Downtown Ellicott City!

Since I moved here, one of my best friends has been telling me all about downtown Ellicott City and the amazingness you can find there. Now that I've taken a job in Ellicott City, I figured it was time to explore! My Baltimore BFF, CJ (you may remember her as Babe the Blue ox from a previous post!), and I decided to spend Saturday afternoon exploring. She was sort of my guide because she had been there before and knew where all the hot spots were! Finding street parking is just like in any city... you have to get lucky! But Main Street in Ellicott has a few, FREE, parking lots behind all the of the shops/cafes and they're pretty large and in charge so parking wasn't really an issue at all. 

WE WERE PARKED AND READY TO GET THE FUN STARTED! AHH!

First: LUNCH! 

We started walking down Main Street and spotted a nice little Italian place called Johnny's Bistro on Main. When you walk in, there's a little sign that says "Please order at counter" so we walked to this little counter and placed our order. They give you a number to place on your table and then you wait for your food. We did see some people walk in and just sit and order with the waitresses, so maybe you can do that too? Probably something the locals/regulars do? Who knows! Anyway... our food came and it was AMAZING. I can't even. CJ ordered the King of the Sea panini and it looked DELISH! It consisted of Smoked Alaskan salmon, dill havarti, cucumber, sweet onion and caper cream cheese. You can also get a side of Williamsburg slaw or shoe string fries, CJ got fries! I ordered the Grilled chicken caesar salad (hey, I have to get into a wedding dress in April, people!) and it was one of the best salads I have ever had. And I've had a lot of salads. I'm sort of a caesar salad expert in case y'all didn't know. CJ wanted to splurge so she ordered Creme Brulee. I highly, highly recommend lunching at this place. The next time I go, I'm going to order one of their personal pizzas because they looked like they were TO DIE FOR. 

King of the Sea Panini

Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad

Creme Brulee

OOOHH.MYYYY.GOOSSHHH. IT WAS SOOOO GOOOOD!!

After stuffing our faces, we mosied on down Main to check out some local shops. CJ raved about this one shop called Vintage Bliss. This place was certainly worth checking out. It had EVERYTHING. They had refurbished furniture, make your own jewelry stations, clothes, handmade items from vendors... I mean, EVERYTHING. Some of it was a little kooky but that made it even better for me. I LOVE finding unique things you will never find anywhere else. This shop also has paint parties using Milk Paint. You can bring pieces of your furniture in and they will teach you how to paint it or antique it. Super cool place if you want to redecorate your home! I'll definitely be visiting them again to spruce up our little house.

           

Here are a few pieces of Homemade jewelry. The necklace was super cool because it's made out of clock/watch faces!

Some pieces of clothing including homemade decorative bra straps. Ya know, in case you don't want to sport that strapless look, ladies!

This. This was so creepy. A bracelet made out of doll faces. DOLL FACES, Y'ALL!

A cute dresser and painted signs. Cute for a nursery! 

Our next venture was to Caplan's Department Store. The jewelry and dresses at Caplan's are seriously just the cutest! They also had a ton of cool kitchen/household gadgets. I couldn't get enough! 

We popped into a few other stores (I won't name every single thing we checked out) including a store for the pups called Work!Play!Bark! which was adorbs. CJ even bought a super cute birthday cake for her Boston Terrier, Prince. The birthday cakes are made from natural ingredients so the humans can nosh on them with their pooches! I don't know that I would eat one, but hey, to each their own! We also hit up a store called Love and Glitter that was going out of business and having a huge closeout sale so don't make plans to go there anytime soon, because it'll be gone! There's also a little Fair Trade store called HutCraft. The cool thing about HutCraft is they host painting parties! You can book them for private parties or just join an upcoming class. Not only do you get to bring home your own work of art, but you can bring your own wine or beer to drink while you paint! I don't know if that's the best idea for me because my artistic talents are pretty slim to none while I'm sober much less three sheets to the wind! 

We ran into Yoda while we were walking around. No big deal.

Downtown Ellicott City gets two thumbs up from me for sure and I can't wait to go back and see what else they have to offer! 

My First Maryland Crab Cake!

I have lived in Maryland for 5 months now and FINALLY tried my first crab cake this past Friday. I know, I know... BLASPHEMY! Anyway, all of the locals think they know where the best one is but one restaurant that was repeatedly brought up as having the BEST crab cake in the area was G&M Restaurant and Lounge so obviously, that's the one we decided on. Before we even sat down for dinner, things got interesting. We arrived a little before one of our fave couples that would be joining us, so C. and I propped ourselves up at the bar while we waited. There was an old man being helped to a seat and we assumed he was just elderly and needed help but not at all. He was just totally whiskey bent! So drunk he couldn't even stand and was still trying to drive home. Luckily the staff wouldn't let him leave and finally called him a ride home, which I thought was super responsible of them. Most restaurants and bars just let people walk out the door without giving it a second thought, so I was happy with that! Z. and S. arrived, so we were on our way to crab cake bliss at last but not before another bump in the road! Clumsy ol' Z. knocked S.'s beer right out of her hand when we were sitting down and her beer splattered all over a gentleman at the table next to us. He looked very unhappy to say the least, but the staff came over and we all threw in our napkins and got it all squared away. Totally Z.'s fault. And luckily, the guy was leaving so we didn't have to sit beside him all dinner making it totally awkward with him and his dinner companions glaring at us. 

OKOKOK...  I keep being side tracked from the real star of this post: THE CRAB CAKE. 

We barely skimmed the menu because, well, crab cakes. We were told the crab cakes here were HUGE so we decided on the single platter because you can make it a double serving of Maryland crab if you want. The dish comes with a salad, a vegetable and a starch. I also ordered a cup of the cream of crab soup, because, well, crab. I'm sure you're sensing the theme by now. I've probably said crab more times in this blog post than in my entire life. 

Anyway, the food arrived. Soup was pretty delish. Salad was a pretty standard issue salad with lettuce and the carrot, tomato bits. Then the waiter returned with our entrees and HOLY CRAB CAKE. It was seriously the biggest one I have ever seen. And the best part was, it wasn't breaded very much. Because sometimes when you order a crab cake, it's more breading and seasoning than it is crab. That is simply not the case at G&M. It was almost ALL giant lumps of crab and no breading. I was very pleased! The sides were pretty standard issue... I had a baked potato and coleslaw but I couldn't eat hardly any of it. I could only manage to eat HALF of my crab cake so maybe next time I'll skip the soup? The waiter was super friendly so the service there was pretty exceptional as well. We enjoyed the entire experience, including the drunk man at the bar and the sad, wet man we poured beer on. It was a really fun night! 

Here's a pic of their double platter.

Here's a pic of my single platter with a baked tater. 

In an attempt to jokingly burn the receipt, Z. actually burned the receipt so the waiter probably thinks we are hooligans. I'm OK with that because... we are. 

Don't worry, the men paid! 

Anyway, I highly recommend this place to anyone visiting the area. I will continue to keep trying crab cakes throughout Charm City just to compare but in the words of C.:

"STARTED FROM THE TOP, NOW I'M HERE!"