From fattoush to falafel the Middle East has given us many culinary delights. The newest fare to come from the region is Dubai chocolate, a stuffed chocolate bar comprised of pistachio cream, tahini, and delicate shredded phyllo (also called knafeh), encased in a crispy chocolate shell.

In Baltimore, there are many riffs on the over-the-top confection, whether melted onto waffles at Little Italy’s Crave or tucked into crepes at Greektown’s Ruya.

“Within the span of a few years, we’ve seen it pop up everywhere from Starbucks to Baskin-Robbins and Harris Teeter,” says Markie Britton, co-founder of Federal Hill’s Ammoora. “It seems like it’s everywhere.”

And that includes Ammoora, where the Dubai Chocolate Crunch Bar has become a best-seller.

When Ammoora was looking to add to its sweets lineup, the pastry team was inspired by the Dubai dessert first created by Sarah Hamouda.

“Of course, Dubai does everything bigger and better,” says Britton. “Like many people, we loved her take on it.”

Hamouda herself was inspired by a childhood memory of knafeh soaked in syrup and topped with sweet cheese. She called her confection “Can’t Get Knafeh of It” and started selling her luxury candy through her online store, FIX Dessert in Dubai. The bar went viral in 2023 with a TikTok video that’s been viewed more than 140 million times.

Ammoora’s Crunch Bar (toasted knafeh, pistachio-tahini butter, white chocolate ganache-like crémeux, caramel espresso, chocolate ganache, crushed pistachios) is in keeping with the restaurant’s Syrian fare.

“All the things used in the bar, including pistachios, tahini, and knafeh, are staples in a Syrian or Arabic kitchen,” says Britton.

Of all the ingredients, the knafeh is of particular note. “Knafeh is traditional in Syrian desserts,” says Britton. “Guests are always asking if we serve it, but the nostalgia of it is something that you wouldn’t compete with—everyone has
their own favorite homemade version, but you just can’t win against somebody’s grandmother. When we learned about the Dubai chocolate trend, we jumped on that and came up with our own take instead.”

Chris Tsonos was bitten by the cooking bug at the age of 14, while working in a deli in his home state of Virginia.

“It just clicked,” says Tsonos, who has worked in various Baltimore kitchens, including Golden West, Parts & Labor, and The Royal Blue. “There was something about the rhythm of the kitchen that made sense to me.”

That sense of rhythm never left him, in the kitchen—or out of it. A lifelong musician, he once played at the famed CBGB, the birthplace of punk rock. So it stood to reason that when he opened his own cafe, music became his guiding inspiration.

“Animal Boy is a Ramones album,” says Tsonos. “It’s not my favorite Ramones album, but I think it’s one of the coolest names you could have for a sandwich shop—it doesn’t make any sense, but it’s fun.”

Why did you want to own a sandwich shop?
It’s the best way to eat anything. I’ve always liked sandwiches. It’s the perfect vessel to present something in and you can get all kinds of flavors and combinations in a single assembly to enjoy. Who doesn’t love a sandwich?

Is there a connection between being a musician and a cook?
Cooks are more into the wild side of things because working in a kitchen is chaos. It’s organized chaos. That’s like a band. You know where you’re going and what you need but you never know what’s going to happen in between it all. There’s always a wrench to be thrown.

What did you want to do with the décor?
A lot of the vibe of the cafe is based off the album cover, with black, orange, yellow, and blue, and all sorts of random punk stuff.

I know you also use the cafe as a gallery space for artists to hang their work.
We have one piece by an artist by the name of Brian Costello. He did a logo of The Grateful Dead of the skull with the lightning bolt. To make the image, he overlayed the words to their songs to create an image. We rotate our art every first Friday of the month.

Tell me about the menu.
You have to be as classic as you can but I like to do my own twist on things. Of course, there needs to be an Italian hoagie. That’s one of the best sandwiches in the world. Layers of cured meat and vegetables come together for this great mouthfeel. And then there’s SPP. We call it South Philly Pork—I lived in South Philly down the road from John’s Roast Pork, which served roast pork with broccoli rabe. I always thought that was one of the best sandwiches.

How did working in so many kitchens help you open Animal Boy?
After learning from different chefs, I’ve always known I’d open my own place. I kept progressing until slowly, but surely, it turned into Animal Boy.

It’s a blustery Sunday night on Harbor Point on the last day of February—usually a quiet month for restaurants—but even after opening only seven weeks ago, Josefina is humming.

Dressed in his bright white chef’s jacket, owner-chef David Zamudio stands behind the gleaming pass of his tricked-out open kitchen. There’s an intensity to his gaze as he dresses oxtail dumplings with truffle caviar, spoons a pool of romesco sauce onto a gold-patterned porcelain plate as an accompaniment for violet cauliflower, and gently jabs a meat thermometer into the center of the bone-in ribeye rubbed with sweet, smoked, and spicy paprika, among other spices.

During dinner service, he’s in the zone—and watching him work is like watching an Olympic-level athlete. With purity and precision, he makes it look effortless as he slides his plates of edible abstract art toward the edge of the pass, where they’re whisked away to the dining room to feed hungry patrons.

Without question, opening your own restaurant is anything but easy, even if you’re a culinary virtuoso. After working around the world, including his native Venezuela, the 32-year-old chef made his mark in Baltimore at Alma Cocina Latina, where he earned a James Beard semifinalist nod for cooking fare from his home country.

For his own restaurant, Zamudio set his sights on Spain, a country where he’s worked in the past (including the Michelin-starred Martín Berasategui) and a place he visits family often. Also driving the decision was the influence that Spanish cuisine has had on his homeland.

“A lot of the food we eat in Latin America came from the Spanish who conquered us,” he says, “so that felt like a great place to start.”

It’s a cuisine he’s drawn to for its bold, simple flavors, iconic rice dishes, tapas, smoky seafood, abundance of vegetables, and ingredients like pimentón (smoked paprika), saffron, and sherry. He’s also interested in modifying those elements in a more modern, approachable way.

“I wanted to tweak some of the most recognized dishes from Spain,” he says, “while respecting the country’s tastes and traditions. For other plates, I just wanted them to be well-executed.”

Josefina is an homage not only to his maternal grandmother and the generations of matriarchs in the family who carry that name but to Spain itself. This is evident in its matador red walls, bottles of sherry fino and vermut dramatically displayed on the soaring glass shelves behind the bar, and the single red carnations—the country’s national flower—that grace every table.

The elegant setting is all a backdrop, of course, for the carefully crafted food. The oxtail dumplings are a play on a more classic oxtail stew served to celebrate the running of the bulls. Zamudio’s tapa features succulent pieces of oxtail tucked into dumplings resting in broth and served with truffle “caviar” (pearls of juice extracted from the fungus).

Also featured among the tapas are the more traditional Gilda, a perfect pairing of plump green olives, anchovies, boquerones, roasted red peppers, and mildly sweet green pippara peppers—think Spain on a skewer. Another traditional tapa is the pan de tomate—a blissful bite-sized piece of crystal bread, so named for the sea salt that glitters across its surface—smeared with mashed tomatoes, garlic anchovies, and boquerones draped across the top.

The César Ibérico salad is a clever nod to the wonderful cheeses and cured meats of the country. Here, leafy greens get showered with shavings of Manchego and strands of acorn-fed jamon Ibérico de bellota, the prized pork of the region procured from black pigs who are raised along the Iberian Peninsula. And then there’s Spain’s signature bacalao frito, essentially their answer to fish and chips—two crispy hunks of salted cod cured in kombu seaweed, then tempura-fried and served with a pickly tartar sauce to cut the richness of the dish.

Of course, rice, first introduced to the Iberian Peninsula by the Moors in the 8th century, reigns here as a menu staple. There’s a version made with duck magret and carrot cream and a Valencian-style paella with an entire Cornish hen. The saffron-scented seafood rice, piled with prawns, scallops, baby octopus, and two delicate head-on langoustines, is a terrific rendition of more traditional paella which usually marries seafood with chicken or rabbit and chorizo. Like all the rice dishes, it arrives in a dramatic, two-handled circular paella pan. It’s fantastically flavored with saffron and smoked paprika and sits on a bed of black squid ink Calasparra rice, which deepens the umami.

Even if you’re not a sweets lover, executive pastry chef Maria Alejandra Cobarrubia’s desserts are impossible to ignore. Look for the heart shaped churros and a creamy, caramelized Basque cheesecake, which, says Zamudio, boasts a “secret ingredient.” (He later reveals that it’s blue cheese, which adds depth to the flavor.)

But even in this sea of standouts, it was the subtly sweet, French toast-like Torrija—brioche soaked in eggs, heavy cream, and vanilla before being pan-seared in butter then torched and topped with hazelnut chocolate sauce—that left us longing for more.

If you’ve ever spent time in Spain, a trip to Josefina will transport you right back there—and if you’ve never been, well, this will whet your appetite in more ways than one.

JOSEFINA 1409 Point St., 667-260-2521. HOURS: Sun.-Thurs. 5-10 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 5-11 p.m. PRICES: Snacks, tapas, salads: $6-30; rice and mains: $38-148 (for 36-ounce ribeye); desserts: $8-16. AMBIANCE: Minimalist modern.

Even before the crab dip bagel made its way onto the lineup at Café Dear Leon, the Canton bakery had legions of fans who needed no extra encouragement. Since its opening in the summer of 2020, the micro-sized Canton cafe has consistently drawn a line along O’Donnell Street, with customers willing to wait for its Japanese-style tamago egg sandwiches, marvelous muffins, pain au chocolat, and various Japanese-Korean-French fusion pastries.

But thanks to local food influencer Giovanna Poscé, who made a video praising the bagel’s “creamy crabby goodness” and named it one of the best things she’s eaten in Baltimore, the item—stuffed with crab dip mixed with sweet corn, Cajun butter, and Old Bay went viral and has since been featured in Bon Appétit and People.

It’s also tipped the bakery’s scales from popular to off the charts. To date, Poscé’s post on Feb. 1, 2025, has garnered more than 52 million views, solidifying it as a must-eat item in Charm City.

It’s even on the radar of superstar artist SZA, who DMed the bakery to ask them to keep the bagel on the ever-changing monthly menu until the next time she’s in town.

Poscé says she never meant to create a social media storm—she was simply sharing her love of food.

“I have fun eating and I have even more fun sharing my feedback on food, so I’m always tickled when anyone is listening,” she says. “Whether it’s one person or a million people, I am still surprised when anyone goes out of their way to try a spot just because I said so.”

In an age of social media, food influencers chasing the next viral post—and users perpetually hungry for food content—can propel an unsuspecting eatery to overnight fame. Charm City boasts countless examples of items that have become phenoms thanks to exposure from Instagram videos, TikTok reels, and national press.

There’s Frank’s Pizza & Pasta in Hamilton, which got a major bump in business when Barstool reviewer Dave Portnoy stopped by for a cheese pie. There’s the double-fried haddock fish sandwiches at the small, family-run restaurant The Gift in Northeast Baltimore, which went viral thanks to a TikTok video. And the shrimp and corn patties—named by The New York Times as one of the “Best Dishes Across the United States”—at Hampden’s The Duchess, which led to an uptick in sales.

Ironically, the crab dip bagel was created as a one-off specialty item and was never meant to be part of the regular rotation of offerings. Dear Leon co-owner Min Kim was getting ready to take the bagel off the menu permanently when lightning struck.

“It was our manager’s birthday and they asked us to make crab pretzels,” says Kim, explaining the bagel’s origin story. “We don’t make pretzels, so we put the crab dip on top of our new bagels and combined the idea with this cheese garlic bread they make in Korean bakeries—all of these things met in a perfect place and became the crap dip bagel.”

While a viral moment might feel like a dream come true, sudden fame can be something of a double-edged sword. At Dear Leon, the lines ballooned from 20 minutes to a whopping hour and a half after the video blew up on social media.

“Some people were getting in line without even knowing what it was for,” says Kim, laughing. “When Saturday Night Live came out with their song, ‘Big Dumb Line,’ it felt very personal. It was very challenging—we have limited baked goods, and we follow a baking schedule to keep everything as fresh as possible, so once we’re out of an item, we can’t make more.”

Even so, says Kim, the need was so pressing that he and his staff decided to meet demand. “At the end of the day, we are in a hospitality business,” says Kim. “Everyone, including our chefs and front-of-the-house managers, understood—we wanted to deliver to our guests what they want. If there’s a clear need for our guests, we’re going to do everything in our power without sacrificing quality, so that’s what we did.”

“SOME PEOPLE WERE GETTING IN LINE WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING WHAT IT WAS FOR.”

To ramp up production from some 100 to 1,000 bagels a week meant more work for the entire staff. “All the chefs spent extra hours and extra days to up the production,” says Kim. “And all the front-of-the-house staff went above and beyond to communicate when the bagels would be available. We have them at 6 a.m. now because the line for them would start even before that.”

In fact, the crab dip bagel was largely the catalyst for the bakery’s expansion to Remington with sister spot La Maison. (Call it the House that Bagels Built.) And while it’s hard to say for sure, the bagel might even have had something to do with their recent James Beard nomination for Outstanding Bakery, which helped get the sweets shop, and hence James Beard judges, national attention.

“We always talked about growing and expanding,” says Kim, “but that has really accelerated the process, because we needed a bigger team to produce all the crab dip bagels. We had to hire more people and more chefs to work at our tiny Canton location.”

Going viral on social media is a different experience than getting national press, notes Ekiben co-owner Steve Chu, whose Asian-fusion restaurant has had more than its share of both.

When Ekiben opened a decade ago in Fells Point, the speck of a spot, which got its start as a hot dog cart, soon became a bold-face name in Travel & Leisure, Food & Wine, and Bon Appétit through word of mouth. “The press attention always gives you a small boost in business but it’s your job to keep it up and maintain,” says Chu.

But going viral is a whole different story, says Chu, whose own recent crabby creation for his Locust Point location, the Maryland Softie sandwich—an Old Bay-dusted soft-shell crab on a bao bun topped with a crab cake, melted cheddar, and remoulade—had almost 10 million views across social media.

“With magazines and newspapers, there’s a paywall, but with social media it just shows up in your feed—whether you asked for it or not,” he says. “There’s no paywall—everyone has access. It’s a million times more in your face.”

Little Donna’s owner-chef Robbie Tutlewski has also experienced what 15 minutes of fame feels like, especially for such a small operation. When The New York Times reached out to speak with him about his Fells Point restaurant in 2023, “I thought it was something bad like, ‘the worst of,’” he says now, laughing at the memory. “That’s just my personality. I always think something bad is going to happen.”

