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.”

Like all hospitality professionals, veteran restaurateurs Tony Foreman and Chef Cindy Wolf are grappling with the aftermath of the closing of their beloved restaurants during the pandemic.

While it’s been challenging, they have been making the best of the situation from their respective Roland Park homes. Foreman is reimagining the wine menu at Charleston and spending time with his family. Wolf is cooking up a storm in her state-of-the-art kitchen and doing ad-hoc cooking videos for her legions of fans.

Both are eagerly awaiting the day they can reopen Charleston, Cinghiale, and Bar Vasquez in Harbor East, as well as Petit Louis and Johnny’s in Roland Park.

“I believe that there will be restaurants that go out of business, and I feel sad about that,” says Wolf. “I have to do what I do, so somehow, some way, we will reopen. I don’t know if that’s pie in the sky, but I will not allow this to not happen—it has to happen.”

How are you?
Tony Foreman: There’s plenty of existential threat on the business and our livelihood as a family, but the sudden big chunk of family time and the chance to just prepare food for the people who are in my house and to just worry about homework, learning to ride the bike, do nature walks in a really wonderful neighborhood, and do stuff that we don’t ordinarily have time for has been really wonderful.

Cindy Wolf: I’m used to being alone, I’m just not used to being home alone for this many hours a day. I’m used to being at the restaurant 12 hours a day, so my home time is maybe an hour and then sleeping and going to work the next day. But thank goodness I have a beautiful home to live in and no one on our staff has gotten sick.

On the last night of service before the shutdown it just didn’t feel right. It was hushed—the laughter, the joy, the excitement, all of the good things about being in a restaurant were all sucked out of the room. —Cindy Wolf

What was that final night of service at the restaurants like?
TF: We had the very strong feeling the governor was going to shut us down. When he did, I was of two minds. The first thought was, ‘Let’s do something to generate income and at least keep some people working.’ We formulated a plan and immediately responded by having takeout for our guests on Monday and Tuesday.

I had a long conversation with [Petit Louis executive chef] Chris Scanga the day before. He was concerned about being the guy who would go to work and take the virus home to his family—that hit home with me. I slept on it and thought, ‘In good conscience, can I ask these people to come to work when this thing is still ramping up?’ We don’t know what it is or how bad it’s going to be. Are we contributing to it just by doing a to-go business in the name of keeping people employed? I called Cindy and she agreed.

What was the last night of service at Charleston like specifically?
CW: When I saw my waiters in the dining room wearing gloves and my runners wearing gloves and [maître d’] Peter [Keck] walking around—he wasn’t doing anything but sanitizing doorknobs—I was like, ‘This is just not right. This is a restaurant.’ Of course, it should be sanitary, but this is heartbreaking for me to see my waiters walking around with gloves and being scared to walk to tables. I was like, ‘What are we doing? Why are we open? This is not how you operate a restaurant.’ From my kitchen, I can see into the dining room and it just didn’t feel right. It was hushed—the laughter, the joy, the excitement, all of the good things about being in a restaurant were all sucked out of the room.

My ability to fry things in whatever cast iron is lying around has been rehomed from my great grandmother Annie Ross’s kitchen—she was Miss North Carolina 1910. —Tony Foreman

What kinds of things have you been cooking at home?
TF: [My 6-year-old daughter], Del, loves fish and so does my wife, Katie. Two nights a week we have some kind of fish. We got really beautiful yellowfin tuna through work and a nice Scottish salmon. When asparagus are around it’s easy—it’s salmon and asparagus. I also made a fried chicken sandwich for Del. It was super tasty with sprouts and crunchy veggies piled on it. My ability to fry things in whatever cast iron is lying around has been rehomed from my great grandmother Annie Ross’s kitchen—she was Miss North Carolina 1910.

Chef Wolf, from the looks of Instagram, it seems like you’re making a lot of great meals at home.
CW: I love food, even if I’m just cooking for myself. If I have leftovers, I give them to someone who works for me. It makes me happy. When we had a sense that something bad was about to happen, I bought chicken and we broke it down and put it on our freezer in small packages at Charleston. I went to the grocery store and, for the first time in my life, I bought frozen vegetables.

