Vaccaro's in Baltimore, MD

While in Baltimore, I decided to get some sort of dessert in Little Italy. I came across a bakery called Vaccaro's and decided to give them a try.

They had all sorts of pastries, cookies, cakes, and other desserts in here.

I had a chocolate and vanilla neapolitan. This flaky pastry was filled with alternating layers of vanilla and chocolate pudding.

I wasn't a fan of how it was served in the plastic clam shell container. The chocolate that topped the dessert stuck to the lid and sort of pulled the pastry apart when I went to open the container. This was tasty, although it was definitely more than I could eat in one serving.

I found out later that Vaccaro's was part of a larger chain. I came across a Vaccaro's in a strip mall in the suburbs of Baltimore and was also informed that there are a few of these in New York as well. I guess Vaccaro's wasn't the small, independent pastry shop in Little Italy that it initially appeared to be.

Uncle Lee's Szechuan China Room in Baltimore, MD

I did some visiting in the Baltimore area. While there, I parked in Little Italy and walked towards the Inner Harbor. I didn't want to actually eat in the Inner Harbor, so I headed a few blocks away and came across a Chinese restaurant located inside a large building that was formerly a bank. It seemed like the restaurant had a bit of an identity crisis since there were three different names outside the restaurant. The China Room was located on the side of the building. Uncle Lee's Szechuan Restaurant was on the awning out front. Finally, Uncle Lee's Harbor Restaurant was on the window above the door.

The inside of the restaurant was very impressive. I don't know if this building was something else between a bank and Chinese restaurant, but modern banks definitely aren't built this way. The interior was decorated with all sorts of ornate features. It didn't look very Chinese (except for the lantern globe lights that were added), but it was a very unique building to be eating lunch in.

I started with an appetizer of scallion pancakes. These are hard to find in Florida, so I decided to get these fried pancakes when I saw them on the menu.

A cup of wonton soup was served next. The dumplings were good although the broth could have used improvement. It was completely clear and basically tasted like warm water.

For my meal, I had one of the lunch specials called Baby Shrimp with Szechuan Rice Wine Sauce. A big plate of shrimp was served swimming in sauce. There were hardly any vegetables in here and was a bit boring. Although the menu noted that this was spicy, it hardly had any kick. Rice was served on the side which was very useful in soaking up the pool of sauce.

I found the food here to be a bit mediocre. The prices were also very affordable and the building was way cool. Can't win with everything...

Silver Diner in Greenbelt, MD

On the morning before I headed home from the Washington DC area, I visited a restaurant called Silver Diner in Greenbelt, Maryland after doing some hiking in the nearby Greenbelt National Park. I didn't realize it when I went into the restaurant, but Silver Diner is a chain based around the Virginia and Maryland area.

They apparently attempt to use local ingredients in their foods. The sign on the table told me that they partner with 15 local farms. It's nice to see a semi-large chain doing stuff like this.

I ordered the Local Farm Raised Bison Huevos Rancheros. This came with a chorizo and bison hash, over easy eggs, peppers, salsa, scallions, cilantro, goat cheese, chunky avocado and fried tortillas. This was very tasty (and the second time I've had bison on this trip), but it was almost too much meat. The huge mound of meaty hash definitely overshadowed the eggs and other toppings. I also would have preferred soft tortillas rather than crispy tortillas. Soft tortillas seem like they go a lot further than fried, chip-like tortillas.

I enjoyed my breakfast, but overall Silver Diner did seem a little too pricy. The average menu price seemed to be about $12, which compared to other breakfast places is really expensive. This was even worse than Ihop's pricy breakfasts...

Bagel Place in College Park, MD

While I was visiting Washington DC for a few days, I stayed in College Park, Maryland. I had just over a mile walk to the nearest metro station to take the train into DC for some sightseeing. During this walk, I stopped for breakfast at a restaurant called the Bagel Place in Downtown College Park.

