore a number of dishes while you’re at it. (The malai paneer is particularly good.) And though this all comes with plenty of naan and rice, don’t overlook the dosas, which taste as good as they look—no small feat.

While you’re feasting, there will likely be a cricket game on the big flat-screen TV, which not only adds character to the place, but makes your server happy. When I was there, an Indian Premier League game was on, and the server—who was, like the restaurant’s owner, Nepalese—did an admirable job of combining flawless service with answering questions, all while closely following the game.

It’s worth noting that the restaurant is BYOB, and thus has a drink menu of teas, sodas, and large pale glasses of lassi so frothy they resemble soda-fountain milkshakes. Conveniently, Spice n Curry is sandwiched between a tattoo parlor and a liquor store, so you can always pick up a bottle on your way in.

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If you want something closer to home, there aren’t that many places left—notably Jong Kak and, next door, Kong Pocha, on an unfussy street in Station North. Those two restaurants have long anchored 20th Street and are remnants of Baltimore’s Koreatown, a vibrant, though small community that thrived from the ‘60s to the ‘90s but then saw most of its markets and eateries shutter. Two popular Korean restaurants in the neighborhood, Nam Kang and Nak Won, have long since closed. 

But go a block northeast of Jong Kak and you’ll find, in an unassuming strip mall, another Korean restaurant that’s been there for nearly 20 years.

B1 BBQ Baltimore is a small shop with a single dining room fronting a back kitchen. Above the tables lining the walls are the overhead ventilation hoods required at barbecue restaurants that make the place look a bit like an upside-down laundromat. The restaurant is cozy, showcasing walls lined with lights, posters, signage, and pictures of dishes and bottles. Above the counter, a flatscreen plays cheery, insanely colorful K-Pop videos.

B1 has been open for almost two decades, but four years ago, owner Jay Cho, who came to Baltimore from Seoul, took it over and began offering all-you-can-eat barbecue, which is now its specialty. She’s been running the counter and the tables both times I’ve been, and offers menu advice and helps with the hot grills.

There are various specials: $12.99 for a “happy lunch” that includes Korean fried chicken, noodles, and a bento-style lunch box; $19.95 for a BBQ dinner; and $27.95 for the AYCE deal, which comes, as Korean barbecue does, in trays of uncooked items that you prepare yourself on the grills at the center of your table. Cho will also help with this, coming over to regulate the heat, load and refill your trays, and wield the kitchen shears. The pork belly, bulgogi, and spicy pork are stellar.

Even if you think you’ve gotten all the vegetables you need in the form of the banchan—the traditional repeating small dishes of kimchi, daikon, cucumbers, potato salad, and other appetizers—order from the vegetable category of BBQ items. (A note that you’ll have plenty of time to enjoy your banchan while you wait for your entrees, as the service is less than speedy.) You’ll likely get thick slices of Portobello mushrooms and zucchini, which cook up wonderfully on the grill with the sizzling meats, and provide a bit of ballast to all that splendid carnivorous excess.

And if you’re not a barbecue person, fear not: Cho’s menu includes a wide variety of soups, noodles, rice, and tofu dishes. The soon tofu is a crimson, bubbling cauldron of spicy goodness. The kimchi jjigae, in another coal-black cauldron, is a rich stew of pork, tofu, kimchi, and chile-zapped broth. The japchae, a classic dish of sweet-potato glass noodles and sauteed vegetables, is slightly sweet, slightly punchy, and extremely soothing.

There are also little steamed buns, very like Chinese bao, that come split, filled, and sauced. There’s more, but unless you’ve populated one of the big six-seat tables, you may need to focus on what you’ve already got in front of you, especially if you’ve opted for bottles of Korean beer and soju.

Even if you’re planning on taking advantage of the all-you-can-eat option (which, by the way, is absolutely not for leftovers, so only order what you can actually consume), do not ignore the kimchi pancakes. A pumpkin-colored, scallion-studded disk that is beautifully crunchy, it’s the perfect starter to any meal and easy to share.

And if you down the sauces that arrive in a small metal container, Cho will bring you the bottles.

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No, not Italian pasta rolled out by a nonna on Instagram, but Biangbiang noodles—wide noodles in the style of Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi, China.

These noodles are made by pulling dough out into belt-like strands that are then whacked against a counter, making the sound for which they’re named. They are tender, toothsome, marvelous things that are sturdy enough to hold up in hot soups and under thick sauces—and they are worth a drive from wherever you are.

Chin Xi’an Style Restaurant is a small place, open for about 18 months, that shares its storefront and dining room with Ben Gong’s Tea, a chain of bubble tea shops. This set-up can make Chin Xi’an easy to miss among the many businesses in the shopping area, but persevere, as the noodles are fantastic.