Of course, it was exactly the opposite. Only a year or so after opening, Tutlewski soon learned that the restaurant had landed on the list as one of America’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2023; the following year, it was named one of the best pizza places in the country. The unassuming chef wasn’t seeking the limelight. “We didn’t want it but we needed it,” says Tutlewski.

As much as sudden celebrity can boost a business, it can also come with its own pressures and challenges, says Martha Lucius, a veteran restaurant consultant and former owner of Chesapeake Bagel Bakery and Boheme Cafe.

“As a restaurant owner, you theoretically wish for this, right? But you only have a capacity for a certain number of staff members and you can’t go beyond that size because you literally only have seven days a week and so many seats. You’re going to have to turn people away. The key is to make your place strong and good in that moment.”

That’s exactly what Tutlewski did when the first New York Times list came out. “I was like, ‘We have to do a really good job—if we work harder the next six months, it will help us in the future,’” he recalls saying at the time. “It forced me to ask myself if I wanted to expand the menu or keep it as it was. I was also like, ‘We can’t run out of pierogies.’”

When the second list came out, the pizza oven broke the day before the article was published. “People were calling to order all these pizzas and we couldn’t even serve pizza,” says Tutlewski. (The restaurant contacted patrons via email and phone calls to avoid disappointment, likely impressing them even more.)

The Wren owners Will Mester and Millie Powell had a particularly banner week last fall when they were named one of America’s Best Restaurants of 2025 by both The New York Times and Bon Appétit, all within days. After that, they were understandably inundated. It was somewhat of a mixed blessing given that the tiny Irish pub in Fells Point has some 20 barstools and just a few tables in a back dining room. Still, the couple is more than grateful for all the attention.

“If those pieces didn’t come out, we just wouldn’t have made it,” admits Mester looking back, especially since the food he serves is somewhat idiosyncratic. “It’s not for everyone,” he says of his elevated pub fare such as ox tongue, blood cake, or a whole roast pigeon. “But when The New York Times decides that it’s for everybody, suddenly it is. And people just get comfortable, because they walk in and the place is pretty busy and that gives them confidence and curiosity beyond having to navigate it entirely on their own.”

Business is now booming, necessitating the need for Mester and Powell to work longer hours. They’ve also had to pivot from their initial mission of having a humble pub that emphasized drinks over food. “We’re no longer stressing that we’re going to have to shut the door,” says Mester, so he’s not complaining. “But we had hoped that we could be a little bit more of a bar and that it wouldn’t be so food-centric.”

Having to switch gears is not uncommon, says Lucius, and finding your identity as a restaurant takes time.

“You don’t know your own brand for a while,” she says. “You think you do—you craft it a certain way, but then those sneaky customers come in and they make you realize it in a slightly different way than you thought it would be.”

Hospitality experts emphasize that getting unexpected press or going viral is not something you can plan for—and it should never be a business plan, says veteran consultant Dave Seel of Blue Fork Marketing.

“People latch onto something and get excited about it—and it goes gangbusters,” says Seel. “But you can’t be shooting for that. You’re not going to sustain your business with a viral hit. You have to be a well-rounded, all-encompassing business that has more than just one viral thing.”

“PEOPLE LATCH ONTO SOMETHING AND GET EXCITED ABOUT IT—AND IT GOES GANGBUSTERS.”

When Rooted Rotisserie’s chicken went viral, it was, in part, because owners Joe and Amanda Burton invited influencer Keith Lee to visit their restaurant in historic Hollins Market.

“I had heard about him through friends and started following him on TikTok,” says Amanda. “His account aligned with the same values that our business aligned with, as far as faith, family, community, and hospitality. He seemed like a genuine connector, and it felt like he really wanted to give exposure to the businesses he visited.”

At the time, Amanda knew that Lee was visiting the D.C. area, which increased the likelihood that he just might stop by. She was also aware that a visit from Lee, which almost always leads to increased exposure, often came with a be-careful-what-you-wish-for caveat:

“He tells people, ‘You have to know what you’re getting into when you ask me to come,’” says Amanda.

Before reaching out, she made sure that her husband, Joe, who is the restaurant’s chef, was ready for the inevitable onslaught of customers who would follow. “Joe, who is a go-by-faith kind of guy, said, ‘Yes, tell him to come,’” recalls Amanda.

So, Amanda reached out to Lee to plead her case. “I said, ‘We’re a small business. We’re not backed by some venture capital. We’re not some big restaurant group—we’re completely independent. Those types of businesses are the types of businesses that deserve exposure.’”

Her pitch worked. Lee did, in fact, drop by unannounced, calling the restaurant “one of my favorite restaurants I’ve visited in a while,” in his review. He was so impressed, he left a $4,000 tip and paid for the other customers.

“He dropped his review on a day we were closed, which we were so grateful for because we watched the reservations pop up in real time—they were going up and up and up,” says Amanda. “That gave us some time to prepare for what he already said was going to happen.”

Sure enough, on the week the review was posted, the restaurant ran out of chicken two hours before closing and there were lines down the block with orders to-go, forcing them to temporarily stop doing to-go orders. “And we went from seven to 10 reservations to 25 reservations, which is pushing 75 to 80 covers a night.”

Now that business has leveled out after several months, the restaurant has started doing to-go orders again. For his part, Joe feels the exposure worked in their favor. “It was a lot of pressure to keep up with the hype, but my motto is, ‘If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready.’”

Before Lee’s visit, Joe made some eight to 10 rotisserie chickens a night. “But after Keith Lee came, we had to reload our rotisserie, maybe two or three times a night, about 30 chickens, to keep up with the rush. I was really happy to receive this new influx in business because it meant product wasn’t sitting around—the faster I can move the product, the fresher the product is in the end.”

And while their business has increased, the important things have stayed the same.

“We’ve stayed true to who we put ourselves out to be when we originally opened,” says Joe, though Amanda admits that sudden success has also had its downside. “There’s this expectation from some customers that it’s going to be the food of their dreams,” she says, “but we are one restaurant that makes one type of food. It’s not going to satisfy everyone.”

While gaining surprise positive press or social media virality can be a mixed bag—both thrilling and stressful—those we interviewed say it’s worth it.

“The food and beverage world is full of rocky seas,” says Dave Seel. “You just try to set yourself up in the best way possible and rely on your skills and your community. Be grateful for those highs because the lows are definitely going to come.”

Time was, ordering bagels was easy: You’d pick your flavor (usually poppy, sesame, or plain), add a schmear, and maybe top it all off with a layer of lox or a dollop of whitefish spread. Ah, simpler times.

Bagels were first introduced to New York’s Lower East Side by Jewish immigrants in the early 1900s. For a while, the bagel’s appeal was limited to the New York area, until the ’60s and ’70s, when mass production (hello, Lender’s!) turned them into an American breakfast staple.

Since then, their popularity—and the many ways people consume them—has only grown. It’s safe to say that today’s versions are a far cry from what was found in your Eastern European grandmother’s breadbasket.

From the crab dip bagel at Café Dear Leon in Canton to the brisket, pastrami, sofrito, cheese, and jalapeño sandwich on a cheddar bagel at Call Your Mother Deli (in Annapolis and other locations), the humble breakfast food has gotten a glow-up.

“People are opening their minds and going way, way beyond the classics,” says Lauren Kistner, owner of Good Boy Bagels. “There are so many different flavor combinations that people never put together before.”

Her canine-themed Canton bagel shop is right in on the trend. Take their signature 40 Gold: a bagel stacked with house-made pit beef, fried eggs, onions, and cheddar-horseradish cream cheese.

“In addition to being delicious, it’s our ode to Maryland,” says Kistner, a New Jersey native who opened Good Boy because she missed her hometown’s hand-rolled boiled-and-baked bagels.

It’s also an homage to another Baltimore legacy. “The name is an ode to Chaps, whose original location is on Route 40 in the Gold Club parking lot,” says co-owner Ben Sawyer.

Another new-fangled nod to Baltimore is the shop’s honey Old Bay cream cheese. “My husband owns Mahaffey’s Pub and we were talking about the most popular flavor of wings at the pub,” says Kistner. “The honey Old Bay wings sell well, so we decided to do a version of that with cream cheese.”

While the classic combos are still popular, patrons have also been known to improvise. “Bacon, eggs, and cheese are always going to be at the top of the list when it comes to biggest sellers,” says Kistner. “But we’ve seen quite a lot of people even going beyond what we offer. They’ll order a bacon, egg, and cheese, but they’ll put it on our French toast bagel with maple glaze or they’ll add cinnamon raisin cream cheese. The other day, a patron requested cream cheese and peanut butter on a bagel.”

Clearly, it’s a brave, new bagel world.

When Robbie Tutlewski and his wife, Kaleigh Schwalbe, were looking for a place to live after a move from Washington, D.C., they were instantly enchanted with Upper Fells Point.

“There were Christmas lights and people had their flowerpots out,” says Tutlewski. “We walked around the area, but I never thought anything would open up.”

But in 2021, something did. That something was the building that housed the iconic Henninger’s Tavern, including a five-room residence upstairs. Schwalbe saw potential, while Tutlewski saw a lot of work.

After all, the three-story brick building at 1812 Bank Street was built circa 1850 and tending to it seemed like a job all its own. In addition to being a family home, at one time, the historic building had housed a medicinal liquor store and sold ice cream. Tutlewski knew he wanted to open a restaurant. It just never occurred to him that he’d live over it.

“I didn’t know anything about how to get a restaurant started—how to hire staff, where to get produce, so to add on another layer of things to go into a space that had a lot of needs wasn’t what I was looking for,” says Tutlewski. “I was just looking to survive.”

But he relented. The couple moved into the home in 2021 and, by June 2022, their charming restaurant—with its menu of Polish specialties and tavern-style pizzas, and granny-chic vibe—was open for business. By September of the following year, Little Donna’s was named one of the 50 Best Restaurants in America by The New York Times.

Four years (and two babies) later, the gifted chef enjoys feeding some 140 or so patrons who arrive for dinner on a busy night.

“A lot of people coming into the restaurant say, ‘Wow, it feels like were in somebody’s house,’” says Tutlewski. “I always love to tell them, ‘You are in someone’s house—you’re in my house!’”

Did you have concerns about living and working in the same place?
One hundred percent, but I thought, if this sucks and the restaurant fails, at least we have a place to stay—we’ll figure out what to do with the downstairs.

Your commute appears to be exactly 12 steps. What’s it like to have such a short trip to the restaurant?
That’s probably the one thing I really miss—the commute. I miss that transition time just being able to space out. But if we lived somewhere else, the restaurant would not be as successful as it is. I wouldn’t have been able to make the commute and have a baby.

How do you balance being a dad with being a chef?
There’s a lot of back and forth. We start turning the lights on, firing up the stove, making the dough, and making pierogies at 7 a.m. I have to finish at five to pick up one of the kids [as the restaurant is open- ing]—and around 7 p.m., I head upstairs to help put the kids to bed.

Is it hard to have boundaries for yourself in both your personal and professional life?
It’s really challenging. The biggest one was having to step away from the focus of food since having our first son, Jesse. There are still things that I want to do here but they have to be on the backburner for now.

Does your staff come upstairs into your home?
Staff is always allowed to come upstairs and three of the people on staff help with childcare—some of them have extra jobs, so I’m only going to ask when I really need it. They will watch the baby monitor or bathe them. It’s not a card I pull often but sometimes I’ll be like, “Hey, can you watch the kids tonight?”

How do you decompress?
I try to get away. In the past, I couldn’t leave because I had to drain the boiler every day during the winter. I couldn’t put that much responsibility on everyone here. I couldn’t put on their prep task, “Cut onions, marinate fish, drain the boiler, this door fell off the hinge.” We’re slowly getting to the point of getting rid of those issues so people can just cook. Sometimes I feel like I’m spending more time working on this stuff than managing and running a restaurant, but it’s gotten better.

What does your almost-three-year-old, Jesse, think about the restaurant?
He knows what’s going on, that Daddy is at work. He comes in and says his hellos, says his holas to everyone, every single day. He has known the staff since day one. He loves looking at [patrons] and seeing what they’re eating. He walked up to somebody one time and goes, “Oh, nice pizza”—and he really meant it.

From The Coral Wig’s Painkiller to The Duchess’s Pirate Princess, tiki-inspired cocktails—bold, boozy, juicy, and often over-the-top—are enjoying a renaissance.

“There are a few factors as to why tiki or tropical cocktails are trending,” surmises mixologist Brendan Dorr, who owns the gin bar Dutch Courage and the James Beard nominated Pink Flamingo. “The whiskey bubble has popped, and people are moving on to other spirits. Also, guests are becoming more educated with their spirit knowledge, especially when it comes to rum.”

Dorr does make a distinction between tropical and tiki drinks, however.

“Tiki cocktails are more theatrical, whereas tropical cocktails is a general term for cocktails using tropical fruit, spices, and citrus—the styling is simpler,” he says. “Also, with tropical cocktails we aim to avoid the cultural appropriation that can go along with tiki.”

That’s exactly why bartender Pat Turner of True Chesapeake Oyster Co. is careful to honor the history of the kitschy cocktails with the Hampden spot’s “Tiki Tuesdays.”

“Tiki recipes are classics,” he says. “The people who came before us aced these drinks, so for our recipes, we’ve turned to places like Smuggler’s Cove [in San Francisco] and Don the Beachcomber [in Hollywood]. Most workers who made tiki drinks were Filipino—these cocktails are an ode to them.”

The revival of the tiki tradition is an antidote to current craft cocktails.

“Cocktail culture has been trending more and more minimalist,” says Turner. “The nicer cocktail spots have the daintiest glasses with the most minimalist garnish—maybe just a simple trimmed peel or a spot of oil. Along with that, there’s a desire for a goofy mug, extravagant garnishes, and setting things on fire—sometimes you need a little maximalism.”

Step inside Nine Tailed Fox, Atlas Restaurant Group’s two-story, 200-seat black-brick-and-steel monolith at The Village of Cross Keys, and you’ll understand why the Chinese-food restaurant was two years in the making.

Even by Atlas’ outsized standards, the whole space, overseen by Ira Imerlishvili, design director at Patrick Sutton Interior Design, is an ambitious, larger-than-life venture, with its jade accents, sprawling rooftop patio, airy atrium, and splendid second-floor bar. It’s a vast space but also balances spectacle with intimacy, thanks to mood lighting, private nooks, and ethereal artwork inspired by traditional Chinese silk paintings and a sculptural rope suspended from the ceiling of the main dining room to anchor the soaring space.