What I have dictates what I cook. My farm in Ohio is just starting out. The salesperson sent me an email saying, ‘We want to send you a box as a gift.’ It was filled with radishes, potatoes, microgreens, and baby parsnips. That really improved my home cooking. In the beginning of this, I ate a lot of chicken. I had some Brabander, it’s an incredible piece of cheese. I brought home a duck breast from Charleston and made magret and ate that for three days. I also got a delivery from Eddie’s. I told them I wanted rack of lamb but didn’t want them to French [cut] it. The meat between the bones on the rack, when left on and roasted properly, is the best part of the rack meat. Between the bones can be so tender and has so much fat surrounding it.

You’ve been posting lots of cooking videos. Why did you decide to make them?
CW: I want to share. I want to teach. I teach every day at work. I’ve always wanted to have my own cooking show.

Any cooking tips for those of us staring blankly into our pantry wondering what’s for dinner?
CW: Reach into the past. All cultures have peasant cooking—all of these old rice and bean dishes. Make things with flour like empanadas—which are made with flour, fat, and water—or pasta. Learn how to make pasta if you can get your hands on flour. Get an inexpensive hand-rolling pasta machine on Amazon. Or boil a potato, mash it, and add ground beef and any spices you like—saffron, chili powder, cayenne, salt, pepper—and add an egg. It’s as good cold as it is hot. Look for old world recipes from French cooking, Mexican cooking, American food, Spanish, and Middle Eastern. Many of those dishes slow cook on the back of stove all day long and make the house smell great.

What will be on the menu at Charleston when you return?
CW: Every day I write things down for the menu, but it’s so seasonal. I have almost an entire notebook filled with either a piece of an idea or something that inspired me. I’ve been hanging out a lot with chef [Paul] Bocuse, I have a lot of his cookbooks, and Anne Willan. I just keep writing, but I don’t know when we are opening. It makes me happy to be with the cookbooks and at least have the ideas. One or two days before we open, when I bring food product in is when we will make the final decisions. I also know people will want the lobster soup and fried oysters—it won’t be a 100-percent new menu because I am here to make people happy.

Will you make changes to any of the other menus?
TF: We are working on a very different presentation and interpretation of the wine list in the cellar at Charleston—now is a chance to do it. We’re going to think about the different restaurants—each one has a pretty pure truth that it’s chasing. I want to make sure that we are as true to those things as we can be. We have the percolation time and I’m going to use it.

What do you miss about being in the restaurants?
TF: The way that our guests rely on the solidity and the care of our team from back door to front door—whether they know that or not. I like that, not just being dependable but being a dependably good piece of people’s lives in a complicated and stressful world. To know that you can go somewhere and you’re going to feel cared for.

Smaller very hand-crafted, curated, and cultivated experiences will be less and less and the attraction to creating those things is going to be less and less—there’s just too much risk. —Tony Foreman

Will restaurants survive?
TF: They are going to be changed. Things will continue to tilt in favor of chains and larger scale places. Smaller very hand-crafted, curated, and cultivated experiences will be less and less and the attraction to creating those things is going to be less and less—there’s just too much risk.

What are you looking forward to when you reopen?
TF: I’m looking forward to that first family meal with our staff. I’ve already told them I will make them a nice supper before we open and I will bring them wine from my cellar, and we will have a nice time.

I walk into that empty restaurant and it’s hard. I miss my guys. [Daytime prep cook] Hubaldo has worked for me since we’ve had Savannah—that’s 23 years. I will not walk into Charleston again until I can start to operate that restaurant again. It’s my life. —Cindy Wolf

Chef Wolf, I’ve seen from Instagram that you’ve been back to Charleston a few times.
CW: In the beginning, I went a few times. I did a bit of repair work—someone who works for us had an opportunity to make a little bit of money, so I went down there. Prior to that, I went in a few times in the first few weeks because I wanted to make sure everything was okay. Also, in those first few weeks, we still had some food left. I went four or five times when we were distributing the food. We did a huge distribution to staff the day we closed.

After being in the restaurant just yesterday, my question was, ‘When do we move forward and how do we move forward?’ It’s killing me. I will not walk into Charleston ever again until I can start to operate that restaurant again. It’s my life. I’ve wanted to do this since I was a kid. All I do is think about food. I’m at work many hours a day. When I’m not there, I’m thinking about food. When I go on vacation, I go to eat food. I eat in some of the best restaurants in France and have a glass or two of Champagne at lunch. A walk at lunch and then back to dinner—I live for that. Getting to immerse myself is so inspiring to me.

