Monday, January 26, 2009

Help Me: Best Cheese and Asian Restaurants

Asian and cheese restaurants -- That's not a natural pair, but they're this Monday's request for your favorites in Howard County.  

I'm posting about "What I've Learned" to collect a guide to the best of Howard County food. I'm asking for help, and I'll incorporate comments in the upcoming posts (or update them if the post already happened):
  • Where can you buy great cheese in Howard County?  Cheese plates at nice restaurants?  Retail displays for special brie or blue cheese that you want to take home?  Where do go?  What do you buy?
  • Where do you drive for great Asian food? I know that is a continent, but I'm looking for your favorites from Korea through Japan down to Vietnam.  I already asked for Chinese and Indian joints.  Now I want to know what you order at Bangkok Garden or whatever places draws you in for great food.  How do you distinguish An Loi and Pho Dat Trahn?

9 comments:

  1. Not a big cheese guy. I know Victoria Gastro Pub has some kind of cheese plate, and I assume that the wine place on 108 I'm forgetting its name, probably does a nice cheese plate.

    Went to Grace Garden tonight BTW, loved the pocket tofu, everything was pretty good, I had the basil chicken which would have been great but they used some less-lean cuts of chicken, which can be gross/inedible in sections.

    Still enjoyed the experience though, you're right very bare bones in there, really liked the menu though, will have to try the fish noodles etc. at another time.

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  2. Also, I know its not Howard County but that Wegmans in that part of town north of the Beltway, I forget the town name, has a GREAT cheese section. It has a great lot of things, really, but I remember a ton of cheese, lots of olives, bread all within range of each other.

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  3. Hahaha. You're stealing my future post about Wegman's. That cheese - olive - bread selection is one of my top reasons to want the Columbia store to open. Thanks.

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  4. Roots Natural Market has probably the best cheese selection in the county. I'm not in love with much else there other than the chocolate selection, but their cheese department is terrific.

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  5. Oh that reminds me, I bet Trader Joe's near the Costco and Perfect Pour probably has a middling cheese section.

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  6. Trader Joe's has a moderate cheese section. Harris Teeter likewise. You'll be able to find all major categories of cheese (cheddar, mozzarella, bleu, gouda, swiss, parmaggiano reggiano, etc) but you'll only be able to find a few rare/specialty cheeses. For those, I either head down to Montgomery County (Balducci's and Whole Foods come to mind) or up to Hunt Valley for Wegman's.

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  7. Finally came up with something as far as "Asian"

    There's several restaurants in the center with Frisco Grille, there's a Chinese place that was good and seems to be quietly popular, there's a Mongolian grill of some sort, and there's a Japanese place.

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  8. Hanamura in snowden is an excellent place to get sushi. They may not have the atmosphere of a Sushi King, but there is something appealing to a small friendly sushi restaurant. Their prices for their rolls are reasonable and high quality. I highly recommend the Kevin Roll.

    8865 Stanford Blvd
    Ste 105
    Columbia, MD 21045

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