Behind-the-scenes is plenty splashy, too. The kitchen is a generous 2,700-square-feet with a team of 44, including Hong Kong-born executive chef Jeffrey Mei and Timur Fazilov, chef of Asian cuisine, whose C.V. includes a stint at the famed Morimoto in Qatar.

The restaurant’s namesake is the mythical “nine-tailed fox” drawn from East Asian mythology. The fox is known for its longevity, cosmic wisdom, and ability to shapeshift. This could, in fact, serve as a metaphor for Atlas founder Alex Smith, who has mastered the art of time travel, as his ever-morphing empire covers almost every continent and time period from the Jazz Age (The Ruxton), to the ’70s (Italian Disco), to the Belle Époque (Monarque).

This time, Mr. Smith goes to China with a restaurant that taps into America’s long love affair with Chinese food that began when Chinese immigrants, primarily from the Canton region, came to California for the Gold Rush, soon adapting their cuisine for Western palates. From the looks of the restaurant on any given night, that love affair is still going strong.

The menu at Nine Tailed Fox references both past and present, highlighting Cantonese classics, alongside clever, more modern combinations drawn from a country with countless regional cuisines. That means you can expect a catalogue of the familiar Chinese-American staples that most Americans grew up eating—orange beef, chicken chow mein, General Tso’s chicken—whether you enjoyed them in Chinatown (if your city was lucky enough to have one) or at simple mom-and-pop neighborhood take-out spots.

But, in addition to those commonly known standards, there are more modern takes on traditional fare, such as black-truffle roasted duck, or lamb (a commonly consumed protein in China) spiced with cumin and cilantro and folded into pan-fried potstickers.

Along with the potstickers, you’ll find a slew of more traditional dumplings. Dumplings are thought to have originated 1,800 years ago during the Han Dynasty, and that history is honored here—the dumplings are handmade by a team of five and treated as something of an art form.

You can make an entire meal out of mixing and matching, including perfectly pleated xiaolongbao (soup dumplings) filled with bits of chicken; pillowy shrimp dumplings bursting bundles of sweetness; or a fantastic vegetarian version stuffed with assorted mushrooms. There’s a bottle of black vinegar and jar of house-made chile crisp on every table that’s meant for the dumplings but adds a hit of heatand umami to most everything on the table.

Another favorite appetizer was the Singapore Street Slaw, a technicolor twist on Lo Hei salad made for the Chinese New Year. It’s stacked with shredded seasonal vegetables tossed with cashews, fried taro, and fried vermicelli, then mixed tableside in a raspberry and preserved plum vinaigrette. The whole affair is a textural and visual delight with its riot of crunch and a confetti of color.

As for the entrées—prettily presented on the same ’50s-style plates from the Sunday sojourns to Chinatown of my Philly youth—every visit led me to a new discovery. Over a handful of meals, that included a beef and mango dish, accompanied by iceberg lettuce for a crisp element and a cooling component; the pepper steak: tender, wok-seared beef with green bell peppers and leeks in a dark, peppery sauce that delivered real depth and bold, spicy flavor; and a lovely, aromatic vermicelli noodle dish mixed with shrimp and an assortment of vegetables.

Speaking of vegetables, there are plenty of wonderful vegetarian options, including stir-fried sweet pea shoots scented with garlic and dotted with fried onions; and stir-fried eggplant and okra doused in a spicy-sweet cashew sambal. Interestingly, okra is not commonly found on local menus but is a widely used ingredient in Chinese cooking. Don’t miss the chance to order it here.

My only quibble? The kitchen could use more coordination. Dishes are served seemingly tapas-style, which means that the appetizers and entrees come out rapid fire—and often all at the same time. Also, because servers don’t write dishes down, on my outings something almost invariably went wrong. On more than one occasion, an entire dish was missing. On another visit, a server sheepishly came back to the table and asked us to repeat the entire order all over again. (Note to servers everywhere: Write the dang order down.)

Service missteps aside, Nine Tailed Fox is a great addition to our dining scene. I enjoyed expanding my palate, while revisiting old favorites. It made me nostalgic for those family outings when, even as our feast was revealed beneath those bell-shaped lids, I’d crane my neck to see what other tables had ordered. It’s that kind of fare.

Even if the cuisine is ancient, the thrill never gets old.

NINE TAILED FOX, 3 Village Square, 443-688-9511. HOURS: Sun. Thurs. 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 11:30 a.m.-1 a.m. PRICES: Appetizers: $8-16; entrees: $19-76* (whole Peking duck); desserts: $4-14. AMBIANCE: Nouvelle Chinese.

With their new restaurant on the corner of 36th Street and Elm Avenue in Hampden, Ben, Amy, and Jake Lefenfeld have headed east of their beloved Basque region to the Italian coast.

Starting on April 2, Seppia will be open for daily dinner service. The new 250-seat restaurant has been several years in the making and is one of the most eagerly anticipated openings of the year, especially since a January fire temporarily closed the Lefenfeld’s Basque-based La Cuchara in Hampden-Woodberry.

Seppia (pronounced sep-e-a), named for the cuttlefish commonly found in the Mediterranean Sea, is set inside the G.C. Murphy Five and Dime building. The historic 1901 structure was at one time a stable and last home to the Five & Dime Ale House.

“We decided to purchase the building after looking at it,” says Ben. “We love the neighborhood and have been right down the street for 11 years now at La Cuchara. We thought it was a great opportunity to expand and put down very long-term roots within the community.”

With the help of Charles Patterson, director of design at SM+P Architects, the space underwent a full renovation that included moving the staircase, demolishing a portion of the second floor to create a 50-foot high ceiling, and refurbishing an old elevator that will now serve as a dumbwaiter to ferry various items from the restaurant’s basement kitchen and a wine cave, which will double as a private dining space.

An original terra cotta wall has been restored and is now showcased behind the bar. And the restaurant’s interior is all aglow with its sea green, gold, and caramel color palette, plus warm chestnut wood and brass finishes.

The driving force for a second spot, says Ben, was to provide new opportunities for their team.

“We were losing talent, because they were outgrowing us,” says the chef. “We needed a place to allow for people to rise up in the company.”

“Pasta is something special—it’s not the kind of thing you bring home and reheat. It’s in the moment of the technique and the freshness of it—there’s something a little mystical about that.”

The bulk of the menu will focus predominantly on pasta, both hand-rolled and extruded.

“I’ve always loved Italian food and fresh pasta,” says Ben. “Pasta is something special—it’s not the kind of thing you bring home and reheat. It’s in the moment of the technique and the freshness of it—there’s something a little mystical about that.”

To that end, Ben is currently hard at work in the kitchen refining his recipes for crispy artichoke lasagna with spinach, béchamel, and sugo di Pomodoro; ruffled-edge mafaldine with squid ink; and casarecce pasta (short noodles with curled edges) with venison ragù.

Seafood dishes also abound, including acciughe al verde (that’s Spanish-cured anchovies soaked in a green sauce of lemon, toasted garlic, olive oil, and parsley); frito misto (a variety of fried shellfish including cuttlefish, calamari, shrimp, and zucchini); and tuna crudo with chile crunch, fermented chiles, and tangerines.

A clever Buffalo milk ricotta “palette” starter is a canvas for a variety of accompaniments such as pistachio pesto, confit tomato, roasted garlic, and roasted shallots.

For the chef, culinary inspiration comes from research, experimentation, and especially travel. In 2024 and 2025, Ben and his wife, Amy, taste-tested their way all over the Boot Country.

“We started in Venice, we went to Abruzzo all along the Amalfi coast, stopped in Genoa and Vernona,” he says. “We went to Bologna. So many of the ideas for this menu came from the Ligurian coast.”

The menu will also change with the seasons. “We’ll be focusing on dishes and inspirations from Northern Italy in the wintertime and going to the south in the summertime,” says Ben, “but we want to utilize the best ingredients possible, so we’re going to see where that takes us from the starting point that we have right now.”

Ben sees the cuttlefish as an apt symbol for Seppia. “It just evokes a feeling of freshness, of salinity, of the ocean. It defines what we are going after.”

The cocktail program will be equally innovative with some 330 wines, predominantly from Italy but also other Mediterranean countries including Spain, France, Portugal, and Croatia. (On Sundays, wines $100 or more will be half-priced, with featured wines 25 percent off Monday through Thursday.) A quintet of martinis, from dirty to dry, will round out the beverage side of the menu.

The restaurant is named after the cuttlefish—a cross between a squid and octopus hybrid—because of Ben’s fascination with the mystical marine animal.

“I’ve been snorkeling before in the Caribbean and seen them,” he says. “They change color so they can camouflage with the rocks and if you’re swimming with them, all the other fish will be swaying with the waves and moving with the current, but the cuttlefish stays in one spot. It’s extremely intelligent and has a vision spectral color range, that is more than any other species on Earth.”

Ben sees the cuttlefish as an apt symbol for Seppia. “It just evokes a feeling of freshness, of salinity, of the ocean. It defines what we are going after,” he says.

After the opening, Ben is looking forward to getting back to the kitchen at La Cuchara, as well, though there’s no timeline just yet for reopening.

“We’ve been cleared by the powers that be to start rebuilding,” he says. “We’ve cleaned up all the fire debris except for the hood [where the fire is believed to have started] that the insurance company wants to take another look at. And then we are waiting on quotes to put a new duct run in for the wood grill. Once we have that quote and get an okay from the landlord to do it, we’ll have a much better timeline in terms of reopening.”

Move over cronut, cruffin, and brookies (a brownie and a cookie), there’s a new so-called “Frankenpastry” in town.

The crookie—what happens when a chocolate-chip cookie melts inside a croissant—is the latest “It” pastry to hit Baltimore.

And it’s a buttery, salty, sweet sensation. The innovative treat was first invented in 2022 by baker Stéphane Louvard, owner of Maison Louvard in Paris, who decided to experiment at work one day while making croissants next to his kitchen crew who were toiling over a batch of chocolate-chip cookies. He put the two together and—voila!—the crookie was born.

Louvard sold several dozen crookies that day, but the treat really took off when it went viral on TikTok, with more than 43 million video views to date. Ever since taking social media by storm, crookies have sprung up in bakeries across the world—including Baltimore where La Masion by Café Dear Leon (and their Canton sister spot Café Dear Leon) is believed to be the first local bakery to sell the creation.

Min Kim, owner of La Maison in Remington decided to add crookies to his pastry lineup as a favor to a patron.

“One of our regulars who has been coming to the store since it opened had been asking us to make crookies. He was sending us Instagram videos and posts like, ‘I know you have a great croissants and great cookies, can you put them together?’” says Kim.

The bakery’s creation is a classic croissant with their French-style brown butter chocolate-chip cookie dough folded inside in the laminated pastry. The top of the croissant is blanketed by a salty caramelized melted chocolate.

“I’d seen crookies before,” says Kim. “We try to stay on top of pastry trends and see what’s out there. Last year, I was like, ‘Let’s just to make this as a gift to our regulars.’”

Of course, other fans have followed, says Kim, and crookies are especially popular with the moppets.

“Not every trend is great,” says Min, who sells some 60 crookies a day, “but this is one that people really wanted to see here in Baltimore.”

While many spots rely on recorded playlists to help set the mood, live music is taking center stage at local bars and restaurants.

Venues with live music include Mount Vernon’s The Prime Rib (where a jazz trio or piano player perform American Songbook standards), Hampden’s The Duchess (with its rotating lineup of local bands), and Highlandtown’s Motte (frequent jazz nights).

At Atlas Restaurant Group, live music is featured at 28 of their 54 properties. In fact, the restaurant group’s music program is so extensive, there’s even a dedicated entertainment director who books more than two dozen bands across the company’s properties on a weekly basis.

“We all subscribe to that belief that a dining experience is, of course, about the food,” says entertainment director Barrett Johnson. “The food is the foundation. But it takes more than a foundation to build a house. Offering live music gives you a full sensory experience.”

“It’s a real testament to the music community because it’s so diverse. You never know if the guy who is ripping the guitar at Admiral’s Cup is also teaching high-school math.”

Johnson knows a thing or two about hitting the high notes. She majored in music at the University of Miami and is herself a professional vocalist.

The songstress, who occasionally performs at the properties in a pinch, has booked many an up-and-comer, including jazz-and-blues powerhouse Carly Harvey, who had a two-chair turn on NBC’s The Voice and performed at the restaurant group’s Monarque in Harbor East, and pianist Eli Staples, who played at former basketball star Michael Jordan’s wedding and tickled the ivories at their Order of the Ace, also in Harbor East.

In addition, there’s also a steady roster of “regular” folks who perform by night but hold day jobs to help make ends meet.

“We book a great mix of people who have day jobs, including doctors and lawyers and occasionally servers and bartenders from our own properties,” says Johnson. “It’s a real testament to the music community because it’s so diverse. You never know if the guy who is ripping the guitar at Admiral’s Cup is also teaching high-school math.”

“I lived in Nashville for a year and this is better.”

Johnson believes that Baltimore has an incredibly strong arts community—and she’s happy about being able to provide artists a platform for their talents.

“Baltimore has such a thriving arts community, especially the music community,” she says. “I lived in Nashville for a year and this is better. I am proud to be part of this community of musicians and so thankful to be able to literally invest in them.”

Puerto 511 Cocina Peruana owner Jose Victorio Alarcon made a name for himself cooking fine Peruvian food but always dreamed of owning a second spot celebrating Peruvian street food, namely the empanada.

That dream became reality in 2019 when he opened his beloved Andina. So it was particularly painful when he lost Andina in a divorce settlement. He turned his full attention back to Puerto 511, until a chance visit to a food court convinced him that he should make another go of it.

“I was with my girlfriend, Patricia, in this nice food court,” he says. “They had empanadas, so I ordered two. I was so disappointed—they were greasy and only had ground beef in them. I told my girlfriend, ‘When you try my empanadas, you’ll see the difference.’”

Not long after, Alarcon made a batch of the half-moon-shaped specialty he grew up eating in his home country. “When Patricia tried it,” says Alarcon, “she said, ‘You need to look for your own place—this is delicious.’”

Months later, while walking in Fells Point, he strolled past an empty storefront that formerly housed Sofi’s Crepes. For Alarcon, the brick-lined alley with outdoor tables offered a quiet charm. Last May, he decided to make his dream come true and opened Empa511 (the number is the country code for Peru).

