BeSeTo Department Store and Food Court | |
| Phone: | 410-744-3027 |
| Address: | 822 N. Rolling Rd. Catonsville, MD 21228 |
It’s not much to look at. The street-level floor of the BeSeTo Department Store is cluttered with cafeteria-style tables and chairs, the lighting is rather dim, and a patch-quilt of signs announce the massive menu and specials. But things bode well when a guy wheels in fresh produce from the Han Ah Reum supermarket next door. So you pick a station: Beijing, Seoul, or Tokyo (hence the abbreviated name). And you pick lunch: There are nearly 250 menu items, plus specials written in Korean, Chinese, and Japanese, with helpful pictures. First we went Japanese with a simple futo maki roll (egg, crab, avocado, oshimko, kampio, $6.50). It was fresh and very good. The spicy tuna roll ($3.75) was rote and uninspired, however. Then came the Korean dishes: A hot sauce-drenched plate of stirred rice cakes and fried pork dumplings ($8.95) was the savory and delicious gut-bomb you’d expect from the description. But the bibimbap stole the show. A sizzling clay pot piled with rice, fried egg, krab (we think), zucchini, greens, carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, bean sprouts, shredded beef, and topped with a dash of fish roe—everything was so completely fresh and lively that it looked and tasted better the next day out of a Styrofoam box than many dishes taste just out of the kitchen. Next trip: Beijing.