I walk into that empty restaurant and it’s hard, and I miss my guys. Hubaldo has worked for me since we’ve had Savannah—that’s 23 years. He’s my daytime prep cook. I am thankful every single day for what I do. I look at him and say, ‘Can you believe what we do?’

Why do we need restaurants?
CW: We need restaurants like Petit Louis and all the little neighborhood restaurants. We need places like Charleston so we can dress up and celebrate our anniversary, even if people need to save their coins to go to those restaurants once in a lifetime. I’m certain that whenever we reopen, our waiters will have to wear masks and gloves, which I can’t stand, but if that’s what it takes to open so be it. We can’t live without restaurants.

On Saturday, our own pastry chef-turned-Food Network star Duff Goldman tied the knot in his new home of California. He married writer Johnna Colbry at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

According to Martha Stewart Weddings, the couple exchanged vows in the museum’s Dinosaur Hall before cutting into five wedding cakes, including a traditional white six-tier, an underwater-themed confection suspended from the ceiling, and a savory, meat-filled groom’s cake with mashed potato “icing” and bacon roses.

Though the wedding was a few time zones away, some important members of Goldman’s Baltimore family were able to make the trip out west to celebrate.

Among them was chef Cindy Wolf, Goldman’s mentor whom he credits with jumpstarting his career: “Cindy is 100 percent directly responsible for my success,” Goldman told us in a 2015 preview of his cookbook Duff Bakes: Think and Bake Like a Pro at Home, which he dedicated to Wolf. “She changed my life. If I hadn’t met her, who knows where I’d be right now.”

Wolf, the James Beard-nominated executive chef of Charleston in Harbor East, took to Instagram to share well wishes after attending. “One of the best weddings ever!” Wolf captioned her post. “Duff—I am so very happy for you and I love you!” In response, Goldman commented: “Thanks for being there chef. You mean more to me than I think you know.”

“Duff’s wedding was just as creative, beautiful and loving as anyone could wish,” Wolf later told us. “It was an honor to be included, and I could not be more happy for him.”

The chefs first met in the late-’90s, when Wolf hired Goldman to bake biscuits and muffins at her now-closed restaurant Savannah in Fells Point. Back then, Goldman’s only relevant experience was working at fast-food eateries.

“I didn’t even know what a pastry chef was,” said Goldman, who later rose to fame when the Food Network decided to produce a show about his Remington bakeshop, Charm City Cakes. “Thanks to Cindy, I started to understand baking fundamentals.”

Goldman’s career came full circle in 2015 with the release of his book, which features an adaptation of the cornbread recipe that he began his career making for Wolf at Savannah.

“She took a chance on me when I really didn’t know how to cook, like, at all,” he writes in the introduction. “She made me bake the cornbread for the restaurant, and it taught me that no matter what you’re doing, do it the best you can. To be honest, every time I open the oven, I’m doing something that Cindy taught me how to do.”

Right after the wedding, Goldman and his new bride jetted off to Thailand. They’ll return so the chef can film for a few weeks before their second honeymoon takes them around the world.

“I’m excited to go on adventures with my best friend,” Colbry told People magazine. “I think that’s going to be fun.”

Maybe lucky number seven will come in handy for Chef Cindy Wolf, who yet again was named a James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef Mid-Atlantic. Wolf is being honored for her work at Harbor East Lowcountry restaurant Charleston for the seventh consecutive year.

“I am so excited, but there is one more step,” Chef Wolf told us, referring to the narrowed down finalist list that comes out on March 14. “I am happy that my kitchen and front-of-house staff at Charleston are being recognized for their hard work.”

As a seasoned vet of the James Beard Awards gala—taking place on May 7—Wolf says she doesn’t have many pre-show rituals, except for enjoying the great food and drink in the city of Chicago. She does, however, always purchase a new dress for the occasion.

“I was thinking I may buy a cocktail dress this year,” she says. “I bought shoes in Paris in the fall and would wear those.”

Though not superstitious, Wolf does always think about what she might say if she were to take home the big prize. 

“I think about the people that have helped me in my career—my father, family , Marcelo Vasquez, the chefs in Charleston where I did my apprenticeship, and also my cooks and Tony,” she says. “And I think about what might be an important message for people thinking about getting into the business.”

Wolf is the only Baltimore chef to be recognized, but is up against another Maryland chef in her category—Tony Conte of Inferno Pizzeria Napoletana in Gaithersburg.