“There was no kitchen, but Puerto opens at 5 p.m. and my cook starts at 3 p.m. The kitchen is empty in the morning, so we prepare everything at Puerto 511 and assemble and bake them on-site.”

Tell me what makes your empanadas special?
I make everything, including the dough, from scratch using my grandmother’s recipe. They’re not fried, they’re baked, and they’re slightly sweet—and none of the fillings are ground. I have huge pieces of chicken, pork, and steak. Everything is chopped and we make them daily, using Peruvian chiles—ají amarillo, ají rocoto, ají panca.

Do you have a favorite type of the seven you sell?
The Huachana is my favorite. It has pork, caramelized onion, and scrambled egg. I remember when my mom made them for breakfast in Peru.

Puerto 511 is more fine-dining. Is it fun for you to make Peruvian street food?
It’s the same flavor, but the price is more accessible.

What did you want the space to feel like?
I want it to smell good—we are always baking. I wanted it to feel minimalist. I also wanted to reduce plastic, so we don’t sell water, it’s free and the cups are compostable. The dishes are biodegradable. Reducing plastic and respect for the environment were important to me.

How did you learn to cook?
When I was a child, my mom always told me, you need to learn cooking so you have more opportunities in life. I studied business administration, but after three years, I didn’t feel very happy. I decided to go to cooking school. Before cooking school, I had never been outside my country. At school, I ended up winning an international competition. The kitchen changed my life.

Is there anything else you want us to know?
Empa511 is dog-friendly. I love dogs and have a Maltese-shih tzu mix named Dogman. He likes chicken empanadas.

When you visit Frederick’s Cugino Forno, simply point to any one of the 11 featured pies on the menu and and you’ll instantly know why Yelp voted it one of the Top 100 pizza shops in the nation.

The aptly named eatery—which translates to “cousin’s oven” in Italian—is owned and operated by five cousins, including Pat Gio, Erin Yildrim, and Yilmaz Guver. They launched their first store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and have opened four more in the state since. After moving from North Carolina, Gio and Yildrim opened the sixth shop in the old Coca-Cola bottling factory in Frederick in 2017. The pizzeria now sells a whole lot of dough—somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 pies a month.

With its family-style picnic tables, self-serve herb and spice bar, stacks of paper plates, and Mutti tomato cans filled with plastic utensils, the space is casual and comfortable. It’s also a celebration of Italy with Ferrari and Maserati banners, Italian soccer jerseys, and Gio’s green Vespa parked on the patio, though the cousins are not from the country that invented pizza but from neighboring Turkey.

It was Guver who first fell in love with pizza when, during a 2010 trip to Italy, he visited the famed L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele in Naples (made famous by Julia Roberts’ pizza pilgrimage in Eat, Pray, Love). Guver liked the spot so much, he took a job there to learn the art and science of pizza-making.

Clearly, the budding pizzaiolo—along with his cousins, who did years of pizza research—was a quick study. At Cugino Forno, the oversized pies that arrive on large metal sheet pans are some of the best I’ve eaten outside of Italy, where my sister lived for 20 years. In the Neapolitan tradition, they’re cooked in a wood-fire oven at high heat over molten-hot, volcanic stones for about 90 seconds. The result is a properly blistered crust that’s airy and light and stands up to a layer of San Marzano tomato sauce and puddles of house-made buffalo-milk mozzarella. Most of the raw ingredients are sourced from the Boot Country, including double-zero flour from Piedmont and tomatoes from Mount Vesuvius.

Start with a basic margherita so you can best appreciate the high-quality ingredients (“This is how you can understand a good pizza,” says Gio), then move on to the sweet and spicy Napoletana, laden with spicy sausage, pepper, and cippolini onions.

The shop also carries three types of salad, vibrant with locally sourced vegetables, and a selection of house-made dressings. To complement the meal, there’s beer and inexpensive wine by the glass or bottle. And to add to the excitement, there’s an impressive spinning carousel-style freezer—designed by Ferrari, no less—filled with imported gelato that seems straight from the streets of Sicily, where the artisanal ice cream was purportedly perfected. The gelato is an excellent capper to a meal. But pizza remains the true star.

“Customers tell me it’s the best pizza they’ve ever eaten,” says Gio proudly. “That’s an important compliment, because it’s not likely that this is their first pizza. They’ve often been eating pizza for 25, 30 years—or even more.”

CUGINO FORNO: 1705 N. Market St., Frederick, 240-575-9903. HOURS: Sun.-Sat. 11 a.m.-9 p.m. PRICES: Pizza: $17.95-23.95; salads: $10.50-11.50; desserts: $5.50-6.50. AMBIANCE: Factory chic.

When it came to figuring out his latest restaurant concept, James Beard Award-winning chef Spike Gjerde turned to France for inspiration. Gallic gastronomy might seem like an unexpected pivot for a chef who championed New American cuisine at the beloved Woodberry Kitchen (now the Tavern at Woodberry Kitchen). But long before he built his reputation on Mid-Atlantic sourcing, Gjerde was a budding baker who scored a job at the French bakery Pâtisserie Poupon after graduating from Middlebury College in 1985.

When a beloved aunt and uncle bought him his first cookbook, Richard Olney’s Simple French Food, it sealed the deal. “I never stopped thinking about that book and it became a throughline in my life,” he says. “I still have it—and it’s in tatters.”

That book, and the sun-soaked region and cooking of Provence—seasonal ingredients, simply prepared—shaped his culinary roots and inspired him to open La Jetée, located in the Canopy Hilton Baltimore in the former Cindy Lou’s Fish House space. The name La Jetée was inspired by the title of an esoteric French film, as well as the restaurant’s positioning on Harbor Point (La Jetée translates to “The Jetty,” which is a small pier where boats can be docked).

Bathed in butterscotch light, the 80-seat dining room sits just at the edge of the Patapsco. With a quiet palette, natural materials, and linen curtains that fan across floor-to-ceiling windows, the vibe is Marseilles meets Maryland.

The same can be said of the concise menu that nods to France with classic dishes such as salad Niçoise and steak frites, along with a bar program highlighting French spirits such as the anise-flavored pastis, and wines from famous wine-growing regions.

Gjerde is still cooking with the seasons and serious about sourcing from local purveyors: Keepwell Vinegar is a pantry staple; Ceremony Coffee in Harbor East supplies the beans for the coffee bar (stocked daily with house-made pastries like the Breton classic kouign-amann); and aromatic olive oil comes from Dimitri Olive Oil in Lutherville. And as always, Maryland’s farmers and fishermen and -women provide high-quality products for Gjerde and culinary director Steven Kenny to work with.

While expectations are always high when a chef of Gjerde’s stature opens a new spot, the restaurant has had some growing pains since its opening last October. To wit, the original chef is no longer on staff and Gjerde and Kenny are overseeing the kitchen until a full-time replacement is found. Another challenge of a hotel restaurant is that it needs to be all things to all people, which can make it tricky for a kitchen that’s producing pain perdu in the morning and turning out lamb shanks at night.

In fact, over the past two months of visits, it was my midday meal on a fall afternoon, a torpedo-sized pan bagnat—a sort of salad Niçoise in a baguette crammed with confit tuna, capers, olives, anchovies, and green beans—that was my favorite. Dinners, however, have been more of a mixed affair, though the starters are a notable strong suit.

During one of my many meals, as Édith Piaf sang “La Vie en Rose” over the sound system, two kinds of bread, a beautiful focaccia-like fougasse perfumed with roasted garlic and rosemary, and a sweet and savory flatbread called a pissaladière, threaded with caramelized onion, olives, and anchovies, arrived at the table. It was a promising start to the meal.

Cold seafood is a real star here: An order of clams escabeche—sweet morsels marinated in vinaigrette topped with a confetti-like shower of mirepoix—and a lovely Maryland blue crab tossed with aioli and fresh herbs were both standouts. On another visit, a fall salad with Little Gem greens, warm chèvre, diced  apples, and a storm of hazelnuts showed off the season. On that trip, I couldn’t help but ogle the seafood “plateau” at another table—a clam-shell-shaped throne with a smorgasbord of various types of seafood strewn across a bed of ice.

Disappointingly, entrees were somewhat hit or miss. The lamb shoulder a la plancha was tough (too long under the heat lamp was one theory), though the hearty helping of ratatouille was a terrific accompaniment. A gorgeous hunk of tuna poivre was seared on the sides but served ice cold in the center. A burger made of ground short rib featured imaginative elements—onion confit, nutty Cantal cow’s-milk cheese, a hit of aioli—but suffered from a stale brioche bun.

Still, there were dishes that worked better: A chicken paillard, a zesty airline chicken breast pounded paper thin, lightly fried to a golden brown, and served with chive aioli and a tangle of greens, felt simple and satisfying. A fruits de mer pasta dish showcasing hand-cut noodles, morsels of monkfish, mussels, clams, and lobster in tomato sauce tinged with herbs was just the right stick-to-the-ribs fare on a cold fall night.

And most of the desserts, made by Kaity Mitchell (formerly of D.C.’s glam Italian spot L’Ardente), were outstanding, including airy profiteroles filled with Grand Marnier ice cream and drizzled with dark chocolate sauce and a just-sweet-enough chocolate mousse.

All new restaurants, even ones by industry veterans, need time to find their footing. Given a little more time, with Gjerde at the helm, La Jetée should fulfill its mission of bringing Provence to the Patapsco.

LA JETÉE: 1215 Wills St. 443-960-8670. HOURS: Mon.-Fri. breakfast: 7 a.m.-11 a.m.; lunch: 11 a.m.- 2 p.m.; dinner: 5- 9 p.m. Sat. brunch 8 a.m.-2 p.m.; dinner: 5-9 p.m. PRICES: Starters: $9-98; entrees:
$24-44. AMBIANCE: Nautical with French accent.

SPAM, the iconic canned meat that’s long been a part of Pacific Island culture, is having a moment in Charm City. From SPAM musubi at Charm City Poke & Sushi in Harbor Point to grilled SPAM tossed with saiman noodles at Halo Hawaiian BBQ & Poke Bar in Arbutus, the product prized for its price and long shelf life has found its way onto many a local menu.

One original take comes from Pink Flamingo in Remington, where discs of SPAM—shaved razor thin on a mandolin—are deep-fried, then transformed into chips as a vessel for a bowl of house-made French onion dip.

“I was talking to [co-owner] Brendan Dorr and he said he wanted pub food but with these island-esque vibes,” says executive chef Blaine Welsh of the inspiration. “Brendan was set on having SPAM in some way, shape, or form on the menu and I wanted to try something different.”

As part of the lineup, Welsh also wanted to include an onion dip, so he married the two ideas. “There’s a saltiness to the SPAM and once you fry it, add the sweetness from caramelized onions, and creaminess of the sour cream,” says Welsh. “I just thought it would work together.”

Clearly, it’s working well. Welsh sells an estimated 120 orders of chips and dip a month. “People just buy it, which shocked me,” he says. “I am proud of the dish but I thought we’d have to push it a lot harder than we do.”

Island vibes were also the inspiration for the SPAM musubi at The Duchess. “SPAM is getting a little comeback,” says Kiko Fejarang, executive chef-partner of The Duchess. “It was a childhood favorite of mine growing up in Guam. I wanted it on the menu for nostalgia and a little bit of feeling like being on vacation. Anytime I’d visit Hawaii, I’d grab a musubi.”

Pink Flamingo’s Dorr has his theories about why SPAM—a portmanteau of “spiced ham” introduced by Hormel Foods in 1937, two years before the start of WW II, and popularized when American troops brought the food to Hawaii—is back in fashion.

“We are seeing other cultures being able to sell their foods now,” says Dorr. “It’s a staple in Guam. It’s a staple in Hawaii. You’re seeing more chefs who aren’t just white males being able to put out the foods they ate while they were growing up. You’re seeing more voices, which is a good thing.”

As part of her morning routine, Old Goucher resident Rebekah Horowitz starts most days with an eight-block walk to Sophomore Coffee.

“It’s such a nice community place to be,” she says. “The coffee is great and I love that [owner] Kris [Fulton] roasts his own coffee, but part of the reason I go is that my dog, Jacques, walks me there. He is also a very big fan of Sophomore.” (This may have something to do with the Milk-Bones they keep in a jar on the counter.) “If they’re closed for some reason, I have to fight him not to walk me there,” she says.

While Sophomore gets plenty of traffic, Horowitz—and her pit bull/dachshund mix—hold the honor of being the cafe’s top customers (this is a measurable metric thanks to a dining app that tracks customer frequency). Horowitz, who works remotely for a public health organization in D.C., sees Sophomore as not only part of her regular ritual but an extension of her wider world.

“The people who work there are lovely and a lot of them live in the neighborhood or close by, so you see people not just at the coffee shop, but at the pool or walking on the street,” she says. “One of the people who used to work there is even my dog sitter now.”

While Jacques always gets a dog treat, Horowitz has small seasonal fluctuations in her order: drip coffee with a splash of milk in the colder months, iced coffee in the warmer ones, and an ice cube in her hot coffee during transitional periods. Sometimes she gets her drinks to go, other times she sits and stays. Her canine GPS leads her there before 8 a.m. most weekdays and a bit later on weekends.

“They know what I’m going to order, and it’s ready for me right away,” say Horowitz. “And the staff knows about my work, they know when I’m out of town for a few days. If I go on vacation, they ask me how it was. Going to Sophomore just feels like I’m not only going and buying something but having a quick little catch-up with my friends—it’s a touchstone.”

In a city that’s fiercely dedicated to its sports teams, quirky traditions, and all things crab, Baltimore’s loyalty extends just as ardently to its coffeehouses, cafes, bars, and other eating and drinking establishments. And at a time when life feels increasingly isolated and automated, being a regular somewhere can offer something essential: a sense of belonging.

With repeated visits, a restaurant staff gets to know patrons’ predilections, drink orders, names of their children and grandchildren, anniversaries and birthdays, and details about their personal and professional lives.

Sophomore owner Kris Fulton first fell in love with hospitality because he liked the relational aspect of the business. In his first hospitality job at 19, he worked at the now-closed City Dock Coffee in Annapolis. The staff there was encouraged to adopt what they called “the Cheers mentality,” where, as the lyrics to the hit TV ’80s sitcom theme song say, “Everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.”

