12/5/2023 0 Comments Sip and bite baltimore closedOn top of two meals that we eaters deemed impeccable, the service was perfectly on point. OH, MY, the best cake I have eaten in years!!!! My friend raved about her REAL hamburger, actually made from ground beef, and her fries - maybe the frozen variety, but hot, perfectly crisp and golden, not greasy. Good sized, perfectly fried, just enough filler, and plenty of seasoning to give it a spicy bite. It was a REAL Maryland crab cake, like the crab cakes of my youth. It wasn't fancy lump with a little mayonnaise pretending to hold it together. My fried crab cake arrived on a soft, grilled FRESH bun, with FRESH, crispy lettuce, FRESH tomato and homemade tartar sauce. My sweet tea was also "made from scratch" and perfectly sweetened. As an extra bonus, the ranch dressing was homemade and excellent. Loved the idea that the menu said I could get a side salad with the cake, and when it came it was an ample serving of FRESH greens (no iceberg to be seen), tomato and onion. I bit the bullet and ordered the crab cake, faint hope in my heart that it would be a REAL one, while my pal ordered a hamburger. After reviewing the menu, the spinach pie and crab cake were a toss up for me. It's small, with a row of formica tabled booths down one side and the counter behind which the food is prepared on the other. You could say, "It was Canton when Canton wasn't cool." I wondered how much it had changed since my last visit in the mid-70's and was relieved to see it still looked like a neighborhood place and the sign still said "homemade cooking". As many Baltimoreans know, the Sip and Bite has been a staple diner-type corner restaurant in East Baltimore since the 1940's. A friend and I were running an errand in the city today and decided to lunch at the Sip and Bite. Even when I have emptied half a shaker of Old Bay on them, they seem rather tasteless, and I have longed for the crab cakes of my youth. They seem to be made of nothing except huge pieces of crab meat (often imported, though the menu doesn't tell you that)and a little mayonnaise. In recent years, I have eaten many of the "new fangled" LUMP crab cakes, usually at restaurants purporting to have "Maryland's best". You got pretty much the same thing at Maryland restaurants way back then. The meat used in the crab cakes was a mixture of everything worth eating that came from the crabs, mushed together with soda crackers, egg, mayonnaise, a little milk, and Old Bay to give the cakes a well-blended, slightly hot, well-spiced taste. The next day, we "picked" crabs that were left and Mom turned the meat into crab soup, crab dip, and crab cakes. Dad steamed them with beer and Old Bay and we ate our fill directly from the pot. We usually when to the "shore" with string and a few chicken necks and caught our own. Crabs or crab cakes in a restaurant were a rare luxury. I grew up outside of Baltimore in a working class family. And naturally, many of those have been in or close to Baltimore.ฤก8 places in all have been featured on "Triple D" and if you're a Baltimore person, you've probably been to many of them! Baltimore even had an entire episode dedicated to it, "All Baltimore All the Time," in Season 21.I am not sure when "lump" crab cakes became the standard in Maryland restaurants. Guy Fieri documents his travels across the USA and hits up every local joint you can imagine. Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives has been a television institution for over a decade now on Food Network.
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