They come in many iterations, in soups and in bowls loaded with various chile-zapped proteins. Arguably, they pair best with lamb, which is abundant in Shaanxi and historically tied to the nomadic tribes of northwest China, which influenced the local cuisine. (Shaanxi is probably best-known for its terracotta army sculptures depicting the army of Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor. There’s a hilarious poster on the wall of one of the warriors sporting a chef’s toque.)

Chin Xi’an’s lamb soup combines handmade noodles, discs of roast lamb, pale sliced daikon, a green thatch of cilantro and chives, and a remarkable, rich yet subtle broth. The soup comes with a small dish of chile sauce that is actually best resisted, so as not to overwhelm the broth.

For something with considerably more heat, there is the spicy cumin lamb served on a jumble of those excellent noodles. This is a spectacular dish, like a mash-up of toothpick lamb, a Sichuan specialty, and a wondrous bowl of noodles. The bits of lamb are tender, not at all gamey, and loaded with cumin and chiles. They form a sauce that adheres to the ragged edges of the noodles and the abundant strands of scallions that both cool and green the dish.

Though it’s understandable to order noodle dishes on repeat here, save room (somehow) for a murger. Murgers are Chinese street food sandwiches made from disks of flatbread and spiced meats—some say they’re the world’s oldest known sandwiches. Chin Xi’an’s murgers come in pork, chicken, and beef, but the best one is, unsurprisingly, made from lamb. These are very portable, by definition, so if you’ve overdone it with the noodles—as happens—rest assured you can get a murger to-go.

Restaurants specializing in food from Shaanxi are considerably harder to find than those cooking, say, Sichuan or Cantonese food—this is the only one I’ve come across in the area—and this is too bad, as the dishes are fantastic.

Chin Xi’an, whose owner is from Xi’an, thus fills a much-needed culinary gap. At least much-needed for me, as I didn’t realize how much I missed this stuff until I found it again. Now if someone would just open a brown-sugar mochi shop…

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A product of the French colonization of Vietnam, the bánh mì is like a jambon au beurre reimagined with a Vietnamese spin: pickled daikon and carrots, cilantro, cucumbers, and thin slices of pork or sausage, all mortared with a thin spread of pâté between halves of a very light, very crispy baguette.

Even more special than the ordinary bánh mì are the bánh mì made with baguettes baked in-house in the Vietnamese style, like those at Saigon Blvd. Bánh Mì in Catonsville.

In a strip mall off of Baltimore National Pike, Saigon Blvd. is a cheery, light-filled shop with a long white counter fronting a space filled with coffee machines for making Vietnamese iced coffee—called cà phê sũa dá, a blissful blend of strong coffee and condensed milk—and bakery ovens turning out the baguettes. (If strong coffee isn’t your speed, there’s also coconut-milk matcha or pandan tea.)

Andy Tien left a career in real estate to open Saigon Blvd. in October, in a former mattress store that required a 15-month build-out. According to Tien, the project also required him to return to his native Saigon, which he and his family left when he was seven, and apprentice himself to a baker to learn how to bake the baguettes.

He brought back both the skill and the recipe. Tien and his staff now offer 14 variations of bánh mì, including those made with pork belly, grilled chicken, meatballs, vegetables, sardines, and more. Loaded with picked vegetables, slices of jalapeños, and a thatch of cilantro, all of this is embedded within those marvelous baguettes.

The other side of the menu is devoted to another Vietnamese specialty: summer rolls. Composed of pale vermicelli, crunchy vegetables, and various proteins that are wrapped with rice paper, these are light and flavorful and pair well with your bánh mì.

It’s also fun to watch the rolls being constructed, as Saigon Blvd. uses a very cool kitchen gadget in the form of a half-circle water bowl for dipping the rice paper circles to first soften the discs.

The sleek space has no seating, so you can get everything to-go, or, better yet, take a seat at one of the two wooden picnic tables outside, as bánh mì are best eaten right away.

And these, the finest I’ve had since leaving Southern California, should spend as little time as possible in their pretty sandwich bags.

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Parked on the side of a Marathon gas station lot off York Road in Timonium sits El Taquito Leon #3, one of the trucks—or, more technically, a trailer—run by the folks who also have a Rosedale brick-and-mortar and three other mobile operations around the area.

Bright green, with a massive red sign advertising a long menu and pictures of various dishes, #3 (open at 2415 York Road from 10 a.m.-9 p.m. daily) is bright, cheery, and helmed by two very friendly women. There’s a bench nearby, as well as lots of parking—unsurprising, given that it’s in a parking lot.