I had a toasted everything bagel with bacon scallion cream cheese. I've never tried that combination in a cream cheese before. It was salty but good. The bagel was big with plenty of seeds. The Bagel Place has good bagels...

Pizza Autentica in College Park, MD

I had pizza right outside the University of Maryland in the town of College Park at a restaurant called Pizza Autentica. This is apparently a local chain in the Washington DC area that seems to specialize in pizza and gelato.

We ordered a pepperoni pizza. While the pie wasn't bad, I did find it to be undercooked. The crust was still very doughy and really didn't have any crunch. We were at the restaurant about an hour before they closed. I wonder if this had anything to do with the rushed cooking of our pie with the employees wanting to get the cooking over with and the restaurant cleaned up sooner? The cheese & sauce were tasty and they were generous with the amount of pepperoni on the pie. This would have been a pretty good pizza if only they cooked it longer!

Kay's Diner IV in Beltsville, MD

On my latest bit of traveling, I made my way up to the Washington DC area for a few days. My first food experience while up there was breakfast at a restaurant called Kay's Diner IV located in the city of Beltsville, Maryland. The restaurant was set up cafeteria style and was very affordable for breakfast.

I ordered one of their breakfast combos which came with scrambled eggs, home fries, toast, and a choice of a meat. I could have chosen a standard breakfast meat like bacon or sausage, but I was distracted by scrapple. Scrapple is similar to a meatloaf, made with pork scraps and grain. It is apparently very popular in this area and was invented by the Pennsylvania Dutch. I've found that scrapple has somewhat of a bad reputation, I guess because of what it's made from (pork head, heart, liver, and other trimmings according to Wikipedia), but that wasn't going to stop me from trying it. Turned out that the scrapple was actually pretty tasty. It had a flavor similar to some breakfast sausages that I've had. The rest of the food here was pretty standard as breakfast items go. The potatoes were somewhat bland but were fixed up with sriracha.

Kay's Diner provided a good, cheap, and quick breakfast. The novelty of scrapple made it better...

Durham's Best Barbeque in Elkton, MD

I stopped in Elkton, MD for lunch. I got off I-95 at this exit and had a few interesting food choices. One was a seafood restaurant selling food from a shipping container. Another choice, and the winner for the meal was BBQ in a log cabin called Durham's Best Barbeque.

I had the beef brisket sandwich, topped with peppers and onions. Durham's gave a huge amount of meat, all overflowing out of the bun. It had nice flavor but was a bit dry. The small cups of barbecue sauce that were supplied weren't enough to moisten the sandwich. The peppers and onions were very skimpy and went almost unnoticed.

R&R Taqueria in Elkridge, MD

It's funny how TV changes people's opinions of restaurants. I was traveling up north along I-95 a couple of years ago and stopped to get gas in a Shell station in Elkridge, MD. Attached to the gas station's store was a Mexican restaurant. I suggested that we try the tacos there but my travel companions objected to getting food from a creepy gas station and we ended up snacking on some sad looking foods from a supermarket across the street. Fast forward a bit and I'm making the same trip along I-95 with the same people and it's lunch time once again. After looking through the various smartphone apps for a place to eat, it is decided that we try a Mexican restaurant that was featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives called R&R Taqueria. We follow the directions and end up pulling into the same Shell gas station. I recognized it as the place that was rejected for being gross gas station tacos, but it was now okay to eat at since it had been legitimized by the Food Network.

There was a good amount of people inside the tiny restaurant. It was separated from the gas station store by large windows, and the walls were decorated with Guy Fieri's portrait. R&R Taqueria is the second restaurant I've dined at that was featured on his show.

I tried two of their tacos at R&R. First was a taco al pastor, filled with nicely marinated pork, onions, and cilantro on a corn tortilla. Next was a pollo taco, consisting of the same fillings with the pork exchanged for chicken. While I liked the al pastor, the chicken was very dry and bland. The salsa served on the side helped it out.

I also tasted part of a chicken huarache. This was a thick tortilla topped with refried beans, meat, cheese, sour cream, and avocado. This was my first time trying a huarache, and it was definitely interesting. I'll need to try another one of these at some point.

 

I liked R&R Taqueria. It was good, simple, and cheap Mexican food all inside a cramped gas station. I'd stop there again on my next road trip up I-95!

Pizza Blitz in Pikesville, MD

Continuing with some more travel blogging, I had reached my destination of my road trip: The suburbs of Baltimore. While there, I did do some of the touristy stuff. I visited the National Aquarium for the first time (I think I'm jaded with sealife. I was disappointed) and wandered around the Inner Harbor.

After I checked that stuff off my list of places to see, I moved onto seeing the more obscure sights in the area. One of the places that I ended up was called Quarry Lake at Greenspring. Apparently this man-made, 500 foot deep lake is one of the deepest in the state. As the name implies, the giant hole in the ground was originally a stone quarry which was then filled with water. The surrounding land was used to build a shopping center, expensive condos, and a paved trail surrounding the lake. When I read about Quarry Lake, I actually didn't realize how built up the area was. I went for the trail to ride my unicycle, but I figured while I was there, I might as well get dinner too.

Food happened at a restaurant called Pizza Blitz. This pizzeria, serving mostly pizza-by-the-slice, was one of the few non-chain restaurants in the shopping center overlooking the lake.

I had a plain cheese slice and a white vegetable slice. Both were good, although the toppings on the vegetable slice were a bit sad looking once I inspected them up close. They basically consisted of chopped tomato and broccoli crumbs. Other than that, the slices were tasty. The crust was nice and thin. The cheese and sauce both had good flavor. Overall, these were good, NY style slices. Apparently the suburbs of Baltimore have good pizza...

Cracker Barrel

Today I'm talking about Cracker Barrel...

In my travels, I ate lunch at the Cracker Barrel right off of I-95 in Elkton, MD. It had been a long time since I had visited one of these restaurants, so I had somewhat forgotten what the menu was like. Breakfast is served all day and some of their breakfast items are quite affordable. The egg sandwich served on sourdough bread with a side of hashbrown casserole was only $4. The price was good, but when everyone at the table ordered these $4 breakfasts, the waitress got kind of nasty. I guess she did the math and figured the tip on a table of three worth $12 rather than a table spending $30 wasn't worth her time. Whenever she did return to the table, the waitress kept on making awkward religious statements. Thought it was a bit inappropriate in a chain restaurant and overall was just weird. Decent egg sandwich though!

During another recent visit to Cracker Barrel, this time closer to home, I had dinner at the restaurant in Sanford, FL. The restaurant had a half hour wait which is totally not worth it, but it allowed time to browse the attached gift shop and see the surprisingly large inventory of Sarah Palin audiobooks and overpriced junk covered in bible verses. Perhaps the religious comments made at the Cracker Barrel in Elkton make more sense after taking a look at what they sell. Eventually, we were seated and I ordered the Rainbow Trout. It came with biscuits and two sides. I picked the hashbrown casserole and turnip greens.

I really had no complaints about the food itself. Everything I tried during this meal was tasty, although the presentation of the trout could have been vastly improved. It's a big plate. There's no reason to put the side on top of the fish, leaving the rest of the plate empty.

On another visit to a Cracker Barrel somewhere, I tried their Chicken and Dumplings. The southern version of dumplings served with chicken and dumplings is interesting to me. When I think of dumplings, I think of them being filled with something, while these are just thick noodles. Is this typical of chicken and dumplings, or is this just how Cracker Barrel does it?

Cracker Barrel has better food than I remember. I still would consider it travel food, not only because all of the Cracker Barrels that I know of are located along an interstate, but also because it seems that's almost always when I end up at one. For travel food though, it's definitely a better choice than a Denny's or Waffle House!