“What a great Thursday,” the Howard County restaurant exclaimed on its Facebook page. “We’re extraordinarily grateful to be listed among these other tremendous culinary greats.”

Best of luck to all the dining dynamos who were named as semi-finalists today, but our fingers are crossed extra hard for Chef Wolf.

a note from the editor

This recipe collection was inspired by a simple question: What do chefs cook once they’ve doffed their toques?

For the men and women in white, it turns out that there’s no such thing as leaving work at the office. Whether they’re assisted by sous chefs and line cooks over an eight-burner Vulcan range or feeding family and friends from the comfort of their home range, they cook because it fuels them.

We’ve asked five beloved Baltimore chefs to design menus that reflect the way they like to eat at home, then photographed them in their own kitchens, from Michel Tersiguel’s cozy space in Ellicott City (his Great Dane named Gale kept at bay during the mouthwatering photo shoot) to Cindy Wolf’s gleaming new personal (yet highly professional) kitchen in Sparks. (Her scrambled eggs were the best we’ve ever eaten.)

We watched as they blowtorched meringue, pounded chicken breasts, and braised a pork shoulder. And we were wowed as they showed incredible grace under pressure, whipping up gorgeous, multi-course meals in a matter of minutes, despite the crowding—as is often the case in every home’s heart—in their kitchens.

So whether you mull these menus for fun, or decide to throw an impromptu party, we hope these pages inspire you to roll up your sleeves, preheat the oven, and pull out those pots and pans. No matter how great our ever-expanding food scene, there’s still nothing like a meal that’s cooked in your own kitchen.

Jane Marion
Managing Editor

Cindy Wolf

Co-Owner, chef / Charleston

Cindy Wolf fell hard for the four-bedroom ranch-style home on a picturesque 15-acre parcel of land in Sparks. It had a long allée of trees and rolling farmland reminiscent of the French countryside. When she moved in last October, the James-Beard-Award-nominated chef and co-owner of Charleston and five other restaurants welcomed the opportunity to renovate the kitchen and realize her design dreams. With a set of copper pots swinging from a wrought-iron pot rack on the ceiling, a stainless steel La Cornue range with copper fittings, and an industrial sink good for both gardening and washing her French porcelain plates, the kitchen is what Wolf desired for decades. “I wanted this to be as much like work as possible,” explains Wolf. “In fact, I’ve always wanted for all my kitchens to be that way, but this is the first one that really is. There are no cabinets at all and everything is very open, with plenty of workspace.”

Even when she’s not at work, Wolf is most content cooking for others and throwing dinner parties. “I’ve always cooked pretty similarly at home as the restaurant,” she says, “but it’s very different cooking for four people than between 60 and 150. That means I can do a whole chicken—I’m not serving portion by portion. I’m cooking for one group and no one after that—and that’s what I love.”

Another dream come true? Wolf built vegetable and herb gardens filled with squash, tomatoes, tarragon, and more. “As a chef, I’ve always dreamed of having gardens on the property,” she says. “To have a farm and a small garden to pick from and have that inspiration each day as I do a daily menu is incredible.”

She-Crab Soup

INGREDIENTS
1 ¼ cups crab stock
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
½ Spanish or Vidalia onion, small dice
2 shallots, small dice
1 rib celery, small dice
1 carrot, small dice
6 tablespoons flour
3 cups heavy cream
1 tablespoon tomato paste
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 pinch cayenne pepper
1 pinch freshly ground nutmeg
½ cup Manzanilla sherry
Kosher salt to taste
4 ounces jumbo lump picked crab meat (traditionally using female crabs, prized for their flavor)
4 tablespoons finely chopped fresh chives

INSTRUCTIONS
In a small saucepan, bring 1 cup stock to a boil and cook until reduced by half, about 10 minutes. In a large, heavy soup pot, melt butter over medium heat. Add onion and shallots and cook until soft, about 4 minutes. Add the celery and carrot and sauté 1 minute. Sprinkle in flour and stir the flour-butter mixture until it turns a light golden brown (this is called a blond roux), about 4 minutes. Whisk in the reduced stock, cream, tomato paste, both types of pepper, and the nutmeg. Simmer, stirring frequently, until the soup is thick and has lost any floury taste, about 30 minutes. Add sherry (you needn’t use it all——just as much as you like). If soup is too thick, thin with a little of the remaining stock. Salt to taste. To serve, spoon 1 ounce crabmeat into each of 4 bowls. Pour in hot soup. Scatter with chives.