What makes El Taquito Leon #3 remarkable is the breadth of its menu: sopes, flautas, tortas, empanadas, huarachas (oblong grilled disks of masa topped with various fillings that are harder to find than they should be), desserts in the form of churros and tres leches cake, and tacos. Lots of tacos. Among them: barbacoa, quesabirria, lengua, asada, and camarones.

But what truly makes any trip here worth it is that they can make your tortillas by hand if you ask, a remarkable option for many taquerias these days—even more so in a truck-stop parking lot. It should be noted that the women speak very little English, so if you learn zero Spanish in your life except for the phrase “tortillas hechas a mano, por favor,” you’ll be well-served. Hand-made tortillas mean you’ll pay a $2 surcharge and wait a bit longer, but it is very well worth it, and you can gas up your car while you wait.

Quesabirria tacos—tortillas topped with melted cheese, folded around birria, and accompanied by a cup of consomé for dipping—are hearty, blissful items. They’re usually constructed with pre-made, purchased tortillas because it’s easier, cheaper, and the factory tortillas crisp up better. But they’re stunning when built with just-made tortillas, though admittedly messier. Your order will come with three tacos and a cup of broth, as well as radishes, lime, and a little knotted bag of hot sauce, should you require more heat.

ETL #3 has been parked at Marathon for about a year. I’d seen it before, but hadn’t stopped until I needed a fortuitous tank of gas. (I’d never been to any of the other ETLs, either.) Which begs the question: How do you know if a roadside truck or stall is any good?

Well, you don’t. In this case, a quick look at the menu and a check of the Instagram account they’d tagged (@eltaquitoleon) were very encouraging. And then I asked if they made their tortillas by hand—not thinking it possible, but asking anyway—and one of the women miraculously said yes. In my mind, any place that makes their own tortillas is a cut far above the rest.

But mostly, you don’t have a clear sign. You just have to give it a try. You’ll get a meal either way. And sometimes you’ll get lucky and find a place as good as this one.

Will I now be driving to Timonium just for tacos? Si, absolutamente. I’ll get a fantastic meal, and I’ll be able to get gas for the long drive home.

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Lately, the neighborhood’s bakery game has gotten even stronger, with the addition of a storefront micro-bakery on the corner of Ann and Gough streets called Brunch Supply.

Opened the last week of December by married couple Andy Bruhns and Glenna Morgan, the shop is currently only open on weekend mornings, selling morning buns, babka, scones, and sourdough baguettes.

Set inside the former home of Van Gough Café, which closed in 2022, it’s an extremely pretty spot with exposed brick walls, a vintage stove, a cornflower-blue bar running down the length of one wall, and a counter loaded with baked goods fronting the large open kitchen. Sheet-pan racks with more trays of pastries, a deck oven and proofer, and other bakery paraphernalia add to the cozy atmosphere.

“I so did not want to be in a plaza,” Bruhns told us early Saturday morning as he stood behind the counter in a lightly floured apron, discussing how he and his wife decided on the location. Instead, they landed on a homey rowhouse in an extremely supportive neighborhood, with folks that are already showing up regularly.

The plan is to expand the shop’s hours, says Bruhns, as he’s currently a government employee and expects he’ll soon have a lot more time to bake. In addition, the bakery will soon have coffee and tea service, as well as retail offerings. Bruhns says they envision their shop as “a closet Williams-Sonoma, but just for brunch stuff”—hence the name.

Both Bruhns and Morgan, who is a lawyer, have culinary training and catering experience, and always envisioned opening a shop. With their current hours, they open at 7 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays and close around noon—or whenever they sell out.

If they don’t sell out, Bruhns says they take any extra bread and pastries to a local mission. But they don’t often have leftovers. This is because, in addition to classic cinnamon rolls, cardamom buns, and babka, they sell something called cereal-milk buns—morning buns made with milk infused with breakfast cereal, lately Fruity Pebbles and Cocoa Puffs.

Anyone familiar with Christina Tosi—the longtime Momofuku pastry chef, Milk Bar owner, and general star baker—will recognize this, as Tosi popularized cereal-milk ice creams and other products.

“Any baker knows about her,” says Bruhns, wrapping a babka for a regular.

Next to the cereal-milk buns that morning were also orange morning buns and cherry kolaches (Czech sweet pastries), as well as cheddar-scallion and espresso-mocha scones.

Here’s hoping they get that coffee machine soon. Welcome to the neighborhood, indeed.

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Taquería Garcia, on the corner of Eastern and Wolfe, opened in January. It’s the second taquería from the family that owns and operates Carnitas Rocio in Highlandtown, a taquería and tortilleria that opened two years ago.

The new place serves the same tacos, tamales, tortas, burritos, and pupusas as Carnitas Rocio, all made on-site. This includes chicharrónes—the distinctive fried pork rinds, bags of which also decorate the counter space—and the tortillas that grace the excellent tacos, also made on-site.

