My mom's birthday is this week, so my brother came up for the weekend to celebrate. I'm the only vegan in our family, so we're continuously looking to expand our repertoire of good restaurants for vegans and non-vegans alike. We had originally planned to go to an Italian place near Downtown, but upon our arrival, we noticed we were the only patrons in the entire place. When we were given a menu with half the offerings listed on their online menu (apparently they were "out of a lot of stuff"...?), none of which interested the birthday girl, we decided to go elsewhere.
Earlier in the week, a couple of friends introduced me to Sticky Rice, a new sushi restaurant and bar in Fells Point. I really liked the place, so my mom and I added it to our list of places to try out. So, for the second time in a week, I found myself at Sticky Rice, but I wasn't complaining - I love Chinese food.
Fells Point in general is always insanely busy on the weekends, and Sticky Rice was no different. The hostess originally estimated our wait time to be about 40 minutes. At this point, we were all hungry and kind of annoyed and not in the mood to wait around for over half an hour, so I asked Mom if she wanted to go elsewhere. We decided to stay, and the wonderful hostess sat us in about 15 minutes.
I'm not generally one for appetizers and a real meal, but whenever I go someplace new, I like to sample a few things to get an idea of what their food is like. For starters, I ordered the tofu bites, pictured above. They're fried tofu triangles served with a teriyaki sauce. They were really good, which says a lot because I'm kind of touch-and-go with tofu. I ordered the mock chicken szechuan, and I loved it. It has a bunch of veggies (broccoli, carrots, onions, peppers) served with your choice of noodles and mock chicken with a spicy sauce. So good. The upside to ordering an appetizer is that I was able to bring home lots of leftovers for lunch today, too.
Both times I've been to Sticky Rice, I've been impressed with their service. Everyone is friendly, the waitstaff is always attentive and accommodating. I especially appreciated the hostess quickly seating us yesterday despite not having a reservation. Their menu features a good selection of vegan and vegetarian options, and they're willing to make substitutions per your request.
If you want to try Sticky Rice, I'd suggest going during the week when it's a little less busy, or just be sure to make a reservation for a weekend night!
And the birthday girl adds a few comments of her own: I didn't realize until we were in the place that it's primary cuisine was sushi. I'm not a huge fan of sushi, vegan or otherwise. However, I had the potstickers, which were really good (non-vegan), pan-seared scallops, which apparently means half raw (shudders at the memory lol), sweet potato tater tots (vegan?? I think so) which were pretty darn tasty, and almost steamed broccoli. The most wonderful things about the entire experience besides just being with both of my kids (I love you guys!!), and the entire evening was quite an experience, were the hostess and waitress at Sticky Rice. Both of them were wonderfully cheerful, helpful, accommodating, and no matter how much I complained (I'm really sorry, Niki, I just didn't understand beforehand what the place was...), the waitress kept a smile on her face and did everything she could to make it a pleasant experience for all of us. When I go out to eat, the food is only half of the equation, the other half is the service, and Sticky Rice deserves a double-thumbs up for that!! And yes, we made sure the waitress knew we really appreciated her good attitude and exceptional service, both in words and $.
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