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Choose your own adventure Friday’s at Belvedere Square
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(Max C. Levine/For the Examiner)
Ikan Sushi Raw Bar, located inside of Belvedere Square marketplace, has everything necessary for customers to make their own sushi at home, a long with sushi rolls that are prepared on the spot. At Belvedere Square on Friday nights, the experience is much like a “choose your own adventure” novel — one’s whims can create unique stories for unique tastes. You can sit outside in loaner chairs and enjoy the free concert — every Friday 6 to 9 p.m. through the summer. You can dance and buy cold $4 beers from an outdoor vendor, or you can head straight for the old-fashioned open-air Belvedere Market for dinner. The market is an overwhelming colorful hodge-podge of fresh breads, ripe produce, steaming soups, slabs of meat — and many people finding their own dining adventure. I honed in on the chilled gazpacho from Atwater’s Ploughboy Soup, and spent $3 for a carryout cup packed with black beans, onions, cucumbers, green peppers, bright red tomatoes and other fresh produce. It truly was a colorful vegetable garden packed into a bowl. It came with a wedge of thick dark rye bread — the way soup should be eaten. My date headed to the Neopol Savory Smokery counter — with displayed meats like lures for any hungry male. He spent about $9 for two plump and pink salmon filets between thick pieces of hearty sunflower bread. Salty smoked bacon complemented the fish and a honey Dijon dressing kept the sandwich moist. Sunflower seeds from the bread added the only crunch. We headed outside with our cheap yet plentiful bounty, sat curbside and dug in. After our meals we were both stuffed, but couldn’t pass up a $2 sample plate of barbecue from Neopol’s outdoor booth. A few forkfuls of wet pulled pork in a tangy yet sweet barbecue sauce with a few bites of tart and crunchy coleslaw left us nearly too full to continue our adventure. Yet we still stopped by Ikan Seafood’s booth and bought a $4 grilled scallop shish kabob. For under $20, we had each satisfied our own culinary desires at Belvedere Market. Being too full was the only foil to our adventures and we had to opt out of the requisite summer ice cream cone. IF YOU GO Belvedere Market/Friday Night Free Concerts » Where: Belvedere Square, York Road and Northern Parkway, Baltimore » Who you’ll see: Young families, happy-houring professionals, music lovers » What you’ll eat: BBQ, deli sandwiches, sushi » What you’ll spend: $20 for two aminkowski@baltimoreexaminer.com |