“The idea was that you should know 70 percent of your customers by name or drink order when they walked in,” says Fulton. “Sometimes you’d see people walking down the street coming toward you and present them with their drink before they even got to the register—it made their day.”

Being a regular also offers the opportunity for patrons to connect not only with staff but with one another.

“The fact that we are a small space works in our favor,” says Fulton. “When people take the time to sit and have a coffee here, they’re right next to each other. And if they start a conversation with me behind the counter, they’re basically having a conversation with the room. It’s exciting to see some of those connections happen.”

“GOING TO SOPHOMORE JUST FEELS LIKE I’M HAVING A QUICK LITTLE CATCH-UP WITH MY FRIENDS—IT’S A TOUCHSTONE.”

Coffeehouses as gathering spots is nothing new—the concept dates back as far back as the Ottoman Empire, where people of different social classes could gather for intellectual and often political debate. Taverns as meeting spots dates to ancient Greece and Rome, white-tablecloth restaurants first became hot spots in Paris in the 1700s, dive bars became hangouts in the late 1800s, and diners turned into social hubs after World War II.

Pretty much anywhere food or drink are served have long been places to gather. But wherever people flock, the reason is much the same: Being a regular gives patrons a sense of camaraderie, community, and connection.

Local coffee shop owner Dave Sherman, of Catalog Coffee in Hampden, has witnessed the bonds that form over freddo cappuccinos and sage lattes.

“We have a ton of people that use us as that third space,” he says, explaining how the coffee shop fills the need to congregate outside home or work (in this remote landscape, it sometimes is the office). “And they’re great customers. They come in and they’ll work on their laptop on our two-tops, and then as soon as we start to get busy, they’ll migrate over to our community table, often networking and just building more community. I’ve definitely seen some friendships form between staff and guests and then between the guests themselves—we’ve seen a couple of romantic connections happening, too.”

Gino Cardinale, co-owner of Tark’s Grill & Bar in Lutherville, says that creating connections is part and parcel of owning an eating establishment.

“Restaurants are not just a place to feed yourself and spend money,” he says. “When they’re working, they’re about connecting with people.”

As much as regulars love their roles in restaurants, restaurants need them, too. Regulars are, if you will, the bread and butter of every restaurant—the patrons who a place can reliably count on to fill seats (or barstools). Through thick and thin (to wit: the pandemic), regulars stay loyal to the brand.

“When you open a restaurant, you have to think past the sizzle of a grand opening and [attention] that you’re bound to get in the beginning,” says Cardinale. “If a restaurant doesn’t find a way to connect with its core community in the location that it’s in, they’re not going to make it long term—the flip side of that is that if you do, you can thrive for decades.”

WHEREVER PEOPLE FLOCK, THE REASON IS THE SAME: BEING A REGULAR GIVES PATRONS A SENSE OF CAMARADERIE, COMMUNITY, AND CONNECTION.

If there’s a formula for how to keep them coming, Cardinale seems to have figured it out.

“Running a restaurant is not always about reaching people who’ve never heard of you before, it’s really about connecting with those who already have,” he says. “There’s no better indicator that you’re doing something right in the restaurant business than when people come back time and again. At Tark’s, we have people who come for lunch, and then hours later, they come for dinner all on the same day—and that’s several days a week.”

For dedicated regulars like that, their favorite haunt isn’t just a place where everybody knows their name—it’s a place that feels like home.

About six months or so per year, some two to three nights a week whenever Hampden/Woodberry residents Melanie and Shawn McMahon are in town, they can be found standing—yes, standing—near the window at the zinc bar at Petit Louis Bistro.

The fact that the bar doesn’t have any seating doesn’t stop them from ordering food and drinks. Given that the McMahons both have desk jobs, they prefer to stand while they eat.

“We used to eat at a table but sometime after the pandemic, we planted ourselves in the corner of the bar and never left,” says Melanie with a laugh. “Now, we’re wearing a hole in that corner.”

The McMahons are diehard supporters of the Roland Park restaurant. They dine at Louis so frequently, they know the menu by heart, have befriended (and socialize with) certain staffers, and can cite chapter and verse of every  aspect of the place, including the daily specials and the names of nearly every person on staff.

“We’ve really developed relationships with the staff,” says Shawn. “The staff is the first thing that draws us here—everyone has been lovely to us from the first time we walked in the door and eating here always feels like coming home.”

In fact, when Shawn and Melanie are away for any extended time, or driving back from a long road trip, it’s often their first stop.

“The biggest testament to the place is that we don’t even drive home first when we’ve been away,” says Shawn. “We drive straight to Louis—that’s our welcome back.”

Even when they’re away, in fact, Louis is never far from their thoughts. “When we were in Paris, [maître d’hôtel] Patrick Del Valle arranged for us to have a meal at Chez l’ Ami Louis,” says Melanie. “That’s the restaurant that Petit Louis was based on.”

Fourteen years ago, when the McMahons started patronizing Louis, they first were lured by the wide-ranging French bistro fare.

“It started because we both work full-time and going out to dinner is often an easy solution after a long day of work,” says Melanie. “We have very different taste in food, so we agreed that whenever we couldn’t agree on what to have at home, we’d go to Petit Louis.”

In the early years that meant having dinner there once a week. These days, the legal marketing partner says it’s closer to three times a week and she and Shawn each have their favorite orders.

Shawn likes the salad verte and the Saturday night beef short rib special; Melanie gravitates to the steak tartare, a Monday night special, and the gravlax appetizer.  He drinks Tito’s with muddled lime, followed by a glass of Beaujolais or Côtes du Rhône; she gets a glass of Champagne or Pinot Noir. If friends join them, they’ll make an exception, grab a table, and order the whole roasted chicken.

“We’ve been eating there for so long, and know the menu so well, that Patrick has joked he’s going to give me the test he gives to new servers to see if I could pass,” says Melanie.

What motivates them to go there now has become something deeper. “For us, Petit Louis is not a just a place eat dinner,” says Melanie. “We’ve really developed relationships with the staff. Going there feels more like visiting family.”

Like the McMahons, John Groopman and his wife, Hilary, have formed deep friendships as dining devotees of La Cuchara in Hampden-Woodberry.*

“We have a standing Sunday night reservation there,” says Groopman, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “We can’t think of a better way to start the week.”

The married couple has been eating at the Basque-inspired restaurant ever since it opened in a historic mill in 2015.

“We’ve known [co-owners] Jake, Ben, and Amy for quite a while,” says Groopman. “We were there in the first or second week after they opened. In the early years, we’d sit at the bar and have pinxtos and we’d go not because we knew a lot about Basque Country cooking but because it was just a wonderful setting and we got to know a lot of people who work there—and we still do.”

Sunday also happens to be half-price wine night—never a bad thing—and they always sit at table 40 toward the back of the restaurant, near the heart of the flaming asador that’s loaded with grilled meat and seafood. The restaurant has also been woven into the fabric of their post-Thanksgiving tradition—they now dine with their whole extended family there.

Though they’ve eaten their way through most of the menu, John and Hilary have their favorite dishes, of course. “If Ben is making tuna-stuffed piquillo peppers, that’s an essential, the shrimp a la planxta and the mussels are always a winner, and the dayboat scallops are pretty good,” he says. “And we always order the chorizo Manchego pintxos.”

Being an insider has its advantages, too. “When the kitchen is experimenting, we get to taste stuff, too,” he says.  “And going to La Cuchara inspired us to visit San Sebastian and learn much about enjoying the wines of Spain.”

The Groopmans have gotten so close with the owners, they’ve even invited them to dinner in their own home, where they were the ones doing the cooking.

Like the Groopmans, Horowitz has found a sense of kindship thanks to her routine rounds.

“Kris and I do a lot of chatting inside and outside Sophomore,” she says. “We run in a lot of the same spaces and same circles.”

In November, Fulton was invited to celebrate Jacques’ “barkmitzvah.” Because Jacques is such a fixture, for a long time, he was even the Wi-Fi password for the cafe.

“People would stop me on the street and say hi to him because they recognized him from his picture on the sign with the coffee shop’s password,” says Horowitz, laughing.

Horowitz considers being a regular a vital part—and perk—of urban living.

“Having that routine is a special part of living in the city,” she says. “People talk a lot about how a city is anonymous, because so many people live there places like Sophomore remind us how much of a community we are living in. Baltimore’s a very livable city, so it’s a real opportunity to be in the big city, but not at all be anonymous.”

*Editor’s Note: As of online publication in early January, La Cuchara was closed indefinitely in the wake of a fire that originated in the building’s ventilation system. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

Travel filled me up this year—Budapest, Berlin, Vancouver, Kyoto—but so did cranberry pecan bread from Ovenbird, Italian subs from Scittino’s Italian Marketplace, and many a gin martini with green olives from Dutch Courage and Petit Louis. In these turbulent times, when the world has sometimes felt tilted on its axis, communing with friends and family over a great meal remains one of life’s surest pleasures.

I’ve covered Baltimore’s food scene for more than a decade, yet it still feels new. That’s because it’s endlessly dynamic: new openings, familiar places reinventing themselves, and cooking that follows the seasons. I love talking to chefs, watching them work, and eating everywhere—from bars and docks to gardens and even parking lots (as I did while downing chicken gyros at Aleko’s in Middletown with my oldest son).

This was the year that comfort food soothed my soul (and stomach) and made everything feel just a little bit lighter. Here are 10 of my most memorable bites.

The Arroz Fosforera at Alma Cocina Latina
This Venezuelan play on paella at Alma in Station North features a tender tentacle of grilled octopus ringed by mussels and punctuated by dabs of pumpkin aioli. The seafood sit on a bed of boldly flavored and oh-so-crispy bomba rice.

The Tres Leches at Clavel
This is the platonic ideal of the dessert whose name means “three milks” (that’s condensed and evaporated milk, plus heavy whipping cream). Imagine eating a cloud.

Empanadas at Empa511
Having eaten empanadas on a visit to Peru a few years back, I can safely say that Jose Alarcon’s artisanal hot pockets are the real deal. Whether stuffed with chicken, pork, or pure vegetables, they’re all delicious, especially when dunked in the drinkable chimichurri. I buy them by the dozen from Alarcon’s new shop in Fells Point, eat a few on the way to my car, and then freeze the rest for the future—though they never last very long.

Pizza at Frank’s
Dave Portnoy was not wrong. (Nor was my car dealer who has been telling me for years that Frank’s has some of the best pizza around.) By the time I decided to make the pilgrimage to the famed Overlea shop, it took nearly 2.5 hours to get a to-go order. (The magic of going viral.) But it was worth the wait. In his “One-Bite” review, Portnoy called the pizza “spectacular,” and I’m inclined to agree. As a Philly girl, I was thrilled to find this type of Jersey-style pie—with a sturdy New York-style crust and ideal cheese-to-sauce ratio—right here in Baltimore.

Pastries at La Maison
Literally all of them, but if I had to name a few, I’d say the almond croissant and the morning kouign (laminated dough with brown sugar and cinnamon) are phenomenal. Grab a table at the new Cafe Dear Leon sister-cafe in Remington, pair the pastries with a cup of drip coffee sourced by Ceremony, and you’ve already had a terrific day.

The Crystal Shrimp Dumplings at NiHao
I’m a sucker for dumplings, especially the shrimp dumplings at Peter Chang’s Canton gem. These are perfectly plump beauties—a delicate rice wrapper stuffed with a hearty helping of steamed shrimp and gorgeously presented in a bamboo basket.

The Mushroom Burger at The Prime Rib
While not an obvious choice on a menu that includes the titular steak—plus a terrific crab cake and other assorted seafood— the burger at The Prime Rib is a bit of an under-the-radar powerhouse. It’s available at the bar, but can also be ordered at a table. When you’re craving a burger, this is the one you’re thinking of: a fat patty of USDA prime beef, plus Gruyère and a heap of mushrooms on a toasted brioche bun. A serving of mammoth onion rings on the side seal the deal.

Sandy Pony Donuts
This adorable donut shop with various locations throughout the DMV has all sorts of wonderful flavors, making choosing just one nearly impossible, but the Jingle Shells—chocolate glaze with rainbow sprinkles—speaks to my inner child. Colorful, whimsical, and secretly doused with “stardust,” these treats even starred in Apple TV’s Pluribus.

The Crab Pot at Woodberry
The crab pot—basically crab dip infused with sherry—at Woodberry Tavern is a nostalgic treat for those of us who remember it from the restaurant’s original menu. (The tavern is now a micro-sized version of the hallowed farm-to-table spot, set in the space adjacent to the former main dining room.) When you order anything with crab at Woodberry, rest assured, it’s always local. And the rustic house-made crackers that accompany the dish are outstanding all on their own.

The Shrimp and Grits Cocktail at Wye Oak Tavern
Another standout shrimp dish that made my list is the shrimp and grits cocktail at Bryan and Michael Voltaggio’s outstanding Wye Oak Tavern in Frederick. The appetizer features four poached shrimp sourced from the Gulf served alongside a side of shrimp toast made with grits and shrimp mousse. A side of spicy green cocktail sauce—made with tomatillos and green tomatoes and spiked with horseradish and cracked pepper—gives both presentations a terrific kick. The whole dish is a visual delight and utterly original, clearly showcasing why the brothers are true Top Chefs.

This is the time of year for fluffy white stuff, whether wafting down from the sky or floating in steaming mugs of hot chocolate. In Baltimore, house-made marshmallows are everywhere, including Artifact Coffee in Hampden, where marshmallow fluff tops cups of hot chocolate, and Stone Mill Bakery in Lutherville, where the airy confections are perfectly paired with Valrhona cocoa and steamed milk.

At Sacré Sucré in Fells Point, the delicious delights have moved beyond the cocoa cup and now come in a variety of inventive flavors—marbled with ribbons of matcha, Earl Grey, caramel, or yuzu.

“We started making them when we were going to the farmers market,” says bakery co-owner Manuel Sanchez. “We didn’t want to sell just macarons, which is what we’re known for—we also needed something that was easy enough for us to make at home. Our first batch was so good, we started selling them.”

The marsh mallow, Althaea officinalis, is a wild plant that grows in wet, marshy environments. Through the centuries, different cultures, including the Greeks and Egyptians, have used the plant to treat many ailments, including wounds, inflammations, insomnia, and sore throats. As far back as 2,000 B.C.E., the Egyptians turned them into edible art by squeezing sap from the mallow plant and mixing it with nuts and honey.

