For the restaurants of Fells Point, the recent opening of the $100 million Thames Street Wharf Building on Harbor Point was effectively overnight delivery for 600 new Morgan Stanley mouths to feed lunch. Positioned strategically between the pubs and taverns of lower Fells Point and the more upscale offerings of Harbor East, this new building has no in-house eating facility of its own.
There are dozens of easy walks from the building's front door, and one of the closest is RA Sushi Bar Restaurant (1390 Lancaster St., 410-522-3200), the kind of high-energy spot most people associate with a night out. But RA is not only open for lunch; it has also given a lot of consideration to its guests' midday needs and preferences.
12:19 p.m. Music is playing, but it's not the clubby music RA pumps for dinner. Thank goodness. Instead, it's Peter Gabriel and the Human League. The lunch staff is bright-eyed. Within a minute, we're seated, given menus, and informed who our server will be. RA's main dining room is equipped with good seating options for doing business — a sizable round table and a row of half-circle booths, perfect for working groups. But it's a good room for leisurely lunches, too. The bar area is an even better option for single diner.
12:25 p.m. The server arrives. Six minutes wasn't a very long time. Even so, the hostess has stopped by to explain the wait. We had just enough time to study the menu and make up our minds.
For lunch, RA issues diners a sushi list and its regular menu, which includes a section of lunch specials, available daily from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The lunch specials are divided neatly into groups of bento boxes; chirashi, rice bowls topped with cooked meats or raw fish; and lunch-sized sushi and sashimi combinations. From the sushi list, we order a spicy tuna roll and something called Spicy Rice Crispy Treats. From the regular menu, we order the bara chirashi bowl and a Bento box with beef teriyaki. We will learn that we've ordered too much. The server tells us that some food comes from the kitchen, some from the sushi bar, and that they are brought out as they're ready.
12:30 p.m. Miso soup, which comes with both the bento box and the chirashi bowl, arrives first. It's good miso, strong and hot. Like everything arriving from the sushi bar, it's presented prettily.
12:35 p.m. The spicy tuna roll arrives from the sushi bar. It's fine, but we can't think why we ordered it when a chirashi bowl is on its way.
12:38 p.m. The chirashi bowl, topped with jewel-like slices of salmon, tuna and yellowtail, and laced with slices of cucumber, avocado, and greens, shows up. Together with the miso, this beautiful bowl would make for a balanced and very satisfying midday meal. At $10, it's a little out of budget for everyday, but workable for a pay-day splurge.
12:43 p.m. The Spicy Rice Crispy Treats are nothing like we expected, but they're kind of cool — sesame-spotted soy hand rolls, stuffed with crispy rice balls, spicy tuna, and vegetables, served with a soy chili dipping sauce. They are maybe just a bit glamorous for lunch.
12:51 p.m. The bento box shows up. This is the first food we've seen from the kitchen, and it's a letdown, indifferently assembled from less-than-lovely ingredients — an underdressed salad from a bag, it looks like, a stiff and lonely pork dumpling, and then something we avoided entirely that looks like pink cole slaw. The beef itself is fine, and it would be better out of a bento box and on top of a chirashi bowl.
1:10 p.m. The check comes right after we ask for it. We're back on the street, with plenty of time to get back to where we need to be, if we needed to be anywhere. RA worked for us, and we easily could have cut 15 minutes and half of our bill by sticking to the bowls on the lunch menu.
Dining time: 51 minutes
Where: 1309 Lancaster St., Harbor East
Contact: 410-522-3200
Food: Service: Atmosphere:
Key:
Outstanding: Good: Fair or uneven: Poor: