Ali Baba And The 40 Donuts, A Story Of Sweets To End A Chinese Feast At Grace Garden

Grace Garden's donuts

This is what you get for being stereotypical:  Forty donuts.

There were three of us, including one Chinese speaker at Grace Garden in Odenton, and we were pretty stuffed from three entrees from the best Chinese restaurant in the area.  But we were enjoying the afternoon and finishing off our tea when our friend recommended the donuts.

We looked at the menu, and, for about $5, there was a line for "40 donuts."  That can't be right, we all agreed.  You know how Chinese restaurants have language issues.  I've seen stir-fried "prok."  I've seen "shimp."  That must be an order with four little donuts.  That would be perfect.  We just need four.

Out came 40 donuts, maybe more.  They're each the size of a donut hole from one of the national chains.  Beautifully fried, warm and crisp but not oily.  Dusted with a large-flake sugar that created sweet crunch.  These are a terrific dessert.  Probably smarter if you have four or six people to eat 40 donuts, but we hoovered most of them.  I concentrated on the section with the most sugar.

I can't recommend Grace Garden's food enough.  It's one of my best restaurants of Howard County even though it is across the border in Odenton.  It's well worth the drive our Rte 32, and now it comes with a sweet ending.

For more about Grace Garden, check out Lisbeth's post on Lisbeth Eats.  As always, she has terrific photos, and she suggests her favorite dishes at what I consider the best Chinese food near Howard County.  Read all my posts about Grace Garden to see what inspires you. 

Worth Repeating: Grace Garden Makes The Region's Best Chinese; Go Pick What You Want

Fish noodles at Grace Garden

I'll leave Howard County for great food, and the easiest drive is for Chinese food off Rte 32 in Odenton.

Grace Garden serves hands-down the best Chinese food in the area.  So good that we had our best Chinese meal in years even though we ordered in part by just pointing at the dish that just happened to be served to the only other guy in the restaurant.

Of course, our table included some great favorites.  The fish noodles are a perfect dish -- actual noodles made from a paste of firm, white fish and flavored with an incredible mix of mushrooms, green onions and slivers of pork.  The sauce provides a warm richness, but there is no oiliness or grease.

You can't go wrong at Grace Garden.  It's a one-chef operation in a forlorn part of Rte 32 just across from Fort Meade.  But the "authentic" menu has an array of amazing dishes from simple vegetable platters to complex whole poultry that need to be ordered two or three days in advance.

The bottom line is that every single dish that we have eat at Grace Garden would be on the table of the best Chinese in Howard County.  We really like places like Noodles Corner in Columbia, but Grace Garden's dishes are simultaneously more subtle and more flavorful.

Cantonese braised chicken

What was the dish that just happened to be served while we looking at the menu?  Cantonese braised chicken -- chunks of meat on the bone served with a sauce made from onions and garlic.  Like all the Grace Garden dishes, there is no gloppy sauce.  It clung to the meat, and there was just a little bit that I obsessively tried to spoon onto rice from the bottom of the bowl.

The braised chicken is an absolute winner, even for Mrs. HowChow who doesn't normally want to nibble meat off a bone.  It was a random win for us, although I later realized that it is repeated rave on the Chowhound thread that first introduced me to Grace Garden.

Seriously, read that thread or my old posts about Grace Garden.  Pick a few dishes that interest you.  Tofu pockets?  Eggplant with plum sauce?  Pork and squid stir fry?  Then just drive to Odenton.  It's a basic place -- maybe a half-dozen tables and photos on the wall that I think were provided by diners who love the restaurant.  You go for the food.

This is part of a Worth Repeating series highlighting dishes and places that you should hear about even though they aren't new.  I'm suggesting sandwiches, Cuban pork chops, ground chuck and other items that have been HowChow favorites for years.

I think Grace Garden is incredibly kid-friendly.  There is no atmosphere to the place except for the friendliness of the chef and his family.  That's a great atmosphere for kids.  No one is going to be disturbed by children at your table.