The first iteration of the modern marshmallow was invented in the 19th century by the French, who whipped the sap (plus eggs and sugar) into a fluffy candy mold. Gelatin, which gave the confection its squishy texture, soon replaced the mallow root plant, while corn syrup replaced sap, allowing for easier production. (To date, more than 90 million marshmallows are sold annually, according to the National Confectioners Association.) By the early 1900s, marshmallows made their way to the U.S., and soon gave rise to items like s’mores, Moon Pies, and Marshmallow Fluff.

Sanchez sees the spongy sweet as a blank canvas with its own personality. “For me, the appeal is all about having these soft and fluffy marshmallows in different flavors,” he says, “and the fact that something you traditionally see as a candy has now become more of a dessert you can eat on its own.”

Until recently, Rob and Angela Wainwright and their five children were a military family. But after Rob retired from the Air Force, and the kids were grown and gone, the couple, who moved to Maryland in 2016, felt like it was time for their second act.

Angela had spent much of her career working in hospitality for large corporations (Red Lobster, Starbucks), mostly because of the flexibility it afforded as the couple moved from state to state; Rob always enjoyed cooking and had a creative side. So, when it was time to figure out that next chapter, the duo decided to open Bodega & Vino, an all-in one convenience store/breakfast spot/wine bar/hangout space in Locust Point.

“This is our empty nest phase,” says Angela, whose family is from Puerto Rico. “We’ve always wanted to do some sort of business. And this was something that spoke to us, since I’m from New York with all its bodegas.”

What they missed most was having a sense of community. “Even after several years of living here, we didn’t feel connected like you do when you enter a bodega in New York,” says Rob. “Having a wine bar allows us to entertain all the time without it being at our house.”

How would you define a bodega for anyone out there who doesn’t know?
Angela: A bodega is all things morning, all things afternoon. You can get a pastry or smoothie for breakfast or get a salad or sandwich for lunch. And we have a happy hour menu for the evening. We also have a grocery side with fruit and veggies and Taharka Brothers ice cream. A bodega is all the things that you need without having to go to the grocery store.

Tell me about the menu.
Rob: We went with simple fare like empanadas, tostones, and mojo potatoes. We also have something we call Brazilian beef sliders topped with plantains—they’re a play on what Anthony Bourdain showed in one of his videos when he was in Brazil. Also, since we had a double-deck pizza oven, folks kept telling us we needed to make pizza, so we created flatbreads and we call them Spanish-style flatbreads.

Angela, tell me more about how the space is reflective of your heritage.
Puerto Ricans are very welcoming and loving. I love being able to share my Puerto Rican culture. When you’re young, you don’t think about it—your culture is just the way you were raised. Now I’m sharing how I grew up with other people. People say they love the arroz con gandules (Puerto Rican-style yellow rice). I grew up eating it, so I didn’t think much of it until now, but the fact that my daughter is making it for the bodega makes it special.

What else do you want people to know?
Rob: We have the large Under Armour parking lot next to us. When you look at the folks in the parking lot, they are very digitally focused, as they beeline to the ferry. We wish we could grab their attention to say, “Take a break Baltimore Water Taxi comes every 15 minutes. Miss the ferry, come down—you don’t even have to buy anything. Don’t start your morning in a rush.” We want the bodega to be the living room for the neighborhood where you can hang out.

While you can’t judge a book by its cover, you can judge a coffee can by its label. Case in point: the Crofton-based Chesapeake Coffee Roasters, which features a glorious array of animals on their eco-friendly, made-in-Maryland, recyclable cans.

From the Oyster Reef blend to the Diamondback to the Hellbender (an ancient salamander that lives in the Chesapeake), each label shares a different conservation story. For the Oyster Reef, a percentage of coffee sales is donated back to the Oyster Recovery Project; and for the Hellbender, a percentage of proceeds supports salamander conservation efforts at The Maryland Zoo. There’s even a bird-friendly line (including one from Guatemala that features a Baltimore Oriole) that helps safeguard habitats and higher prices for farmers.

In other words, when consumers buy a can, or a cup, of Chesapeake Bay coffee, they’re getting way more than high-quality, certified organic, fair trade coffee—they’re helping to protect migratory and regional birds and other wildlife.

“Seven years ago, we started getting involved in taking organic to the next level, which is the bird-friendly programs we work with in support of research,” says Kevin Kehus, general manager of Chesapeake Coffee Roasters. “Those programs have been certified by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, ensuring that the coffee is grown under specific shade conditions that assist migratory bird habits.”

Chesapeake Roasters actually encourages farmers to grow coffee that is friendly to migratory bird species.

“That’s the real tie-in to the local,” says Kehus. “A lot of the bird species where our coffees are grown actually spend their summers here in the Chesapeake Bay region.”

The company (formerly known as Chesapeake Bay Roasting Company) was founded by Maryland native Rick Eber and his brother, Tom, back in 2002.

“We both lived in the Annapolis area,” says Eber, a restaurateur who sold commercial Italian espresso makers before segueing into the bean business. “I love the water—it’s where I find peace and tranquility. Living there, we realized that there were things that we could do to make an impact in the community and the environment and for the health of the Chesapeake Bay.”

While it hardly feels like a brand booster to have your product featured as a vector for a virus, that’s exactly what happened to Delmarva’s Sandy Pony Donuts when their confections were featured in the premiere episode of Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus, currently streaming on Apple TV.

Sandy Pony owners Ben and Brea Wang were first approached by the showrunners about 18 months ago, asking if they’d be interested in supplying doughnuts for a pivotal scene in the sci-fi drama, in which the world’s population mysteriously morphs into a happy hive mind.

Much of the show is set in Gilligan’s beloved Albuquerque (the setting for his hits Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul), but some of the scenes, involving some sort of shadowy government lab, take place in the Annapolis area.

Although the scenes were shot in Albuquerque, Gilligan wanted to support a business in the Annapolis area. When he’d read how Sandy Donuts was born, he was taken with their upstart story (and likely their branding, featuring brightly colored teal boxes)

Brea was working at NASA as a graphic designer, while Ben, who likes to bake, was in construction. Tired of the nine-to-five, Brea came up with the idea of doing a doughnut food truck, which the couple first launched in Chincoteague (hence the name, a reference to the island’s wild ponies).The shop now has five brick-and-mortar locations, including Annapolis, Bethany, and Dewey Beach.

When the call from showrunners came, Ben, who was already an avowed Breaking Bad fan, couldn’t have been more excited.

While they couldn’t reveal the exact plot of the show, “They told me, ‘Something happens to people. We can’t tell you what it is, good or bad, but we have to let you know and we need you to sign some paperwork.” Ben was all too familiar with the dark nature of Gilligan’s shows, but he was too tickled to care. “I don’t care if my donuts kill characters in the show,” he said, only half joking.

When filming started, Ben shipped the doughnuts to the Albuquerque set two dozen at a time over several weeks. In all, he shipped some hundred dozen doughnuts to New Mexico. Ben was also offered the opportunity to make them on set, but he declined, due to the work entailed in running their small family business.

Making the doughnuts was business as usual, but shipping them, which took him five to six hours, was a real challenge.

“We spent an entire day frying, glazing, and carefully packing box after box, making sure every donut would arrive looking—and tasting—perfect,” says Ben.

In the doughnuts’ starring scene, a woman is seen meticulously licking each and every so-called “Ms. Sandy” glazed donut tucked inside some five or six dozen boxes splayed open across the counter of a government building. The character licks the fried dough rounds, then places them back in the box, their surfaces slathered in her (virus-ridden) saliva. A sign below the boxes depicts a smiley face that reads, “Help Yourself!”

“If you watch the scene, they did the placement exactly how we line them up,” says Ben. “We line them up like a checkerboard in the box to make it fit. And when they open the box, and even how [the character] grabbed them, was exactly how you’d get them in the store. To me, that was like the coolest part. I didn’t request that, it was just so meaningful.”

After the trailer for the series ran, including a split second shot of the bakery box, the shop was flooded with calls, from Romania to Kuwait. And while the doughnut shop can’t ship their sweets worldwide, they can ship Pluribus-themed T-shirts and other swag.

Sandy Pony celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. “It couldn’t have been better timing to have this happen,” says Ben. “It’s been surreal.”

When it opened in 1993, G&M was a humble pizza shop along an industrial stretch of road near BWI airport in Linthicum Heights. Business partners John Zoulis and George Ieromonahos purchased the former pizza shop (named for its previous owners Gerry and Michael) at auction.

“The pizza place sold crab cakes but we tweaked the recipe,” says Zoulis, who also owns Estiatorio Plaka in Greektown. “When we took over G&M, we started testing recipes. We figured out that it’s all about the spices.”

More than three decades later, the blue crab recipe stands the test of time—and G&M has become a premier place to indulge in oversized crab cakes, as well as steaks and chicken Chesapeake.

Through the years, in addition to their regular customers, they’ve had a few VIPs. Director Steven Spielberg, writer Tom Clancy, and Sen. Ben Cardin (who hired G&M to cater a White House party) have all stopped by to get a taste of the Chesapeake-style menu.

The next generation now helps run the place but it can get confusing—ironically, both business partners have a son named Dimitrios and a daughter named Anna. “It’s a Greek thing,” says Zoulis with a laugh.

We chatted with him about three decades of success.

How did you refine your signature crab cake recipe?
The pizza shop sold a crab cake but we weren’t happy with it. We kept asking our customers, how do you like your crab cake and we took their feedback—you have to listen to the customers.

How much crab do you sell a day?
I can’t tell you because we also ship them all over the country, including Alaska and Hawaii, but I can tell you it’s 1,500 pounds of crab a day and 2,000 pounds on a busy weekend. During the holidays, we sell 20,000 pounds weekly of crabmeat. We can’t ship internationally, because the meat could sit in customs for who knows how long, but we have had customers come here from Australia who take them home.

Where do you source the meat?
We are using blue crab. People will tell you they are using blue crab from Maryland, but it’s impossible to get the meat. We have a Maryland-style crab cake but there’s not enough Maryland crabmeat to support our need for jumbo lump. I wish we could get it from Maryland—I try every year. We get ours from the Gulf and Indonesia and Maryland when in season.

Do you come from a restaurant family?
M father, Minas, owned Tom’s Restaurant in New York from Seinfeld. My uncles and cousins took over after my father’s death, and my family still runs it today. In addition to inspiring Seinfeld, it’s mentioned in the song “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega. When I first came here, I worked at Timbuktu Restaurant & Lounge [in Hanover]. I was born in New York, moved back to Greece, then came to Baltimore for college. I wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps.

What do you think keeps people coming back to G&M?
You cannot become stale—we are always introducing new stuff and trying to stay trendy without losing our consistency. We are known for our portions, our prices, and our consistency of product.

When Lindsay Willey was just beginning her career as assistant sommelier at Cinghiale, she had to fake it till she made it. With some 350 bottles and 40 glasses on the Harbor East restaurant’s wine list when it first opened in 2007, it boasted one of the most extensive exclusively Italian wine programs in Maryland.

“A lot of times when a guest would ask about a particular bottle, I would literally run in the office to look something up,” admits Willey, who was 28 at the time. “I’m not good at lying, I’m not good at schmoozing—I needed to be able to be honest about it.”

Now, some 18 years later, she’s the wine director of Charleston—Cindy Wolf’s famed Low Country restaurant that’s just a stone’s throw from Cinghiale—where she has complete command of the restaurant’s 7,000-strong inventory, one that includes a diverse range of important growing regions across the world, from the Southern Rhône Valley to Burgundy and Champagne.

In addition, she oversees the wine programs for the newly formed Tony Foreman+Co., whose properties include Cinghiale, The Milton Inn, Petit Louis Bistro, Johnny’s, and The Duchess. In total, she’s responsible for handling a staggering 20,000-plus bottles among the six cellars. She’s a bona fide expert now, but the 46-year-old veteran has maintained the same refreshing humility as the day she started.

As she gives a tour of Charleston’s 55-degree wine cellar—really just a tightly crowded room off the restaurant’s kitchen with wine organized numerically—her deep cellar knowledge about vintners, their prized products, and potential pairings is impressive. She pulls a random bottle—bin 2127—off the shelf and rattles off the tasting notes.

“This is a 2021 Châteauneuf-du-Pape,” she says, cradling the bottle in both hands. “It’s a current release from Clos des Pape; we had a great visit there last March. It leans more red fruit, but with a lot of floral and herbaceous notes.”

She’s just getting started. “It’s not uncommon to have lavender and rosemary and sage growing near the vineyards, so it can pick up some of those aromatics in the wine,” she continues. “That’s why it’s perfect for this time of year when chef does things with eggplant and tomatoes and herbs and black olives. It marries nicely with those Mediterranean flavors.”

Charleston has long been both a local and national dining darling, thanks to its peerless owner-chef Cindy Wolf, the well-curated wine list, and hospitality that comes from the heart. And there are awards galore to prove it—in a small, alley-like room behind the bar, and out of public view, an entire section is wallpapered with awards and nods that have poured in ever since Wolf and her then-business partner, Tony Foreman, opened the restaurant in 1997. (Wolf became the sole owner in Dec. 2024.) And yet, there is one award that has been elusive.

While Wolf has been nominated for Best Chef Mid-Atlantic nine times (the restaurant has garnered 24 nods in total), she has never won—earning her the nickname of the “Susan Lucci of chefs.” Lucci, famously, was nominated for 19 Daytime Emmys before she won on her 20th try. Wolf and Charleston didn’t have to wait quite that long to get culinary gold. In June, Charleston won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages.

The medallion, slung on a simple satin ribbon and framed in silver leaf, hangs proudly inside the restaurant’s foyer. It’s very much a shared award: Willey shaped the cellar—and sommeliers and staff moved the bottles from cellar to table. But it’s Wolf’s daily changing seasonal menu, complete with 20 different pairings for each dish, that’s the inspiration behind Willey’s work.

When the restaurant was named a semi-finalist for its wine program last January, Willey was quietly excited. By April, when Charleston was named a finalist, her anticipation grew. “I was definitely hoping,” she admits, “but I was cautious, because I thought, ‘There’s no way.’ And then chef was like, ‘We’re going to the awards ceremony in Chicago!’” recalls Willey, sounding like a little kid. “And I got excited.”

WOLF’S DAILY CHANGING MENU IS THE INSPIRATION BEHIND WILLEY’S WORK.

Once seated at the awards ceremony, Willey’s partner, Patrick Weber, who used to work in event production, tried reading the tea leaves. The trio was seated on the end of a row, something he saw as a good sign.

