HowChow Praises Xitomate, Coalition Questioned: Howard County Blog Roundup

HowChow Reviews Xitomate

Xitomate, a new Mexican restaurant, opened earlier this month just off of Snowden River Parkway on the Columbia and Ellicott City line. It didn't take long for local food blogger HowChow to try it out. His post also includes a guest post from Jackie of La Casa De Sweets. 

From Jackie: Chiles Rellenos: We’ve come to agree that the authenticity of a Mexican restaurant is its treatment of a chile relleno. The chile, cheese, and sauce all matter. Xitomate’s version is perfect. It’s stuffed with the right amount of real Mexican cheese, the chile itself is flavorful, and the tomato chipotle sauce packed on even more flavor to the dish.

From HowChow: Both the tacos and enchiladas showed off a kitchen that works to be special.  It's high praise when I say the tacos were equal to R&R Taqueria.  Tender moist meat cooked with a tinge of pineapple.  Terrific tortillas that were somehow toothsome, yet tough enough that the last taco was still perfect and firm after soaking up al pastor sauce as we enjoyed everything else.

Worbones and HoCoRising Question the Coalition for Columbia's Downtown

After Alan Klein, of the Coalition for Downtown Columbia, questioned a new plan to develop Columbia's Symphony Woods, two popular bloggers Dennis Lane of Wordbones.com and CA Board member Tom Coale of HoCoRising, criticized Klein's use of the Coalition criticizing the plan.

Lane on Thursday: Alan makes a big deal about what he perceives as a lack of transparency on behalf of CA but his own organization is downright opaque. The website lists no officers or board members. There are no minutes of meetings where the organizations positions are discussed and consensus reached. While Alan claims CoFoCoDo supporters oppose the Symphony Woods plan there is no evidence that the organization even met to discuss it or that these 500 supporters were polled.

Coale on Tuesday:  I respect Alan as a dedicated Columbia activist, but he's wrong here.  The presumption of bad intentions has brought him to distort a Plan that preserves the vast majority of the natural setting, while integrating a limited number of buildings (parts of which are projected to be built underground) into what may make up less than 5% of the entire Park.

Klein in an email to Patch: Push back from Dennis and Michael Davis and Tom Coale is to be expected. Coale is an insider on the "McCall Plan" and Davis and Lane go out of their way to belittle anyone who dares to ask questions of developers. Our Coalition is still active and if anyone requests their name to be removed from our list, we remove them, without hesitation. We have always been a coalition of people who actively supported our proposed plan for revitalizing Downtown Columbia, not at all a coalition of naysayers.

P90 Noir Breaks News on Growler Programs in County

The P90 Noir blog focuses on music, beer, wine and food, among other things, and this week the blogger broke some beer news.

Beginning on Friday, February 1st, 2013, IM Wine will begin filling growlers. And beginning this Friday (the 25th) Wine Bin in Ellicott City will start [filling growlers as well]... IM doesn't say what size growlers they will offer, but they state that by law, they must be branded as IM Wine. I'm hopeful that they will offer 32 and 64 oz, but I'll be happy with anything.

Ellicott City Patch also covered the announcement that the Wine Bin would begin selling growlers in 2013.

As I See It on the Inauguration of Barack Obama

Jonathan, of Columbia, wrote about the pride he felt as a volunteer for President Barack Obama to watch the President be inaugurated for a second time.

To make a very long story short,  Monday, January 21, 2013 was the culmination of many weeks of work to get a President re-elected.  All of the door-knocking, sign-waving and phone banking paid off, as I was privileged to be a witness to the pageantry of democracy. I had been awarded the coveted Red Ticket to the 57th Presidential Inaugural Ceremonies. Even as I write this, I am still in disbelief. To think that this all really started in 2008 when my wife re-directed  us, as we were on the way to another wallet draining trip to Columbia Mall. Click here to read the full post.

HoCoMoJo Video on the Mall in Columbia Holiday Flash Mob

OK, so this video is from 2010, but I just came across it, and with the snow outside, it kind of brought me back to the holidays. It's always nice when people in Howard County can get together, do an organized dance and make people smile. We should do it more often.