Grace Garden, A Kitchen That Never Disappoints

Pork and tofu with eggplants in the bowl behind

We have gone a little restaurant crazy in the past few weeks, and it just reminds me that few kitchens can compete with Grace Garden in Odenton.

The tiny Chinese restaurant sits across from Fort Meade, and it has zero ambiance.  But it has all the great meals that you could ever want.  We ate some fancy celebration meals over the past month, but I had just as much fun exploring a bit at Grace Garden.

Of course, I started with a known dish -- fish noodles, actual ground fish formed into sweet, long noodles.  But then we stretched out with an eggplant in plum sauce and a pork with dried tofu.  The eggplant was delicious.  Vegetable cooked perfectly tender, then a sweet and spicy sauce.

But the pork was a new reason to drive all the way out Rte 32.  Crisp pork and thin-cut pressed tofu offer contrasting texture.  A light char flavor from the pork.  Bright color and taste from green onions.  Most of the dish is tofu, which has a meaty texture and a light coating of oil that adds richness without grease.

The sauces make Grace Garden my favorite Chinese restaurant.  I can saute vegetables, but I can't make the dishes where a sheen of oil coats everything in flavor without ever tasting oily.  Every dish at Grace Garden tastes unique.  From XO sauce to seasonal vegetables to braised pork, the single chef turns out variation and surprise.  Honestly, the food was as much fun as our big-ticket dinners.  It's the only place where we consciously order more than we can eat -- three dishes feed two with lunches for tomorrow.

(Update: Grace Garden is on Rte 175 in Odenton.  We drive out Rte 32 and then turn north on Rte 175.  If you're farther north, then note the first comment below that it's probably faster to drive direct on Rte 175.)

Grace Garden is a great place to bring friends for a feast.  You can't order wrong.  But you can find what you like by reading all my Grace Garden posts to make a list of dishes that sound good to you -- and follow the links to Chowhound and Yelp for more-expert advice.

Seasonal Chives Special At Grace Garden

We go to Grace Garden in Odenton for the best Chinese food, and many of the dishes amaze us with techniques like filling tofu pockets and forming fish noodles.

But don't miss the simple tastes.  Grace Garden always has vegetable specials, and you should pay attention because they're using whatever vegetable looked best to the chief.  Last month, we had Chinese chives.  They're long, mild chives that come with with a sweet flavor and a tender bite.  There is just enough oil to transform them into something that I couldn't make -- flavorful, but not greasy.

On our last trip, we ran into one of the folks who helped turn on the local blog scene to Grace Garden several years ago.  We had the pork and tofu at her suggestion.  We will order the Taiwanese fish on our next visit and maybe the steamed fish with rice powder because she says they're great.  And we'd like you to try the "3Ts -- tripe, tongue and tendon" and tell us about it in the comments.  That's two Ts too much for me and Mrs. HowChow, although we disagree on which T seems okay.

Off-Menu Chinese At Grace Garden

If you want to explore the offering at Grace Garden, consider calling ahead and asking if they can make Sichuan Steamed Fish with Rice Powder in a Lotus Leaf.

Min snapped the picture above at the Odenton restaurant that is one of the best Chinese around.  She says the dish is time-consuming and usually not available on weekends. Min got the dish because she ate with folks who are old friend's of Chef Li:

The steamed fish version gives a great more delicate taste than its pork counterpart with a lot less grease. (At GG, Chef Li uses thinly sliced pork while in Taiwan chefs prefer using pork baby riblets.)  With the fish, we could taste the subtle aroma of the dried lotus leaf, the five spice powder and the kicks that the Sichuan peppercorns bring. 

She says that she'll call in advance next time and see if she can get the steamed fish and to ask Chef Li to make fish stock for pocket tofu.

Fish Noodles At Grace Garden

My favorite restaurant dishes are the ones that I know that I could never make myself.

The fish noodles at Grace Garden in Odenton are one of my absolute favorites.  Mild fish somehow pureed and then reformed as rough noodles.  I love the texture, which is firm and light, and the fish is almost sweet.  Mushrooms provide an earthy flavor, and pork slivers give the plate a salty bite.