“When we sat down, Patrick was like, ‘This is interesting,’” she recalls. “He said, ‘All the speakers are usually seated on the aisle because that way they don’t have to go through other people,’ But even then, I was like, ‘It’s probably just a coincidence.’”

It was not. When the restaurant’s name was called, Wolf and Willey—who says she let out a Beavis and Butt-Head laugh—stood up and embraced, then headed toward the stage at the Lyric Opera, where, at long last, they accepted the award, known as the Oscars of the food world.

At the podium, Wolf portrayed their partnership. “It is a joy to have a som who knows your cooking, understands your cooking, and knows how to pair—it’s the best thing you can ask for as a chef,” Wolf recalls saying to the crowds.

Willey never set out to be a certified sommelier. Growing up in a ramshackle 1800s home in Garrett County on some 30 acres, there were plenty of places for her, along with three siblings and various farm animals, to roam. It was a happy childhood, filled with family and good food. Her parents primed her palate. “My dad, Morris, was a really good cook; my mom, Pam, was a wonderful baker,” she says, “and we were always making jam in the summer.”

Her father’s signature dish was roast chicken with cippolini onions. He kept a vegetable garden. Her mother made strawberry-rhubarb pie. Wine was something that appeared on the table at special occasions. “At Christmas, if we had tenderloin, my mom would have a Cab or something like that out, but there wasn’t a big emphasis on wine.”

In her teen years, Willey wasn’t yet sure of her future. She earned a scholarship to attend college at North Carolina State to be a pulp and paper engineer, because it was the path of least resistance. “There was a big paper mill in Western Maryland,” she says, “and they liked to promote people to have careers in math and science. But after one semester I was like, ‘I cannot be a pulp and paper person.’ It was going to be a really dirty job. I love paper. I was like, ‘I want to be on the happy side of paper!’”

From there, she headed back to Maryland to Frostburg State, her parents’ alma mater, majoring in graphic design. And she worked at an Italian restaurant part-time, where she did wine tastings for the first time. “I loved food, and I loved the restaurant business,” she recalls. “I loved learning about things and talking with the guests. It helped me learn to talk to people as an adult, because I was always a little bit introverted, but I didn’t think I could make a career of it. I always thought, ‘I’ll be a server, I’ll make some money, and then I have to get my grown-up job.’”

At 22, after graduation in 2001, she moved to Mount Vernon for her “adult job,” working for Agora Publishing on newsletter design—and then came the light-bulb moment. “After six years, I needed to hit the reset button,” she says. “My dad had terminal cancer in 2007, and he passed away in 2008. It was eye-opening. Not to be corny, but life is short—so, I took that leap. I thought, ‘He was only 56 when he died—I want to find something that makes me happy.’”

On a lark, in 2007, she interviewed for a part-time job at Foreman’s Harbor East wine shop, Bin 604 Wine Sellers. But during the interview, Foreman saw something special in her and decided she was destined for bigger things.

“When we met, I recall that she had this curiosity about wine,” says Foreman. “I thought, ‘This is a person I want to teach.’ She had a lovely spirit, and I was impressed by her—we just vibed immediately.”

Willey started as a server at Cinghiale, Foreman’s recently opened Italian enoteca/osteria. But within a few months, she graduated from server to assistant dining room manager and assistant som. “She was exceptionally organized, a good taster, and paid attention,” says Foreman.

The massive wine list was daunting, but Willey was a dedicated student. “I committed myself to wholeheartedly learning that list so I could talk intelligently about the wine,” she says. “I kept this big file and would add tasting notes. I have a good way of connecting my senses to memory—I was like a sponge.”

Her strong sense of smell also helped sharpen her palate, the key, she says, to being a som. “I’ve always noticed smells and have often been transported by them—like some fruity perfume of a lip balm as a kid or picking berries in the summer,” she says. “I have a sensory curiosity that makes wine tasting engaging and challenging. If you aren’t interested in tuning in to smell and taste, then wine tasting is hard.”

The first time she really grew to appreciate wine was during the tasting of a 1997 Barolo in 2007. “I remember seeing the color of it—it almost looked like iced tea,” she says. “I didn’t even know that wine could taste like this, look like this, age like this—I was captivated.”

The following year, a wine trip with Foreman and other staffers to Northern Italy furthered her education and fueled her newfound passion—and there have been many trips since to Italy and other wine-growing regions, including ones to France and Spain.

“Seeing the vineyards, and meeting the people and understanding the processes and all the variables that go into it, was amazing,” she says. “The fact that you could make something that was somewhat consistent from year to year and the dedication to it boggled my mind.”

“I’VE ALWAYS NOTICED SMELLS AND HAVE OFTEN BEEN TRANSPORTED BY THEM—IF YOU AREN’T INTERESTED IN TUNING INTO SMELL AND TASTE, THEN WINE TASTING IS HARD.”

As a young woman in a mostly male-dominated field, she occasionally encounters sexism and ageism, though overall, she says, “I haven’t found it to be too frustrating.”

Still, there’ve been times when she’s been tested. “There was a guest who came in regularly to Cinghiale,” she says. “He either hated me or he had a crush on me. He would say things like, ‘Would you describe this wine as herbal or floral?’ And I’d be like, ‘Well, I don’t really think either.’ He’d be like, ‘Oh, okay, good. Because I read  about it and it’s neither’—he would try to trick me.”

Of course, as a female chef, Wolf can relate. “I’m a woman in a male-dominated field and she is, too,” says Wolf. “But it doesn’t matter if she’s a woman or a man, she’s just really good at what she does.”

On a late summer day, Willey, who lives in Medfield with her partner, Patrick, and a rescue cat named Momo, meets the morning wearing a white cotton top and bright green pants. Green, which she wore to the Beards, is officially her lucky color. It’s also the color of her eyes, which stand out next to a mane of dark hair that settles just past her shoulders.

The work starts early at Charleston and Tony Foreman+Co. As wine director, Willey handles all the details and logistics of the restaurants, working with vendors, tracking inventory, ensuring wine gets delivered, updating and printing the wine lists (the happy side of paper, after all), working wine dinners, and spending time with staff to demystify wine. She even teaches them the intricacies and the art of opening a bottle at the table, everything from keeping the cork quiet by easing it out of the bottle slowly to always keeping the label facing the customer to decanting along the side of the decanter so “it doesn’t look like a science experiment,” she says. “It contributes to the overall feeling of being in the restaurant.”

Willey also decides what makes its way onto any one list, always considering if the wine presents properly. “I ask, ‘Is this what the wine is supposed to taste like?’” she says. “For example, if it’s 100-percent Nebbiolo, I’m looking for certain characteristics—usually some sort of rose, floral quality, usually cooler, darker fruit with some sort of anise, tarry taste, not incredibly heavy on the tannins, very aromatic—it might be really tasty but not what I’m looking for. And then I ask myself if the price is fair.”

Her responsibilities at Charleston, where she eventually started working part-time in 2010, are particularly daunting given Wolf’s daily rotating menu—with each menu item accompanied by suggested pairings. It’s those pairings—curated to complement the menu—she believes, that clinched the award.

“I don’t know what put us over the top,” says Willey, “but I think that maybe this award was focused on the pairings. What consistently sets Charleston apart is the number of options you have when you dine here. We have 20-some wines that are going to be paired with any offering on a given day. I have never seen a restaurant offer the number of choices and flexibility that we have. I don’t know if somebody noticed that this particular year, but I definitely think that makes it very special.”

As she stands near the entrance of the restaurant showing off the Beard, she beams. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she says. “I had it with me for three days—I put it next to my pillow and slept with it. But it really belongs to the restaurant. I wanted the staff to look at it every day and be reminded of the great work they’re doing.”

Still, the down-to-earth wine director is proud of her part.“I’ll never forget my place in this,” she says. “That’s etched in my brain—I had my time with him.”

While the manufacturing of new pennies will cease sometime next year, the production of penny candy—those nostalgic treats from yesteryear—is far from disappearing.

It all started in 1879, when Frank Woolworth of F.W. Woolworth’s figured out how to sweeten a visit to his Utica, New York, store. As patrons browsed for everything from household goods to children’s toys, they passed by a colorful candy display offering one-cent treats.

Before Woolworth’s, the penny confections were sold at apothecaries and general stores, but the five-and-dime’s grand display made a visit to the store special, as customers flocked for Necco Wafers, Lemon Drops, and Rock Candy.

Today, penny candy can be hard to come by, but Pat’s Porch in Catonsville has a rich assortment of retro treats. Owner Beth Reymann opened her shop in 2016, taking over a century-old house that had been home to a candy store. While the previous owner passed away, she continued selling penny candy and also expanded her inventory to include Maryland-themed gifts.

If a penny candy exists, you’ll find it here—including candy cigarettes (called candy “sticks”), candy necklaces, Atomic fireballs, Dad’s root beer barrels, wax bottles, Zotz, Pixie Stix, and locally made Goetze caramel creams.

For her adult customers, says Reymann, who sources from a third-generation manufacturer in Myerstown, Pennsylvania, “It’s a trip down memory lane. I have kids who come multiple times a week. People keep buying the candy because it’s a good memory.”

In other words, the candy is only part of the appeal. For many, it stirs memories of a simpler time when a solo walk (or bike ride) to the corner store, plus a pocketful of change, offered a taste of freedom—and what’s sweeter than that?

Sitting at a high-top table at Cindy Lou’s Fish House inside The Canopy by Hilton at Harbor Point, Spike Gjerde takes a bite of panisse—a rectangular-shaped chickpea fritter that’s a popular dish in the South of France. He dips it in some garlic aioli, then breaks off a piece of rosemary-tinged fougasse flatbread, which is also rooted in that region.

The South of France has become the culinary reference point for his latest project that will focus on Provence, the seafood-rich expanse of Southeastern France that borders the Mediterranean Sea.

Between bites, he talks about the new 100-seat restaurant, which he’s named La Jetée (no, not a ballet move—that’s jeté—but French for “jetty,” a man-made structure that extends into water) and will open on Oct. 5. The name was inspired by the restaurant’s position on Harbor Point, a tract of land that protrudes into the Patapsco.

La Jetée also shares a title with a French film that the James Beard Award-winning chef has long loved. “It has a science fiction kind of quality,” he says of the film. “There’s some time travel in a sense, but it seems to be really more about memory and how we move between versions of ourselves in the world.”

As he gets ready to turn 63 on Oct. 4, Gjerde could well be speaking about himself. In this older, maybe wiser, version, his monastic dedication to sourcing has loosened a little, so he can continue to grow without being confined by the strictures that prevented him from using ingredients that are not locally grown.

La Jetée will allow him to stretch as a chef. “What I’ve done so far has largely been defined, starting with Woodberry Kitchen, by ingredients—and it still will be, but this represents the next chapter,” he says. “I’m still as excited and as committed as I’ve ever been to local ingredients and supporting our local food system, but there are ways to present it, which guests might find more interesting.”

The term farm-to-table is tired, he says.

“If we’re being honest, the farm-to-table moment has passed—the urgency in thinking about our food system is more important than ever, but using that term to interest people is not what it was,” he says. “It’s become almost a perfunctory thing. I needed to find new ways to reach people, but I will never fully be able to exclude thoughtfully grown from that equation.”

And while French food might feel like a departure for the unfussy chef, he maintains that it’s not. Unlike food from north-central France, with its heavy sauces and creams, Provençal food is, in fact, quite simple and seasonal.

“I thought it would be really interesting to take the culinary traditions and the joie de vivre of that region and overlay it with the great produce, and especially the great fish and shellfish, we get from the Chesapeake Bay,” says Gjerde. “I thought there was this great opportunity to really dig into a tradition that I love, but then stay with the Atlantic and Chesapeake. We won’t be flying fish from the Mediterranean, but we’ll be using a lot of the same approach and recipes.”

Of course, the mid-Atlantic’s regenerative farms will be celebrated with every dish. “We will still get the things that we can locally,” says Gjerde. “We’ve already started a process by which we’re introducing [the staff] to the local growers that we work with and getting them used to the fact that there are going to be farmers dropping product off, and people will be talking about their product constantly.”

“If we’re being honest, the farm-to-table moment has passed,” Gjerde says. “The urgency in thinking about our food system is more important than ever, but using that term to interest people is not what it was.”

Some six months ago, Beatty Development Group—the firm behind Harbor Point—first approached the chef about taking over the Cindy Lou’s Fish House space. (When Cindy Wolf and Tony Foreman moved on from the project, the hotel took over the management of the restaurant.)

“I’ve been friends with the Beattys in Baltimore for as long as I can remember,” says Gjerde. “We share so much love of food and wine and they’ve been great supporters through the years. We got into this conversation to see if I was interested in doing something here.”

Harbor Point was also familiar territory for Gjerde. His now-closed temporary beach bar, Sandlot, has been reimagined as nearby Point Park.

Gjerde found it easy to share his concept. He has long been drawn to the celebrated region known for its Mediterranean cuisine, lavender fields, and deep artistic heritage. “It’s a place that my mind and my palate return to frequently,” he says.

It’s also the country where his career began, in a manner of speaking. In his mid-20s, Gjerde worked for $5 an hour assembling fruit tarts with almond crème at Pâtisserie Poupon in Little Italy. Seeing his penchant for the place, his favorite aunt and uncle gave him his first cookbook, Richard Olney’s Simple French Food.

“I never stopped thinking about that book and it became a throughline in my life,” he says. “I still have it—it’s in tatters.”

From a culinary perspective, it’s a bit of a full-circle moment. And since La Jetée will be open all day, you can expect “crepes in the morning and incredible baguette sandwiches and classics like a salad Niçoise for lunch.”

Dinner will highlight items like roasted leg of lamb and chicken paillard, and, of course, all manner of seafood. “Our challenge is to overlay these traditions with great Chesapeake fish and shellfish,” he says.

To that end, a large part of the menu will be dedicated to a raw bar with Chesapeake oysters and clams. “And we’re going to go further afield than we would in the past with mussels from Maine—they are a great regenerative species.”   

Flavors will be highlighted with aromatic herbs and ingredients like olive oil, capers, and citrus (the last of which was all but forbidden at Woodberry because it was impossible to source locally).

The beverage program will lean heavily toward French wines of that region, especially rosé. Classic French spirits like anise-flavored Pastis and citrus-leaning Lillet will also be on offer and mixed into cocktails.

“It’s a place that my mind and my palate return to frequently,” Gjerde says of Provence, the seafood-rich expanse of Southeastern France that serves as the culinary reference point for the new restaurant.

