Cities are a tapestry of millions of decisions. As someone who has only lived in Maryland for seven years, and Baltimore for a year and a half, its sometimes fun to look back in the history of the city to see how it eventually ended up the way it is now. Maps of Baltimore in the early 1800’s show a small town that has only slight resemblances to what it looks like now. The dead end park and ride at the end of I-70 shows how close the city was to having an interstate cut the city in half. Pictures of the Inner Harbor from the late 1960’s show an industrial area that has little resemblance to the tourist attraction we have now, and how much change was required to get it to where it is. And the Baltimore Subway was the first step to a system that would have had eight branches.

Baltimore Subway proposal from 1965

Both Baltimore and DC were looking at adding underground rail in the mid 1960’s. DC opened theirs in 1976, and has continued adding to theirs ever since. Baltimore opened theirs in 1983, added two extensions to the single line, and has not moved forward with anything else since then (with a major caveat on that).

Before I lived in the city, I lived in Laurel and Glen Burnie, so I have never had a reason to ride the Baltimore Subway, and now that I live in the city, there are faster ways for me to get around than using the subway. So when I saw that this week’s restaurant, Silk Road, was relatively close to a subway stop, I figured it was a perfect opportunity to take a ride.

Telling someone that you are going to take the Baltimore Subway usually get a response like:

“Why would you do that?”

“I can drive you!”

“That goes through West Baltimore.”

“You are going to get shot.”

All very reasonable, but if I am looking to experience Baltimore, that sometimes means going outside of my comfort zone. Some of it is about a little urban exploration, and some of it is to try and get a peek of a world that I am not usually privy to.

The Subway

The first part of our journey is one that my wife knows very well. She works in the building of Hopkins that is right next to the Johns Hopkins Subway stop, and walks to work every day. As we were walking up there, I noticed one spot at Orleans St and Broadway Ave where on the right side of the street is the 70 year old Douglass Public Housing project, and on the left is the new $100 million Hopkins Cancer Research Center. It was the contrast that I saw two weeks ago in Middle East, but was much more stark this time. I bet, like Perkins a few blocks south, Douglass is on borrowed time with no replacement.

The Hopkins stop would be amazingly convenient for someone who lived in the northern suburbs and worked at Hopkins. Its central to the campus, and is a really nice station. To be honest, I expected it to be rather dirty, and pretty deserted on a Saturday evening. But it was very clean, had nice art integrated into the station, and there were probably 50 people on the train. Not only that, but trains run every 10–20 minutes on the weekend, which is much more frequently than I would expect.

The one thing that was a little surprising was the racial makeup of the trains. I walked past all four cars to get a sense of how many people were riding, but it was hard to ignore the fact that we were the only white people riding on this train. I kind of anticipated something like this, but it is an interesting experience to go from situations where you are solidly in the racial majority, to being the minority. To be honest, it was uncomfortable, but it was good to sit in that discomfort and really think about why I was uncomfortable.

Did I get hassled? Did I get mugged? Did I get shot?

No.

No one even talked to me. The one person that was staring at my wife was actually one of the white guys that got on at the next stop. The train kept filling up until Mondowin Mall stop when it started clearing out, stop by stop.

Later in the evening, I was thinking back to my subway ride and considering why the racial makeup might have been the way it was. To walk to the subway, ride the subway, and then walk to Silk Road, it took a shade over an hour to get there. On the way back, it took 25 minutes. Regular use of mass transit like that, even without a time consuming transfer, is going to suck up a lot of your life. That is a huge cost on the poor in Baltimore.

Silk Road

Going into the Silk Road experience, it was very much being setup for success. Last week’s Irish experience was definitely a down note, so this week had to be an improvement. But we also had our neighbor, Amanda, who gave me a list of foods that we should try. I coordinated with Shahboz at Silk Road to make it happen, and he took care of it seamlessly. Like, he took care of it so seamlessly that I shot him an email with some of the requests, called to make sure it would work, and he just took care of it.

And when I say that it was taken care of, I mean that we showed up, and the appetizer plates started rolling out of the kitchen right away. We started with four appetizer/salad dishes: eggplant salad, nejnost salad, a plate of tomatoes, and Korean carrot salad.

However, Amanda said that the first part of the meal (and last part) is the tea service. The hostess (they must be female) is responsible for performing this part. She starts by offering tea to the oldest and most respected male at the table, continuing with the rest of the men, and then serving the women. When serving, she is supposed to offer with her right hand and keep her left hand on her right bicep so that she keeps it steady.

When serving tea, you are only supposed to fill it half full to indicate that she will be constant and prompt service. Hospitality is very important in Uzbek culture, to the point where you can have a house that is falling apart, but will still have a nice guest room. She actually said that if you were to visit Uzbekistan, you would probably end up staying with random people because they consider it such an honor to host people.

After we had our choice of black, blue or green tea, we started on our appetizers.

The eggplant salad wasn’t Uzbek, but Amanda said that she really enjoyed it the last time she came to Silk Road, so we got it. I am not an Eggplant kind of guy, but it was really good. Under that eggplant is a tomato, and the seasoning and dressing make it really good.

The nejnost salda was a great start to the evening, as it was my second favorite dish of the night. Its a tripe based cucumber salad that is unlike anything I have had before. Tripe would normally not be my thing, but the crunch of the cucumber and the sour cream based sauce with it make it amazing. If I weren’t saving room for the rest of the meal, I could have chowed down on just that!

The Korean carrot salad would have been right at home in a Korean dish, but it is apparently an Uzbek dish. Its shredded carrots that have a spicy kick to them. It was the dish that really reminded me that Uzbekistan really is in Asia. They were ok standalone, but I think they really stood out being mixed with the last dish of the evening, which we will get to later.

The last part was basically a plate of sliced tomatoes. Good, but nothing compared to the rest of the dishes.

Next, we had Manti dumplings. Maureen was most excited about going to a place that was similar to Russian because she loves perogies, and this was the most similar dish to it. Perogies are dumplings with potatoes in them, and this was probably filled with pumpkin or sweet potatoes with sheep fat to add flavor. Amanda told us how Uzbekistan has bred their sheep to have a second butt that is made of pure fat, because they love using all of that fat for their cooking. Take a look at some of these sheep with some extra junk in their trunk.

Next was my favorite part of the meal: somsa! Its this very flaky pocket that is filled with sheep (of course) and onion. The filling is cooked with some of that sheep fat, which really bakes that flavor throughout, and gives it this very tender, juicy element. And the pastry crust was amazing. This was far and away my favorite food of the evening.

If you think we are getting close to the end, you are wrong. The food just kept coming! Next was the kabobs. Amanda had set this up to mix it up a bit with some beef and chicken, but the third meat was, of course, sheep. This is legit Uzbek food, so sheep is heavily used! But to be honest, the sheep was much better than the beef or the chicken.

Next was a soup course that appears to be a normal vegetable soup at first glace. The most obvious difference is that there is (yep) sheep in it. But the second is that they have hand made noodes at the bottom. If you have ever seen Italian noodles made, its a process of making lots of noodles by rolling them out. But these noodles are apparently rolled out into a single really long strand, and then cut up. Granted, the Italians have to make a lot more noodles than the Uzbekis, but it made for a much different noodle consistency. The noodle was much larger as well.

Finally, we got to the main course, which was plov with sheep. The sheep is boiled for an hour, and then a chunk of sheep fat is cooked into the rice and carrot mixture to make it all sheepy and tasty.

But this is also the one where you are supposed to eat it with your hands. Basically, you reach in, grab a fingerful of rice, rub it around in the sheep fat to get it into a ball form and then flick it into your mouth with your thumb. Todd took a couple pictures of me trying this, but lets just say that my first attempt at this was very messy. Amanda made it look very elegant, but I somehow ended up with the rice ball falling apart as I tried to catch the spray with my mouth. I probably looked a bit like a fish right there.

But this was also the part that went really well with the Korean carrot salad from before. The taste of the sheep, along with the crunch of the carrots, and the spice from it made it a serious contender. This was my third favorite dish of the night, which is still to say that it was really dang good.