Grace Garden is one of the best restaurants around because it excels at little things like the mushrooms.  Mrs. HowChow couldn't get over how they tasted like mushrooms.  These weren't bland, reconstituted filler.  They were an equal part of the meal, holding their own against even meal.

All of the cooked vegetables have the nicest crunch.  They're not soggy or limp.  The sichuan pork belly comes out full of garlic and crispy with an unctuous, warm flavor of oil that I'd never put in my weeknight dinners, but no greasiness.

We hadn't been to Grace Garden in months, and our most-recent dinner shows that it hasn't lost a step.  There are only seven tables and minimal decor, but you don't want to miss the XO seafood if you like scallops and squid tossed with a rich sauce.  The squid was cooked perfectly -- tender enough to cut with a fork, still holding that perfect spot that is toothsome but not chewy.

Chinese Restaurants in Howard County 2010

This post started a few months ago as the question: "Is there any Chinese food worth eating in Howard County?"

I wrote up Chinese restaurants in early 2009, but the truth is that we rarely eat the stuff around here -- opting for other cuisine or driving a little farther to check out better restaurants.  A horrific dinner at Hunan Legend and some takeout failures made me expect glop on every plate, and I wondered if there was anything worth trying.

The answer: "Yes."  But, to get the food that I want, you have to ask.

To get the Chinese food that I want, you need to find restaurants with a separate, authentic menu -- and you need to really emphasize that you want the authentic version.  This frustrates some people, and it really frustrated me when my Hunan Legend waiter lied and denied that the Columbia restaurant had a separate menu of authentic dishes.  But that led to a wonderful series of posts where Wai provided and translated the Chinese menu, then other people like Warthog used it enough that the restaurant put out an official version.

I have decided that Chinese restaurants are just different from other places.  My Chinese-speaking friend said that Chinese people are very aware that foreigners can be put off by their food, and he said people seemed surprised that he wanted real Chinese food -- even in China where he had clearly made an effort to speak the language and live there.  My friend joked that Americans assume that everyone in the world wants to eat a hamburger and commute in their own car, but Chinese people are so aware that foreigners might be put off by spices or flavors or ingredients that they often just don't want to risk making you unhappy.

The flip side is that they can be very happy if you try.  Noodles Corner in Columbia invested the time to translate its second menu of authentic items, but the managers were still visibly surprised when we ordered authentic dishes.  They confirmed twice that we wanted Chinese versions.  We did.  They smiled.

But, with that said, I totally respect people like Little Audrey who points out that she can get terrific tacos at R&R Taqueria without knowing a secret password.  She likes Hunan Legend for a quick kung pao, but she doesn't want to prove her worthiness to order authentic stuff -- so she drives the extra miles to Grace Garden.

You should drive there as well because Grace Garden tops my spots for local Chinese.  I'm a complete novice, but I know where I have found fresh, interesting dishes that make me think you can get several provinces of special meals if you know where to ask:

Grace Garden in Odenton:   Chef Chun Keung Li serves luxurious flavors in a Spartan room. This is a place for people who want to explore, who want to drive a little extra to enjoy tea-smoked duck, sliced pork belly, steamed whole fish, and fish noodles.  Grace Garden stands out because of its skills and becomes it welcomes everyone.  Ingredients familiar to anyone who eats Chinese -- chicken, fish, vegetables -- become stellar meals, and the exotic touches are there for anyone who wants to try.  I understand that the menu tends towards southern Chinese cuisine.  Check out my posts and search Chowhound or other local food blogs.

Red Pearl in Columbia: This authentic menu at this new lakeside place runs to spicy Szechuan food.  Lunch at the Red Pearl was a hit for me -- a dry kung pao that was delicious and different than the American variety, a special vegetable (Chinese broccoli) that was crisp, and the Red Pearl posts have some detailed recommendations and comments, including ColumbiaJ who recommended potstickers with hot oil and flounder with soft tofu.  (Update:  Red Pearl added dim sum, which I think is absolutely delicious.)

