Noodles

Jim Mikula returns to Weber'sRestaurateur Jim Mikula returns to the city when he reopens Weber's on Boston (845 S. Montford Ave.) at the end of the month. He was one of the original owners of the bar-restaurant when it opened in Canton in the early '90s. He was also a partner in Bohager's and the Neon Moon.More recently he's been involved with the Timber Creek Tavern in Kingsville, whose talented chef, Bruce Clarke, will be in charge of the food at Weber's as well.Why did he decide to buy Weber's back?

Restaurant owner Phu Do and his business partners toured noodle restaurants in big cities across the country before opening Noodles Corner last July. They found inspiration in Chicago and brought the concept home to Columbia, where their stylish restaurant is located.A few non-noodle stir-fries are prepared in their sleek open kitchen, along with some noodle-less appetizers and salads. But the heart of the menu is pasta in every Asian variation, from fat lo mein noodles and wide chow fun noodles to Singapore-style rice noodles and sizzling Japanese udon.

Radio hits make strange bedfellows.There was a time when the only place you'd hear a song by the Offspring was on an alt-rock or underground station. Nobody thought that odd, either, as the California punk quartet was not aiming for the Top-40. These guys made music for their own amusement, not to push their album to the top of the charts.Imagine their surprise, then, when "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" -- a cranky satire of suburban wannabe- homeboys from the band's latest album, "Americana" -- wound up becoming one of the winter's biggest hits.

Four people walking out of Noodles Corner were each carrying a takeout box, suggesting either they had ordered food to go or they could not finish all they had ordered.But, when the waitress brought us a heaping plate of Indonesian noodles -- a pile of fried rice in a silver tray full of seafood pasta -- it was clear that she would have to prepare another box for all the extra food at the end of the night.Seen from a glass atrium at the Lake View Shopping Center off Dobbin Road, Noodles Corner could be an Italian bistro or steakhouse without tablecloths.

For college students, sushi is the pizza of the '90s.Of course, pizza is also the pizza of the '90s, so there may be some flaw in my reasoning here. But I still think the new Japanese-Korean restaurant Niwana will succeed where a pizza place didn't, across the street from the Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus.Niwana opened recently after major renovations. The restaurant isn't fancy, but behind the long bar is a lower-level dining room with blond-wood furniture and muted colors. It's fresh- looking and soothing.

Sue Hi Hong, known about town as Suzie, is a little bit superstitious. So she took it as a sign when she found an ornamental gong that was a perfect fit for a restaurant space she was considering in Hampden. The location, Hong knew, was just right for Suzie's Soba.You might recognize that name from Hong's restaurant in the Belvedere. Since business there is slow in the evening, Hong had been searching for a site at which to open a dinner-only restaurant, one that was small enough for her to handle the cooking.

* Item: San Giorgio flavored pasta* What you get: 12 ounces* Cost: $1.69* Preparation time: 7 to 9 minutes* Review: San Giorgio has added Lemon Pepper Penne Regate and Roasted Garlic & Red Bell Pepper Rotelle to its long-standing line of pasta. Unlike many flavored pastas, these noodles offer robust flavors well suited to almost any dish, including the recipes listed on the box. I resisted the temptation to add garlic to the warm Rotelle with Chicken and Tomato Fresca and was glad I did, because the roasted garlic flavor of the noodles really came through.

The strip mall at 8865 Stanford Blvd. in Columbia has become quite the little restaurant center. The Hard Times Cafe, which specializes in chili, is there, plus two new restaurants, Noodles Corner and Hanamura.Noodles Corner has all sorts of Asian pastas. There are also other Japanese, Chinese, Malaysian, Japanese and Thai dishes. Two can eat well for under $15 here, I've heard.Hanamura is a traditional Japanese restaurant and sushi bar, with an extensive selection of yaki (grilled) dishes, including my favorite: broccoli-yaki.

At home in Hanoi; My favorite placeThere are places I have been to for which I have no address, but could, if pressed, describe how to find them. And then there are others that I could never find again if I tried, like the noodle shop in Hanoi where I ate a steaming bowl of po, seated on a pail turned upside down next to a young man named Tran. I arrived there on the back of Tran's moped and the insides of my calves were black with motor oil. I was one of only two women in this lean-to on a downtown side street, and this made me an oddity.

Look for a new Pan-Asian restaurant to open in Columbia in a couple of weeks. The Noodles Corner (8865 Stanford Blvd., No. 103) will specialize, not surprisingly, in noodle dishes. It has an inventive menu, from "Little Dishes to Share," such as Malaysian satay and vegetarian pot sticker, to "Asian Stir Fry" like pine nut shrimp and barbecue pork chops. In between are all the noodle dishes: lemon grass pasta, Singapore-style rice noodles, noodles in a hot pot and many more.The Noodles Corner will have seating for 75 and is hoping to get a liquor license.

