Ekiben

Ekiben is a steamed-bun restaurant on Eastern Avenue in Fells Point, Baltimore, with a strong Taiwanese accent. Its name is the Japanese word for the boxed meals sold at railway stations.

Steve Chu, Ephrem Abebe and Nikhil Yesupriya met as students at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and in 2014 they bought a hot dog cart to sell buns at the Fells Point Farmers Market. Chu, the son of a Taiwanese chef, wrote the first menu and tested it with friends late at night in the kitchen of Jumbo Seafood, his father's Chinese restaurant in Pikesville. Before that he had waited tables at Petit Louis in Baltimore and cooked at Kin Shop in New York under Harold Dieterle. The partners come from Taiwanese, Ethiopian and South Indian families, and each heritage shows up in the seasoning.

The best-known bun is the Neighborhood Bird: a large thigh of Taiwanese curry fried chicken with sambal mayonnaise, pickled cucumber and fresh herbs, folded into a soft bao. Tempura broccoli comes with fried shallots, herbs and a dressing of rice vinegar. Tofu Brah puts tofu in spicy peanut sauce under a seasonal slaw, and the Original bun holds Thai chicken meatballs in a coconut and black peppercorn sauce.

The cart became a small storefront on Eastern Avenue in March 2016. Travel + Leisure later named Ekiben the best place for a sandwich in Maryland, and StarChefs called Chu a Rising Star of the DC-Chesapeake region. Further restaurants followed in Hampden and Locust Point. Ekiben works with young people from the YouthWorks summer jobs program of Baltimore City, and during the pandemic it sent buns to nearby hospitals.