The tacos, on two freshly made and crisped tortillas, are loaded with toppings, accompanied by caramelized onions and jalapeños, and a pair of housemade hot sauces. And the tamales, massive envelopes of filled masa wrapped in corn husks, are among the best in Baltimore.

Both taquerías are owned and operated by Gerardo and Rocio Garcia and their extended family. The Garcias came to Baltimore from Léon, Guanajuato, in central Mexico, 20 years ago, where Gerardo ran a series of carnicerias.

The space includes a large, bright dining room with many café tables and chairs arranged around a pool table, and with flatscreen TVs showing soccer games. In the evenings, the large bar at the back of the dining room turns into Azteca Sports Bar, as Garci rents out the space to what is essentially a bar pop-up.

Maybe grab a packet of freshly made tortillas and some tamales to take home after your nightcap. And Rocio Garcia’s mole tamales are superb, either with your cocktail or for breakfast the next day.

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Lucky for us all, there’s a new Sichuan restaurant in town that has plenty of dumplings on the menu, as well as Kung Pao chicken, mapo tofu, cumin lamb, and plenty else. 

Open in Charles Village since early January in the former Busboys and Poets space, Lao Sze Chuan is part of a national chain of Sichuan restaurants that was started in Chicago in 1998 by restaurateur Tony Hu—who some might recall making news in 2016 when he was jailed for tax evasion.

With legal woes behind him, Charles Village seems to be a good home for Hu’s latest venture, as the place has been busy since it opened its doors. (With Johns Hopkins classes now back in session, we can only imagine the restaurant will continue to pick up steam.) Here’s hoping it measures up to the standards of Hu’s flagship, which won Michelin Bib Gourmand awards a decade ago.

Lao Sze Chuan has a menu that runs from easily recognizable favorites like Kung Pao chicken and dan dan noodles to more esoteric regional specialties like braised pork belly and abalone, as well as pig’s trotters, which arrive to the table wrapped in a tent of tin foil.

There are also soup dumplings, a requirement on dim sum menus these days, as well as cumin lamb, a version of the toothpick lamb that’s also a now-common dish on Sichuan restaurant menus. Featuring bits of heavily spiced lamb loaded with cumin and chiles, the dish gets its name from the toothpicks that skewer each chunk of lamb. There are no toothpicks here, thankfully for both eaters and preparers; but a bed of red onions and chiles instead.

Instead of whole fish, try ordering the fish fillets with Sichuan peppercorns, a variation on the water-boiled fish with peppercorns, lotus root, and glass noodles that’s also a Sichuan staple. At Lao Sze Chuan, the fish is loaded with the peppercorns that produce that numbing taste called ‘mala’ and comes in a white bowl the size of a hubcap.

There’s a similar dish on the menu at nearby Orient Express and at both of Peter Chang’s Baltimore restaurants, and it’s a fabulous choice for cold weather. The broth is both punchy and soothing, excellent if you’re feeling a bit under the weather. And all that tender flounder is comforting for Mid-Atlantic fish lovers.

There’s a tiny dessert menu (sticky rice cakes and pumpkin cakes), but if you’re still hungry, you’d be better served ordering some more dumplings.

It is good luck, after all.

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Exploring is encouraged.
It’s a great time to explore places you haven’t been before, or hit up those you haven’t frequented for a while. It’s also a good way for restaurants to bring folks in during what is traditionally a lean time and appeal to newcomers—think of it as gateway dining.

Newcomers are going to invade your favorite spots.
This also means that regulars may want to take a break from their usual spots, as there may be more crowds than usual, and either stay home and cook for a change—or get on the bandwagon and do some exploring themselves. (I have never been a fan of Restaurant Weeks, preferring to dine out on Tuesdays just after doors open, as I don’t like crowds or prix-fixe menus, but I know I’m an anomaly.)

Research is key. 
If you do decide to go, a bit of legwork is recommended. Scan websites and check out the special menus before you go, as you want to be sure that what’s on the Restaurant Week menu syncs with your dietary preferences. Not a carnivore or a soup fan? You may not want what’s on offer at one place, but might find exactly what you do want at another.

Look at pics.
You can also check Instagram, as many restaurants showcase their recent or classic dishes and give frequent updates. It’s also fun to have visual aids before you shell out for dinner. That said, note that some dishes the restaurants are best known for may not be on the Restaurant Week menu.

Know your budget.
Financially, Restaurant Week is a great time to finally splurge on a place that’s always seemed a bit out of reach, or gives you a nudge if you need that bit of bargain-hunting to appeal to your dinner (or brunch or lunch) mates. Some spots even have wine pairings as part of the set menus. Either way, do some research first—it’ll likely pay off as much as any discount on dinner.

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