Last summer, Baltimore-based artist Gil Jawetz proposed to his girlfriend, Tracey Middlekauff, on bended knee in the middle of Royal Street in the heart of New Orleans. That, in itself, might not be terribly unusual, but the wedding ceremony a few days later certainly was - and colorful enough to generate a vivid, engaging series of paintings on view at the Yellow Dog Tavern. The marriage took place in the Voodoo Spiritual Temple of Priestess Miriam Chamani, Servant of Ayizan, on North Rampart Street.

In my life as a reviewer, I never get to visit chain restaurants. In real life, I don't frequent them, but I don't go out of my way to avoid them, either. When the restaurant intended for this review was closed, though, we ended up eating at Noodles & Company, and I'm glad we did. For one thing, it was a very satisfying evening for me and the multi-generational family I had made plans with. And, for another, it's very useful for me to know about "fast casual" places like Noodles & Company since they're increasingly the direct competition for the kind of locally owned restaurant I typically do review.

The Sun's Olympic correspondents, Rick Maese and Kevin Van Valkenburg, are blogging to each other at baltimoresun.com/olympicsblog . An excerpt: Kevin, friends, et al., If we can momentarily feed an unfair stereotype: We scribes of the sports pages are particularly good in a couple of areas - watching sports and eating food. Charged with covering Michael Phelps and his eight gold medals, we've had little time for culinary adventure. Much of our dining has come in between assignments and interviews in the first-floor cafeteria of the Main Press Center.

When I need to go to a happy place in my head, I invariably wind up at my Bubbe's Sunday night table, which always featured lokshen (noodle) kugel. The noodles were just a good excuse to add raisins and almost every dairy product in her fridge. It was the ambrosia of my youth. She served this every Sunday night, except during Passover, when noodles cannot be used. Food plays a huge role in the observance of most Jewish holidays. Apples and honey are eaten on Rosh Hashana, potato latkes and jelly doughnuts on Hanukkah, hamantaschen on Purim.

Dianne Pearson of Columbia was looking for a recipe for making meat lasagna without pre-boiling the noodles. Betsy Howells of Redmond, Ore., e-mailed her recipe for no-boil lasagna that she said is her "trouble- and mess-free method for making an Italian classic." The dish comes together quickly, thanks to the use of bottled spaghetti sauce and the fact that you don't have to boil the noodles. It can be assembled in advance and refrigerated. The key is to use plenty of sauce and to cook it slowly at a low heat to allow the noodles to soften and the flavors to blend.

How do you keep rice or pasta from absorbing all the broth when you add it to soup? I used to have the same trouble until I started cooking the noodles or rice separately, then adding it to the soup just before serving. I also asked readers for their suggestions: Cook the noodles in a broth that's similar to the base of the soup. That way, the noodles have the richness, but don't soak up all the broth. Rinse the pasta or rice before and after you cook it to remove some of the starch.

Harumi's Japanese Home Cooking By Harumi Kurihara Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking By Masaharu Morimoto DK Publishing / 2007 / $40 The artsy tableaus in the Japanese Iron Chef's new cookbook might be more at home on a coffee table than in the kitchen. Masaharu Morimoto's brand of global fusion is a flamboyant 180 degrees from Harumi Kurihara's more humble - and practical - home-style fare. Eating is theater to the television star and restaurateur. I wasn't too intimidated to make Morimoto's signature raw Tuna Pizza With Anchovy Aioli but couldn't find decent ruby-red, sushi-grade fish in time.

The cheerful new Red Parrot Asian Cafe fits a lot of ambition into a small space. The restaurant, small enough to fit comfortably inside a typical Starbucks, serves an astonishing range of dishes, including sushi, stir-fries, Thai-style noodles, Japanese teriyaki and Malaysian grilled chicken. Poor:]

IRVINE, Calif. -- On a production line at Union Foods Newcorp, Chief Executive Officer Victor H. Sim watches blocks of twisted ramen noodles careen down a chute like mini-toboggans. Since 1974, the company has been making packets that take three minutes to turn boiling water into a primary food group for college students. But high costs and other problems sent Union Foods on its own steep plunge in recent years. Sim, 40, left his position with an internationally prominent firm last year to try his hand at staging a turnaround.

From my first miraculous spoonful of egg drop soup, I knew that Jang Won was not a typical Chinese restaurant. The steaming brew, far better than the usual mix of chicken broth and egg ribbons, featured tiny, succulent scallops, as well as morsels of shrimp and bits of carrot. It was terrific. At $13.50, the soup was many times the price one normally pays, but it was intended to be part of a family-style meal, and the portion was large enough to easily serve four. Like many Chinese restaurants, Jang Won isn't much to look at. But it's kind of cool in a noncool way, with a television showing Hello Kitty commercials and Korean cooking shows, and lazy Susans in the center of the round tables, making requests to pass the soy sauce ridiculously fun. And if you are not in the mood for kitsch, there's always the popular takeout option.