Scrambled Eggs

INGREDIENTS
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
3 large fresh eggs
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon heavy cream
1 teaspoon grated Gruyère

INSTRUCTIONS
Heat a stainless steel sauté pan on high, then turn down to low before adding butter. Whisk eggs with salt and pepper, then pour into pan, moving and shaking the pan the entire time and using a fork to help break up the curd. Just before eggs are cooked through, add cream and Gruyère. Spoon onto plate. Eat right away, preferably with brioche toast.

Goat Cheese & Mâche Salad

INGREDIENTS
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
8 round slices cut from a baguette, each ½-inch-thick
2 tablespoons high-quality red-wine vinegar
1 teaspoon creamy Dijon mustard, preferably Maille
½ cup high-quality, extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt to taste
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 bunches of mâche (aka lamb’s leaf lettuce) washed and dried
1 head radicchio, leaves stacked and sliced
1 head frisée, tough leaves and stems discarded, tender leaves washed and dried ½ cup Vermont goat cheese, crumbled
¼ cup (total) coarsely chopped fresh basil, mint, tarragon, and chervil

INSTRUCTIONS
In a medium sauté pan, melt butter over medium heat. Add the bread and toast golden brown, about 2 minutes per side. Drain on paper towels. To make dressing, in a small bowl whisk together vinegar and mustard. Drizzle in olive oil, whisking constantly. Season with salt and pepper. Toss all the greens with dressing. (You may not need all the dressing.) Divide salad onto 4 plates. Scatter each with goat cheese and 1 tablespoon herbs. Set 2 toasts on each plate.

Linwood Dame

Co-Owner, chef / Linwood’s

Linwood Dame is a big believer in practice makes perfect. “One of the golden rules when it comes to entertaining is to practice the dish before you serve it to a crowd,” says Dame. “Don’t try something new when you’re having a dinner party.”

When he’s not working at his fine-dining restaurant in Owings Mills, Linwood is fond of throwing gatherings in his Cockeysville home—though his dining directive is to keep things easy. “When we entertain, it’s never over-the-top,” he says. “It’s always about simplicity. The product is always good, but I don’t want to spend a ton of time in the kitchen.”

Dame’s dinner party menu was inspired by a spontaneous get-together he had while on a vacation visit to his Nantucket cottage last summer. “We were out that day and ran into some people,” he recalls. “And I said, ‘Hey, what are you doing tonight? Come on over, let’s have dinner.’ But by the time I was done inviting a few couples, I was like, ‘Oh boy, now I have to whip up dinner on the fly. And I only have a few hours to shop, prep, and cook.’

So I whipped up this whole meal in two hours, and although I have a recipe for lemon pound cake here, I bought a pound cake from the farm bakery that looked pretty good, sliced it, buttered it, toasted it under the broiler, and served it with warm berries and ice cream.”

Citrus Chicken

INGREDIENTS
6 skin-on boneless chicken breasts (½- to ¾-inch thick)

3 lemons

2 oranges

½ cup olive oil

5 tablespoons crushed red pepper flakes

Sweet and savory grapes (recipe below)

FOR GRAPES2 tablespoons mustard seed

1 cup white-wine vinegar
½ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
¼ cup freshly squeezed orange juice
¼ cup sugar
2 tablespoons finely grated orange zest
2 tablespoons ground chipotle chili pepper
½ pound green (or green and red) seedless grapes

INSTRUCTIONS

Place 1 chicken breast on a cutting board. Cover with plastic wrap. Use a kitchen mallet to pound to an even thickness. Repeat with remaining chicken. Zest and juice lemons and oranges. Choose a wide pan (such as a 13-x-9-inch baking pan) to marinate chicken. Alternatively, you can pour marinade into 2 gallon sized zip-top bags.

Combine oil, red pepper flakes, both kinds of zest and both kinds of juice. Add chicken. Cover (or zip) and chill. Let marinate 1 to 5 hours, turning chicken (or bag) once. Heat grill to medium-hot. Grill chicken over direct heat, skin-side down, until skin is crispy, about 6 minutes. Flip and cook over indirect heat until internal temperature reaches 165 degrees, about 8 minutes. Garnish with grapes.

For grapes: Add mustard seed to a medium saucepan. Set over medium heat and toast, shaking pan now and then, until darkened and fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add all remaining ingredients except grapes. Bring to a boil. