Hanoori Town

Apparently the nation of South Korea has annexed a small area of Catonsville off of Rolling Road. This consists of the massive, amazing H Mart, where one can purchase such delectables as green tea flavored ice cream, seaweed (of many types, there's half an aisle dedicated to it), and red bean candies much touted by my friends and much doubted by myself. Next to H Mart is Hanoori Town, which claims to be a Japanese food restaurant.

Really it's the entrance to a Korean complex, with a new frozen yogurt stand, what appears to be a furniture store, and the restaurant itself. At lunch the restaurant serves a $10 all-you-can-eat sushi buffet, which is why I found myself there with Doo, chef of the Metropolitan.

You think a sushi buffet might be dangerous? It is. I spent most of the time trying to get Doo to stop making disparaging comments about the people around us. "You want us to get into a fight?" I asked. "We'd probably get killed," he admitted, "they all know Tae Kwon Do." Just the kind of culturally sensitive statement that was gonna get us into a fight in the first place. Somehow being Indonesian lets him get away with that. Next Doo introduced me to the girl behind the counter by saying "This is my friend Mike. He thinks you're really hot!" Let's just say that didn't lead to one of the better conversations of my life.

Ah, but the food. The sushi half of the buffet was picked over when we got there, but the hot food was still well stocked. What little sushi there was was good (I rate it a B+). Since there wasn't much sushi, we gorged on some spicy Korean beef (What's the best Korean restaurant in Baltimore? I await your opinions. There ain't enough kimchi in my life.) dumplings, miso soup, fried rice, soba, and lots of pickled ginger. Unfortunately Hanoori didn't have the delicious sweet fried rice thingies they had out last time we were there. H Town had better get it together or I'm not gonna be back to flirt with that girl behind the counter again.

OK, yes I will.