While Gjerde will oversee the kitchen, Matthew Audette, who was hired after Wolf’s and Foreman’s departure, will stay on as executive chef.  Restaurant veteran Virginia Allen, formerly of Alma and Woodberry Kitchen, will step into the role of general manager.

The space itself, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows and spectacular views of the Patapsco and the neon Domino Sugars sign, is also undergoing a comprehensive update. The fireplace that occupies a central portion of the dining room will be removed and the color palette will soften.

“It will be more comfortable and less industrial,” says Gjerde. “There will be more drapery framing the windows. It will feel very coastal with lighter woods and linen.”

As always, Gjerde is trying to push the boundaries for himself—and for diners.

“When you’re sitting here, and you’re looking at the harbor, you’re seeing Domino Sugars, but hopefully you’ll feel like you’re on the Mediterranean,” he says. “I am hoping it will transport you as much as possible.”

Jean Christophe Rusatira hails from a family of proud Rwandan coffee farmers. For more than 30 years now, his parents, Marie Mukamurenzi and Celestin Rumenerangabo, have toiled on Gasharu Farms to help their family and to rebuild the region on the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But another reason his parents worked so hard is so that their nine children would be able to attend school and have options beyond the farm.

“Growing coffee is a very laborious process,” says Rusatira. “You are farming for the whole year and you only have three months to farm. If there’s rain or a heat wave, the whole year is done. My dad, who planted his first coffee trees in [the district of] Nyamasheke when he was 17, loved farming but he wanted all of us to get educated.”

It worked. Rusatira is now an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. But it’s safe to say that beans were in his blood. In 2019, after meeting his business partners—Baltimore-born Michael Saunders; Ernest Asiedu, who hails from Ghana, and Dulani Christian, a native of St. Thomas—he opened Matriarch Coffee.

The Inner Harbor cafe is an homage not only to Rusatira’s mother, who left a teaching job to help on the farm, but to all the strong, influential women in the owners’ lives.

“The name was inspired by all the women who surrounded us,” says Rusatira. Saunders notes there was an additional inspiration. He says, “Ask any African American where the homeland is, and they’ll say, ‘Mother Africa.’”

Why did you want to open Matriarch Coffee?
Jean Christophe Rusatira: For me, the main motivation was to see the work of my parents’ farming directly reaching the customer, especially because I was moving from Rwanda and coming to Baltimore—Baltimore is basically my new home. It made sense for me to connect in the community and really be part of that generational wealth space. When you’re a farmer, you are technically farming for other people who are going to do the business, so it’s not an easy process to be part of the farming and also be a part of the business as a way to create wealth.

What’s it like to see your coffee beans come here from your country? It must be emotional.
Rusatira: The journey of the coffee starts a good three months from the time it leaves Rwanda. We ship one to two containers at a time. One container is 19 tons—that’s 42,000 pounds. We use some and sell some to other roasters—but I only sell it to people who appreciate it. Otherwise, I tell them to bring it back.

How would you describe what this coffee tastes like?
Saunders: Our motto is from soil to cup—we have the best quality control with Chris’ family in Rwanda, and then you bring it right to my home port in my city. I don’t know if they are singing to the beans at night, or talking to the plants, but I can’t sing enough praises about what they are doing. For me, as someone who is just a coffee lover, there’s an array of notes from chocolates to berries to melons to the apples and pineapples inside of it, but it’s the finish—smooth to the last drop—that makes the difference.

Rusatira: I always say our coffee is coffee that never wants you to put sugar in it and should taste good whether hot or cold—if you have those three elements then you are probably having good coffee.

Saunders on Rusatira’s family of coffee farmers in Rwanda: “I don’t know if they are singing to the beans at night, or talking to the plants, but I can’t sing enough praises about what they are doing.”

Michael, what does it mean for you to have this cafe in your city?
Saunders: To have a Black-owned local coffee shop as a native Baltimorean who is also roasting beans directly imported from Africa is incredible.

What should a first-time customer order?
Saunders: Start with a simple cup of coffee—if you like coffee, taste coffee. If you like lattes, taste a basic espresso, then once you’ve done that, try a cold brew.

Jean Christophe, did you grow up drinking a lot of coffee?
Rusatira: Growing up in Rwanda, we don’t necessarily drink coffee. I grew up being told that coffee beans were sold abroad to make bullets! Everyone thought that was a thing. I think they told us that to keep us from drinking the profits. But in 2016, when I came here to do my master’s in public health, I was tired and really struggling because of the weather. A colleague told me to drink coffee. So, I went to a local coffee shop, bought a cup of coffee, and I realized it really helped.

For Catina Smith—the personal chef who co-founded Our Time Kitchen, a community-based incubator in Old Goucher—getting cast as a contestant on Fox’s Hell’s Kitchen was both a dream come true, and a bit of a rollercoaster ride.

When casting called about trying out for the show, she was elated. As part of the audition, she was tasked with making a video that highlighted Baltimore, as well as cooking a dish for the camera. She went to a local videographer friend and crafted a submission that featured scenes of the Inner Harbor. She cooked a seafood pot pie to highlight local fish and shellfish.

“What’s crazy is that I literally wrote a culinary bucket list a few years ago,” says Smith, “and being on Hell’s Kitchen was on that list.”

Understandably, that ambition made filming her audition for the show—which kicks off its 24th season on Thursday, Sept. 25 at 8 p.m.—somewhat surreal. With the opportunity, she was hoping for increased exposure, not only nationally, but locally, as well.

“I was always like, hopefully, if I’m not the first one off the show, this will give me a chance to show what I can do,” she says. “I’ve been having this internal battle with myself of proving to the city that I am the chef that I think that I am. Because I don’t have a restaurant, I’m often excluded from certain spaces.”

But soon after making the video, she was told she wasn’t going to make the cut. Then, a few days later, she was told she was cast, but when she arrived at the site of filming—Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut—she was once again told that it was up in the air.

“When we got there, they were like, ‘We invite more people than we can have on, and we just have to see your personalities.’”

Of course, the bubbly chef with the rapier wit, a great laugh, and a warm smile was a total made-for-TV shoo-in.

After a quarantine of a few days where she wasn’t allowed to leave her room or interact with other potential contestants, she was soon getting fitted for her coat.

“Finally, we started shooting,” she says. “[Host and celebrity chef] Gordon Ramsay came out and said, ‘It’s going to be a battle of the states.’ He gave us sashes with our states, and I’m up there with my Maryland sash.”

For the community-minded chef, the competitive nature of the show was a challenge all its own.

“I’m competitive, yes,” says Smith, “but I’m also a team player—and I’m all about sisterhood. I don’t have that, ‘You’re going down’ spirit.” So, when the teams were divided by gender, she says, “I was like, ‘How are we going to work together to beat the boys?’ I was also interested in getting to know the other contestants and what they were doing in their own cities.”

When it came time for the first challenge, things got real quickly. As a private chef, the 39-year-old Smith, who worked briefly in restaurants as a line cook, sous, then executive chef, felt like she was at a disadvantage.

“I realized at that point, I really do have to beat out these people and be better,” she says. “When we did our signature dishes from our cities, I was like, ‘Who is cooking at the level I’m cooking at? Who’s my direct competition? I’m pretty decent, but I felt like a fish out of water—I just felt totally uncomfortable being on the line with the fast pace, because I’m used to working at my own pace, setting my own schedule, being with my own thoughts.”

While the individual challenges felt familiar, working as a team on group challenges was tougher. “For the individual challenges, I was 100 percent confident because I’m like, ‘I know how to cook when I don’t have to depend on someone else and can turn out something creative and interesting. (While Smith can’t reveal exactly what she made, she will say that in one round, for her signature state dish, she presented her version of coddies with fresh herbs and potatoes.)

Of course, cooking with the famously fiery Gordon Ramsay over her shoulder also raised the heat in the kitchen.

“When I was on the line, every time Gordon Ramsay walked in the kitchen with his big energy, he just had that power over me. I was like, ‘How do you boil water again?’” she says with a laugh. “I felt this blend of star-struckness and, ‘Wow, he’s intense.’”

At one point while filming, she asked him what drew him to open Gordon Ramsay Steak at Horseshoe Casino Baltimore. “He was basically like, ‘I love the grittiness of the city—I really love Baltimore.’”

While Smith is not allowed to reveal the outcome of the competition, she says that even her military career couldn’t prepare her for the experience.

“I’m an Air Force veteran,” she says with more laughter. “I’ve been through basic training. The yelling doesn’t bother me at all. But it was so nerve-wracking to cook with 30 cameras watching.”

The cameras, she said, made her “hyper-aware of my sanitation, and you’re just trying to think about the timing of everything. Also, it’s not your kitchen, so you’re not 100-percent familiar with where everything is, and you’re around strangers trying to operate in the way that you do. And with the camera looking at you, you’re like, ‘Should I sit here and smile? I don’t want any weird angles.’”

When the episode airs, Smith will be back on set with her 71-year-old mom in tow. For locals who want to tune in, there’s a planned premiere watch party at The Empanada Lady in the Inner Harbor on Sept. 25, as well as another live viewing event at R. House on Oct. 2.

Regardless of the result, Smith is happy for her 15 minutes of fame.

“I’m just really proud to represent Baltimore at a time where things are crazy in the world,” she says. “I wanted to bring a little joy and highlight how we really have awesome food and food culture here.”

When Ernestine Chambers and Naté Gordon opened Chopped Broadway Bodega & Deli in Fells Point in May, they marked many a milestone as the first Black women-owned bodega and deli in Baltimore—and the first to feature a menu based on chopped sandwiches, the latest TikTok trend.

Chopped sandwiches are just what they sound like—with all the components of a sandwich cut into small pieces and mixed before being loaded into some sort of sub roll.

“Everyone comes in and says they saw us on TikTok,” says Chambers, laughing, “but we just got on TikTok.”

Look for plenty of overstuffed sandwiches (weighing between one and three pounds) like The Godfather, an Italian sub mash-up with peppered ham, Genoa salami, capicola, and provolone, plus onions and peppers tossed with scratch-made Italian dressing; and the vegan Wise Warrior, a colorful combination of vegan cheddar, lettuce, avocado, garlic hummus, tomato, and onions dressed with garlic aioli.

The chopping—done with the help of a rounded mezzaluna blade and a knife—leads to a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

“What happens when we take all the ingredients and chop them together is that your tongue explodes on every bite because you are activating  all your senses in that process,” explains Chambers. “But what keeps people coming back are homemade dressings and sauces.”

In addition to chopped sandwiches, Chambers and Gordon are hoping to serve the community by being the corner store that also sells household products, fresh produce, and dry goods at reasonable prices.

“It’s a convenience store,” says Gordon, whose other job is workforce development, “but it’s also gourmet food in the back of a bodega.”

Thus far, their customers couldn’t be happier.

“A few days ago, I was sitting in my car and a guy banged on my car window,” says Chambers. “He was like, ‘You have to get in there to make food!’ I went in and he ordered the Frank Lucas, a beef pastrami with melted provolone, mayo, and honey mustard. He came out and stood on the curb dancing while he ate the sandwich—he did this entire joyful shuffle in front of the store.”

Outside of Baltimore, Slutty Vegan customers may not know what “slut dust” fries are—that’s spuds sprinkled with Old Bay—but they certainly know the larger-than-life restaurant personality Pinky Cole Hayes, the company’s founder, who has reached celebrity status with her brand of plant-based burgers and retail products, including plant-based dips.

Despite legal woes of the past few years, the brand is still going strong. Cole Hayes has six Slutty Vegan joints around the country, including Atlanta, Dallas, Brooklyn, and Birmingham, but opening on the Baltimore Peninsula last year has been particularly meaningful for the Charm City-born entrepreneur.

“I love the fact that I get to go back to my city and do it right this time,” says Cole Hayes, who also owns Bar Vegan, a plant-based restaurant and bar, on the Peninsula.

When Cole Hayes left Charm City at 17, she was a newly minted graduate of Western High School, where she ran what she calls “an illegal business” out of the school cafeteria selling McChicken sandwiches for double the price.

“The things I learned as a kid,” she says, “apply today as an adult. I had that hustle-and-grind mentality. I don’t take that for granted because it made me stronger and it made me smarter.” (She credits her father, who served more than two decades in prison for his involvement in a drug ring, for her hustle.)

Her ability to hustle has also changed her life. “This brand is the reason I met my husband and the reason why I have children,” says Cole Hayes. “It’s the reason why I became a multi-millionaire. It’s the reason why I’ve been able to travel around the country and help inspire other people. And it’s the reason why I can build that generational wealth—I will never take that for granted.”

From her adopted hometown of Atlanta, we caught up with the entrepreneur to talk about all things Slutty Vegan and growing up in Baltimore.

When did you realize you had a hit on your hands with Slutty Vegan?
I’ve been in the trenches a long time. I’ve seen highs; I’ve seen lows. I knew I was really good at bringing people together. I’m sitting in front of my flagship location and remembering what it meant to have a grand opening here. I created something special that people can love and appreciate. I love to know that people love to consume not just the business but they are obsessed with the brand, making this bigger than just a restaurant—it’s a marketing brand, it’s a clothing line, and it’s really cool.

How did you come up with the concept for the brand?
I worked on the Maury Show [as a producer] and marketing has always been my thing. I know how to get people to pay attention in the weirdest ways. I realized that if I could merge food and sex, it would be a win-win. On the Maury Show, everything is racy and in your face—that’s why he was on the air for 25-plus years. I wanted to create something that would spark people’s attention. When I thought of the name, I was sitting in my two-bedroom apartment—the name Slutty Vegan hit me like a bolt of lightning.

How did you want to change the conversation around vegan food?
I wanted to help people reimagine food. For so long, veganism has been this boring thing. The funny thing is that so many of my customers are carnivores. The best compliment I ever got from anyone was, “Wow, this tastes better than meat!”

I know your dad has given you advice. What did he tell you?
That success is like mud—you have to throw things at the wall and something is going to stick.

How did growing up in Baltimore shape you?
Baltimore made me super brave even in the times when I was scared. I got my independence in Baltimore. I got my first job when I was young, working at the Police Athletic League and Forever 21. I got my license early. I got a car young. My mother gave me the space and opportunity to be independent—no one cradled me. I am grateful my city did that for me.

What has it been like to open a Slutty Vegan here?
Baltimore is a beautiful place and I’m happy that I get to be a part of the new growth of Baltimore, creating opportunities for other people.