Dinner at Woodberry Kitchen is to die for. They truly do farm fresh right. Cafe Hon for lunch yesterday was reasonably priced; I'll just say you get what you pay for there.

Unrelated note, I have had a constant craving for Honey Pig.

me too !

I guess I wasn't clear; it was our friends' first time. One of the most fun parts of living downtown is introducing friends to great restaurants.

That said, we all loved Lebanese Taverna. Food is just different enough to be an experiement away from basic American, but familiar enough not to scare the "less adventerours" eaters. Our waiter was full of useful details and recommendations. I recommend this place to anyone, and suggest both the leg of lamb (mouzaki?)and reservations on weekends.

We were also able to introduce a different set of friends to the bad-for-you-in-every-possible-way-but-freakin'-delicious wonder that is the Panne Rotundo at Amicci's.

All in all, a fun food weekend.

you were clear indeed :) I think restaurants for Less Adventurous Eater friends is a good topic.

Got out of work Sunday night a bit early and hit Catonsville Gourmet for a Hutzler with Ms. Joker's family... Always good, and still ranks as one of my favorite spots.

R, I have many pictures of my lazy rescued pit bull, Carlito. I think all he does is sleep and eat stink bugs. Would you like a couple?

I demand Carlito photos -- richard.gorelick@baltsun.com

friday night went to brewers for dinner. had the Goat-Ricotta gnocchi which came with chestnuts and celery root in a butter sauce. amazing way to start the meal. you could really taste the celery root in the sauce and the gnocchi was super light. (beer pairing: pinkus muller hefe weizen)

for entrees i had the rack of pork with porcini/bacon/fennel bread pudding and garlic chili broccoli rabe. the pork was a thick bone-in pork chop that had a nice rich flavor and was tender but it seemed slightly overcooked, maybe a touch dry. not enough to make it bad, just something i noticed. the star of the show was really that bread pudding: smoke-bacony goodness. the broccoli rabe also went nicely with that garlic chili sauce, which gave it a sweet/spicey bite and almost an asian flavor. (beer pairing: rochefort 8 trappist)

my girlfriend had the grilled tuna with gigante beans and grilled bread with a romesco sauce. from what i tasted everything was good, and that romesco sauce on the bread was a highlight.

for dessert we got a cheese plate and the cookies and cream (homemade light cookies served with a really really good butterscotch pudding). we ended up taking most of the cheese plate to go, but the blue was really good and the fresh honeycomb was a nice touch. (beer pairing: flanders brown ale)

overall a great meal, and as always our service was great. they even melted a candle so they could stick it to the cheese plate for my birthday. a really nice touch.

sunday we got some breakfast at georges in peabody court, which was pretty standard breakfast food in a nice setting, then walked down to set uip shop in front of osheas for the parade.

as always it was a lot of fun, and always a treat to be able to have a couple harps outside while cheering on guys with crazy canes and huge wolf dogs. i didn't get a chance to try the shepherds pie, but my friend said it wasn't seasoned very much. not surprising since they were probably going through mass amounts throughout the day.

huge crowd there after the parade too for the live irish bands. overall a great birthday weekend in bmore.

Met up with friends for lunch at the McCormick and Schmidts (?) for the view more than the food. I had the snapper done faux udon style. Too salty. But the cinnamon roll bread pudding was nice. It was a nice day, so the view made up for the not so good (relatively expensive) food. I have to say the service was better than most. The servers were very cheerful.

Hey, happy belated birthday, ryan97ou!

ChefJoker, if that dog really scarfs up stink bugs you might be able to rent him out for pest control!

Dahlink-

I have thought about it. Problem is, he's so lazy I don't think he'd make much of a dent!

You know your dog best, ChefJoker. But I can't help remembering that when we had the 17-year cicadas years ago our neighbors' dog loved the cicadas so much that they saved a ton on dog food. (Mmm--crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside!)

thanks dahlink, good weekend indeed.

Dahlink-

You know it! He used to spit them out but I'm guessing he got used to them. Now he pounces on them only if he's not snoring too loud to keep him from hearing them! For a supposedly ferocious, mean, aggressive breed, he sure is a bad example. He is now snoring on his pad 5 feet from me. You'd think he'd done something all day OTHER than sleep!