Noodles Corner in Columbia:  This is our newest find, and our single takeout meal wasn't enough for me to offer even my uneducated opinion.  Apparently, this authentic menu is heavily Taiwanese, and I recommend the shredded pork appetizer, the asian chili wrap, and the pan-fried noodles with beef, chicken and shrimp.  I was turned onto Noodles Corner by people like Wai, Jade's Mama, David P., Little Audrey, and William.  From those folks, I have a "to do" list of fish fillet with XO sauce, black mushrooms with bok choy, the seafood or beef hot pot, and the northern Chinese noodles (even though Wai would like them spicier and saltier).  William also recommended the tea -- no giant pot in the back; they put tea leaves into the pot that they serve to the table.

Hunan Taste in Catonsville.  Although it's not Howard County, the extra miles are worth checking out the Hunan menu.  This is the place that really got me excited for authentic Chinese because dishes like preserved sausage with smoked bamboo shoots were a revelation.  New flavors.  New combinations.  I thought it was a tasty, classy, casual place, although you can get cultural clash with your meal.  Several comments describe food that they didn't like and management who didn't seem to care.  Another got great food at lunch, then watered-down takeout soup the next day.

Hunan Legend in Columbia:  This is an odd recommendation because my only meal here was terrible.  But that was off the American menu, and other people really love Hunan Legend's authentic dishes that trend Cantonese and Malaysian.  People like Warthog convinced the owners to give the translated Chinese menu to everyone, and the Hunan Legend posts include lots of comments that recommend specific items.  Also, Warthog sparked a long Chowhound string that lists dishes and discusses the whole stereotype that Americans don't really like Chinese food.

Asian Court in Ellicott City:  This is for lunch-time dim sum -- rolling carts on the weekend and from the menu on weekdays.  We think this matches the famous places in the DC suburbs, and we'll go again and again for steamed BBQ pork buns, steamed dumplings, sticky rice, and even for desserts like coconut jelly and sesame balls.  You can explore beyond into chicken feet, head-on shrimp, and bitter melon rounds stuffed with shrimp paste.

That isn't to say that you need to worship authentic Chinese.  That's my taste these days, but Chinese restaurants make people happy every day with dishes that never saw China.  A single kitchen could serve "authentic" to one customer, "comfort food" to another, and just give you a bag of takeout on a night when you can't face the stove.

• Jade recommended the Lucky China Inn in the Oakland Mills village center in Columbia -- especially Szechuan lo mein, orange chicken, and mu shu chicken.
• Anonymous recommended Hunan Express in Elkridge -- especially the steamed dumplings that come six for $4.
• Anonymous recommended ChopStixx in Elkridge -- really for pan-Asian noodle dishes like pad thai.
• Jake recommended Hunan Legend in Columbia -- for a friendly atmosphere, steamed dumpling and the kung pao triple delight.

Jake's recommendation brings me back to the Big Three because no discussion of Howard County Chinese could be complete without the established trio of Hunan Manor, Hunan Legend and Jesse Wong's Asean Bistro.  When we lived off Rte 108, Jesse Wong's American-style dishes were our go-to takeout, and the pretty ambiance still makes it a nice place to take people for a casual, but classy night.  Hunan Manor has been a family mainstay for people like Kevin of Kevin & Ann Eat Everything, and some people even swear by Hunan Legend's regular menu.  These are places that serve memories along with the food, although there are disputes with all three about whether they have declined over time.  Two years ago, I would have held Asean Bistro up against any other kitchen, but I don't think that anymore.  For now, I would rather explore my six places than go back to the old standbys.

What do you think about Chinese food in Howard County?  Are there places that you recommend?  Specific dishes?  I think the most-useful advice is a description of a few specific dishes so a newcomer can start off with something delicious.  Are there other places with Chinese menus?  Other places where you love the American versions?


Specifically, has anyone been recently to Garden Gourmet in the Long Reach Village Center in Columbia?  There is a 2006 Chowhound string between Warthog and Elgringoviego that makes me want to try their Szechuan food.  Both those guys are thoughtful writers, and I wonder if Garden Gourmet still has special dishes.

