Mo's

In between soccer games at Becca’s March Madness tournament in Baltimore this weekend, we managed to join another couple and sneak away from the team dinner on Saturday evening to go to the inner harbor for a meal. For all of us it was the first time we’d been in the inner harbor since the entire inner harbor has been renovated. Most of the feel of the old harbor seemed gone except in little Italy. Since we were near that and wanted seafood –Norm kept talking about the raw oysters he couldn’t wait to eat-- we ate at Mo’s Fisherman’s Exchange. The place didn't look fancy, which was good given the gentrification of the entire area surrounding it. We should have expected, based on the number of diners leaving the place with plastic bags and Styrofoam containers, that there would be large portions of food, but somehow we didn’t. For example, I ordered a Caesar salad and the hot crab dip (which I shared with the rest of the table) and found myself already full. But then the entrée—salmon stuffed with crab and shrimp, all in imperial sauce—arrived and it was huge, almost covering the full dinner plate. It was delicious, though I could eat only about ¼ of it. There would have been enough for another two full meals. And Kathy’s crab cakes were like nothing I’d ever seen before—almost entirely large lumps of crab with almost no breading, each about six inches in diameter. My tablemates all had the same problem finishing their meals. We all lamented how there were no minifridges in our hotel rooms and so no way to bring the food back with us. All Sunday, as I was stuck eating Dunkin’ Donuts in between the semi-finals and the finals, I imagined that fish and what it would taste like to be heating it up and having it as leftovers. And, oh yes, Becca’s team came in first!