#110 - Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill, College Park, MD

On the last day of my trip to Maryland, my dad and I were out running a few errands, and getting some lunch before it was time to head to the airport.  I had seen Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill in Crofton earlier in the week, and had also seen one in College Park plaza, right off campus.  It's located in the corner of the strip mall, where Boston Market used to be.  It had gotten good reviews on TripAdvisor, so we decided to give it a shot.

It's set up a lot like Chipotle.  They've got salads, "we build it" gyros and platters, and "you build it" wraps, pitas, and plates.  Thankfully there was no one else in line, so we had time to think.  While we did, we had a sample of falafel and a sample of seasoned chips.  I like when restaurants do that, so you can make sure you like it before you buy it.  My dad went with the sweet & spicy quinoa salad.  I did the plate so I could try a lot of different items.  You get one protein, plus any of the sides, and then a sauce. 

Falafel, hummus, red cabbage, tabouli, quinoa salad, rice, lettuce, cucumber & tomato salad

I was really pleasantly surprised I got 6 falafel. I definitely wasn't expecting that many. The red cabbage and salad were okay. Everything else was really delicious and light. Well, not necessarily the falafel because it's fried.  But it's chick peas, so that makes it okay. The Tzatiki sauce had a ton of flavor.  My dad had the jalapeno apricot vinaigrette on the side.  It had a little bit of a kick, but the apricot toned it down.  And it was very good.  

I could barely finish my meal.  It wasn't a ton of food and I had been absolutely starving. But chick peas and tabouli are full of fiber and very filling.  You also get a big pita with each dish. I think they should offer a half pita, and even ask if you want any at all.  I would think there's a lot of waste with that.  

Will I go back?  Definitely!  As we were paying the manager asked if I wanted a frequent buyer card.  When I told him no because I live in Oklahoma, he told me there's a location in OKC.  I looked it up and lo and behold there is! So I'll definitely be going there.  

#109 - Sabatino's Italian Restaurant, Baltimore MD

After about an hour at Ravens fan day we had enough.  And besides, the skies looked like they were getting ready to open up at any moment.  The stadium is about a 10-minute walk from the Harbor where we had parked.  About halfway there it started raining, but thankfully not too bad.  We had thought about going back to J Paul's or somewhere else on the Harbor, but decided we wanted Italian instead.  Little Italy is literally less than 5 minutes from the Harbor.  You could probably walk if you were really ambitious and it was nice and during the day.  When you enter Little Italy it's like you've been transported across the ocean. Authentic restaurants, Italian festivals, bocce ball tournaments, etc.  It's a very cool place. Kara had seen that one of our mutual friends on Facebook had posted that Sabatino's Italian Restaurant was one of his favorite places, so we decided to check it out.

I love that they didn't mess with the interior architecture, and instead built the restaurant to fit the space.  So the tables are spread out over different rooms, and sometimes on different levels separated by just a couple of stairs.  We were seated towards the back of the largest room at a corner table.  

The woman who brought us water was this adorable little old lady who has probably worked there for at least 50 years.  I saw a couple of other older women working there throughout the evening.  Their hair was perfectly coiffed, no doubt from weekly trips to the salon. Working in a restaurant is hard work-I tried it once for about 3 months--so I was quite impressed. 

It's no secret that I'm not good when it comes to menus.  And the challenge started really early, when I couldn't decide on wine.  The server eventually brought us tastes of chianti and shiraz.  We settled on the Placido Chianti.  And for some unkown reason we felt the need to order a whole carafe. In hindsight, half carafe was plenty.  But we plowed through, and left less than a glass behind.

The food menu is very large, and pretty overwhelming.  But from the get-go I knew I had to get homemade pasta.  About half of the pastas are homemade, which is kind of odd.  You would think all or none would be homemade.  But I did like that you could swap homemade pasta into any of the dishes.  I kept going back and forth on a couple of different dishes, and finally my server just took the menu away and told me she would surprise me.  

We started by splitting the garden salad with house dressing.  You have to pay 50 cents extra for that dressing, which I also found quite odd.

One bite though, and I was sold.  It was like a ranch, with parmesan in it, and you could definitely tell it was homemade.  Nothing tops that.  I really like that they put it on the side, but I still used too much because it was so good.

I had really wanted the penne with vodka sauce, but the penne wasn't homemade.  The fettucini with marinara was.  So she brought me a combo...fettucini with vodka sauce, topped with the homemade marinara.  And Kara had gotten meatballs on her dish, so she gave me one.

Wow, this was amazing.  The vodka sauce was perfect, and both that and the marinara had tons of flavor.  At first I was a little concerned about the combination, but neither one overpowered the other.  On the contrary, they complemented each other really well. The meatballs were huge, so I'm glad I didn't get my own order.

I'm sure the desserts were delicious, but at that point neither one of us could eat anymore. We both ended up with to-go boxes just from dinner.

One funny thing I noticed as I went to the restroom was a cigarette machine

I had no idea these even still existed.  And in this day and age you would think it wouldn't even be in the restaurant anymore.  But I think Europeans still smoke a lot.  So they're catering to their largest customers.  And besides, it's not like they can smoke in the restaurant. 

Will I go back?  No question.  I would love to try some of the other dishes on the menu, and just experience the great atmosphere again.