This is an update to the "What I Learned" series of posts from 2009. They're a bit out of date by now, but they link to many other posts. They're organized in rings. See below to continue on the ring about different cuisines. Or click to switch to the posts about shopping in Howard County or posts about areas and ideas.

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Vegetarian At Grace Garden

You should go eat at Grace Garden this week -- a fun dinner for yourself and a "welcome back" to the owners who just endured several weeks closed by snow on their roof.

With my cousin last weekend, we explored the vegetarian options, which were more limited than I had predicted when I suggested the joint.  Grace Garden puts slivered pork or shrimp in almost everything.  That's how you to make authentic-tasting Chinese food, but we still got a nice meal -- although we did cheat and order fish noodles for me and Mrs. HowChow.

The key to getting vegetarian at Grace Garden is to ask the question.  Last weekend, they had three seasonal vegetables -- pea shoots, baby bok choy, and Chinese chives.  They also had two tofu dishes that could be made without meat -- ma po and "homestyle."

I loved the bok choy.  It's the skill of Grace Garden that the tiny bok choy arrive perfectly cooked -- tender, but still slightly crisp.  The sauce was garlicky and satiny.  The sauces are what really separate Grace Garden from other Chinese restaurants and from anything that I could wok up at home.  They're thick without being greasy, satiny without tasting like corn starch.  The "homestyle" tofu came with cabbage, hot peppers and shittake mushrooms.  Again, everything was cooked perfectly.  The shittake mushrooms alone are worth a visit.  But it was a one-note dish with the spiciness crowding out other flavors and without the complexity that we love in the fish noodles, the braised pork, and other dishes.

And remember:  A one-note dish at Grace Garden is still the equal of any Chinese in Howard County.

Click here for my original post about Grace Garden, which links to a bunch of other bloggers and directions to the Odenton restaurant.

Grace Garden Closed Temporarily By Snow Damage, Acc'd To Chowhound Posts

Commentators on Chowhound are saying that snow damage to the roof has closed Grace Garden -- one of the best Chinese restaurants in the area -- for the foreseeable future.

The post on Chowhound comes from a regular poster, who says he had talked to the owners of Grace Garden.  This is a truly spectacular restaurant, and it is family-run, which makes it seem very vulnerable to problems like this.  I hope they can re-open quickly.

(Update:  The Grace Garden Web site now says that they are temporarily closed during the reconstruction.  That sounds like they're going to try to reopen in the same place.  Good luck to them!)

Grace Garden For Christmas

'Tis the season to try some authentic Chinese food.

Grace Garden in Odenton says that they'll be on open on Christmas, and this is your chance to sample -- or to go back for -- the authentic dishes that get so many people up in a twist.

For more than a year, I have thought Grace Garden was one of Howard County's best restaurant although it is actually a little east of the county line. Even with that, our dinner two weeks ago was better than anything that we have ever had before.

For the first time, we tried the fish noodles and the braised pork, and I haven't eaten anything better all year. The noodles are literally noodles made from ground fish. They have the texture of rustic pasta, and a mild flavor that says meat without being fishy at all. I have no idea how Chef Li puts that together, and, if anything, the pork is an even greater mystery. This is pork belly -- the same cut that people use for bacon. But Grace Garden serves pork that is crispy and tender, a flavor of pork and the spicy sauce. No greasiness at all. We

rounded out with the pea shoots to get some vegetable on the plate, and we packed up containers with leftover pork and pea shoots. (The fish noodles don't reheat well, we were told. So we finished them happily.)

After my first review of tofu pockets and braised beef, I thought this was the best Chinese restaurant in Howard County, but Mrs. HowChow stayed loyal to Jesse Wong's Asean Bistro. The fish noodles and pork pulled her across. While we were still at the table, we were already talking about a Christmas return. Still haven't tried the head-on shrimp that Kevin talks up, but we'll try something new.

Click here for my original post about Grace Garden, which links to a bunch of other bloggers and directions to the Odenton restaurant.

Grace Garden Chinese in Odenton

The drive and the cuisine at Grace Garden are more than worth the effort if you are looking for an adventure in Chinese food.

