I’ll put the tl;dr up front here: We got banh mi from Café Au Lait, a nice little eating space tucked into an office building on Ridge Road. The banh mi were tasty, and they’re buy-5-get-1-free. But if we want banh mi again, we’ll call in the order well ahead of time, because it was the longest I’ve ever waited for sandwiches.

So I don’t know if Café Au Lait is usually slammed on Saturdays for lunch hour, but it was certainly slammed this past Saturday. We dropped by to order sandwiches for the family: five banh mi (Vietnamese sandwiches). Then the nice young man at the counter told us that banh mi were buy-5-get-1-free; would we like to order one more? We were more than happy to do so.

The young man at the counter told us that the kitchen had a lot of orders to deal with and that it would probably be a half-hour wait; would we like to go away and come back?

We were a bit surprised, as our previous experience with banh mi was with the Lee’s Sandwiches chain in southern California, where the time to get a banh mi was roughly comparable to how long it takes to get a sandwich at Subway. Still, we’d wanted to try the local banh mi for a while; we agreed that we would wait for them.

The place wasn’t that full, so they must do a bustling business in takeout orders. We bought a chocolate croissant to snack on (perfectly decent, though not French-bakery-crusty by any means), went over to Home Depot and ran a leisurely errand, and were back in about 40 minutes.

The sandwiches still weren’t ready. The young man was extremely apologetic and offered to throw in some bags of chips. We waited maybe five or ten more minutes, and then the sandwiches finally came out.

On the bright side, they were pretty delicious. We got five flavors: classic, roast pork, grilled pork, meatball, and lemongrass chicken. (We chose roast pork for our sixth baguette.) We were sharing the sandwiches among five adults, so we cut each one into four pieces. The taste varied dramatically depending on whether or not you got a slice of jalapeno pepper in your bite.

Each sandwich came encased in its own Styrofoam container. (I don’t know why they didn’t just wrap them in paper; it would have taken up less room. Maybe they were afraid the sandwiches would get squished?) They were served on a somewhat softer, doughier bun than I’m used to; classic banh mi is served on a baguette, but this was toasted ciabatta. It’s okay; it was still tasty. All of the meats had great flavor, although the grilled pork was somewhat unexpectedly spicy. The pickled sliced vegetables gave just the right sweet-sour crunch. I liked it a lot, although personally I’d go with less jalapeno.

So yeah, the banh mi was pretty good. It wasn’t the best I’ve had, but it still pretty good, and it’s certainly great to have banh mi right here in Ellicott City. I’m already looking forward to getting a coffee drink or a bubble tea next time I go. I’ll just be sure to call in my order ahead of time.

…we waited 45 minutes for this.

K and I had a cupcake tree at our wedding reception (featuring Cakelove cupcakes), and ever since then, we’ve marked our anniversary by eating cupcakes. We got together with some friends at the dim sum happy hour at Red Pearl, and I decided to surprise people with cupcakes from Linda’s Bakery. One of our friends also surprised us… with cupcakes from Oh What a Cake! on Dobbin. After saving two for later, that still came to twelve cupcakes for five people. We were undeterred. The cupcake cake-off was on!

Our selection actually overlapped beautifully, which made us very excited for the cupcake cake-off. From Linda’s Bakery (on the left), we have carrot, red velvet, chocolate with chocolate buttercream, coconut, lemon with raspberry buttercream, and chocolate with raspberry buttercream. There’s also a little box with another red velvet cupcake and an almond cupcake. (We saved a red velvet and the chocolate/raspberry for later.)

From Oh What a Cake!, we have lemon, coconut, almond, carrot, chocolate, and red velvet.

We painstakingly divided each cupcake into five equal slices (I was getting really good at it by the end) and did a flavor-to-flavor comparison. The cupcakes from Oh What a Cake! were unanimously deemed more fluffy and moist, whereas the crumb of Linda’s cupcakes was more on the dry side. (The exception was the carrot cupcakes, which were closer in texture.) More tasters preferred the buttercream of Linda’s cupcakes to the flavored icing on the Oh What a Cake! cupcakes, although this was not unanimous. We joked that in an ideal world, most of us would order nude cupcakes from Oh What a Cake!, and then take them over to Linda’s to get decorated with buttercream frosting.

The flavors were very good. Both bakers seemed to use real carrot for the carrot cakes, but when it came to the almond and coconut cupcakes, the cupcakes from Linda’s had more genuine almond and coconut flavors, whereas the ones from Oh What a Cake! tasted of artificial syrups. Linda’s cupcakes were also much more lavishly decorated, whereas Oh What a Cake! went for a very plain look, sometimes adding a single colored candy on top.

In general, the cupcakes were pretty fantastic all around, and we were all very full afterward. It’s great to live in a place where fancy, delicious cupcakes are available at a moment’s notice.

In case you haven’t heard of the snakehead fish, it’s an invasive Asian species that’s gotten into Maryland and Virginia waters. It’s scary, a voracious predator with no natural enemies in these parts, and it takes very good care of its young, ensuring that large numbers of them survive to reproduce. It’s freakishly hardy, able to breathe air and survive for days out of water. US Fish and Wildlife have been trying to contain the population explosion, but the snakeheads are flourishing.

Enter Whackfactor Outdoors and the Potomac Snakehead Tournament. They set up a tournament with cash prizes for whoever could bring in the heaviest snakehead catch within a set amount of time. As a bonus (and this is what caught K’s attention), local chefs would prepare delicacies with snakehead.

K has long been saying that the cure for invasive species is for humans to eat them. Humans, after all, have hunted species to the brink of extinction time and time again. If anyone can take out a species, it’s us.

We showed up at the tournament near the end, for the Invasive Species Tasting (open to the public). I was delighted by the quality of the free snakehead delicacies.

On my plate: snakehead ceviche on a tortilla (courtesy the chef from Alewife), a snakehead crostini with microgreens (courtesy the staff of Dino DC), and fried blue catfish (apparently also an invasive species).

It was fabulous food; everything was delicious. I didn’t take notes on the flavors, but I would cheerfully go out to the restaurants if they put those dishes on the menu. People, if you see snakehead on the menu, snap it up! I’m sure we can eat these invaders right out of the Potomac, if we put our minds to it.

By the way, the tournament ended up removing over half a ton of snakeheads from the area. Kudos to the hardworking tournament contestants!

When I go to the grocery store, I disdain the shopping carts. I’ve never liked the darn things, with their giant baskets and sticky wheels. I’m part of a two-person household, I tell myself; we don’t need that much food anyway. I usually have a couple of reusable bags, so I just put my groceries in the bag and tote the bag around on my shoulder. I like to think of it as good exercise.

90% of the time, however, after I’ve picked up a ten-pound bag of cat food, a gallon of milk, and a half-gallon of orange juice, and the bag straps are cutting into my shoulder, it occurs to me that I’ve been an idiot once again and I should have just gotten a cart. But the carts are always outside and who wants to go outside to get a cart after assembling a haul of groceries?

Anyway, that was the situation I found myself in at Giant the other day — I was wandering the isles, populating my reusable bag, and my shoulder was aching from the cans of pineapple and the two(!) bags of flour that I’d somehow decided I needed… when a stack of shopping baskets caught my eye. Shopping baskets with wheels. And tall pull handles.

I immediately took a load off my aching shoulder.

It’s such a piece of brilliance. A shopping basket with wheels! Perfect for those of us who don’t feel like maneuvering a huge shopping cart around the store. I was so happy. I tugged the basket along behind me, like a helpful little puppy, and picked up a gallon of milk on my way back to the registers. Just becase I could.