LAKE trout, prepaid cellphones, discount cigarettes: Drive on Baltimore Street West, away from downtown, and the hand-painted signs plastered to building flanks beckon. Fried chicken, lake trout, checks cashed: The awnings on take-aways here advertise that trifecta.
Korean-owned fast food spots here sell lake trout. So do Greek-owned souvlaki houses. Chinese restaurants deliver egg rolls, egg foo young and free-form sandwiches of fried lake trout, rolled into tinfoil packages that resemble, at least in heft, Cal-Mex burritos.
Hip Hop Fish and Chicken, a franchise on Reisterstown Road, sells trout. So does Chicken Express and Caribbean Cuisine on North Charles Street, where the menu features curried goat, fried plantains and boneless lake trout, tucked between slices of coco bread.
The crab cake, fat with pearlescent lumps and spiced with Old Bay, is the dish that middle-class Baltimore heralds and middle-class tourists seek.
Lake trout — rolled in cracker meal or cornmeal, fried hard in roiling oil and served with a pile of cottony white bread and a sluice of vinegary hot sauce — is the dish that working-class Baltimore craves, tucked into a brown paper bag and eaten on the go.
Continue reading “A Fried Favorite in Baltimore” at The New York Times.