If you want to explore authentic Chinese flavors, then you should drive to Odenton -- to Rte 175 just north of Rte 32 -- and dig into the "Eastern" menu. Ignore the paper menu with the takeout standards. Fill your table with sliced pork belly, steamed whole fish, basil chicken, fish noodles, tea-smoked duck, and pocket tofu.

(Update:  Grace Garden closed briefly because of snow damage to its roof, but it reopened in March 2010.)

The Grace Garden food is delicious. Mrs. HowChow and I loved the spicy pocket tofu and the sauteed Chinese broccoli. The broccoli was 100% talent -- humble vegetables, sauteed to that perfect point of cooked but crisp, then dressed in a light sauce. The pocket tofu was 100% new. I had expected something like the tofu pockets that I buy at the H Mart, but instead, the dish looked like dumplings in a thick, chili sauce. Spectacular. The outside skin is thin, but miraculously strong and wrapped around a tender filling of minced shrimp.

I also liked the Sichuan braised beef, which was an enormous bowl of sliced beef with bamboo shoots, onions and something from the bok choy family. Again, this was Chinese cooking like I have rarely had before. The sauce was viscous, and I instinctively tensed at the first bite because thick Chinese sauces have always meant gloppy flavors. But Grace Garden's sauce was spicy and bursting with flavor. The texture was silky, not gloppy.

(Update: If anything, the tofu pockets and braised beef were exceeded by later meals of fish noodles and braised pork.   The noodles are literally noodles made from ground fish. They have the texture of rustic pasta, and a mild flavor that says meat without being fishy at all.  Then, they serve pork without being greasy.  This is pork belly -- the same cut that people use for bacon. But Grace Garden serves pork that is crispy and tender, a flavor of pork and the spicy sauce.)

All this is 20 minutes from most of Howard County, but it comes with a HoCo pedigree. The chef Chun Keung Li opened his own place in 2005 after years at Hunan Manor in Columbia.

Again, go to Grace Garden if you want an adventure. Last summer, this was the center of a food blog explosion that started on Chowhound, and the City Paper named it Best Chinese Restaurant for 2008. People who know Chinese food have posted all about Chef Li's history and talent and about the dishes that blew them away -- Skillet Doux, Skillet Doux II, Tea and Food, This is Gonna Be Good, Minx Eats, reviews on Yelp.  You'll read mentions of how this is truly a family-run place and even some comments that the planned widening of Rte 175 may force Grace Garden to relocate. If those posts interest you, then a table of Grace Garden delicacies will make you happy.

Only a few articles mention that Grace Garden falls somewhere between "Spartan" and "scary." On a dark night, we drove past blocks of shuttered restaurants and found Grace Garden's strip shopping center pressed against Rte 175 between Cluck You Chicken and a barber shop. Inside, there were a handful of tables, a few photos on the wall, no customers, and a teenaged waitress who couldn't have been less engaged. By the end, I was entranced. Mrs. HowChow was happy with her meal, but she wasn't going to clamor for an early return when she could also go back to Bangkok Delight or Jesse Wong's Asean Bistro.

Read the menu. Read all the blog posts, the City Paper review and especially that Chowhound page. After an extremely disappointing meal at Hunan Legend, I drove to Grace Garden with a list of things that I want to order. (Next time, I'm getting the fish noodles and the basil chicken.) Don't count on the waitress to recommend.

(Update: So much for my cute ending. See Skillet Doux's comment below that you *should* get the waitress to recommend if your waitress is Mei, one of the adult owners. That would just make a Grace Garden visit even better.  And see BMoreCupcake's comment on Chowhound that everything on the "American menu" was excellent as well.)

Click here for my 2010 write-up of Chinese restaurants in Howard County.

Grace Garden

1690 Annapolis Road (Rte 175)

Odenton, MD 21113

410-672-3581

Note: They're closed on Sunday.

NEAR: This is on Rte 175 just north of Rte 32. It is in a strip shopping center right against the road. There is parking in back of the center.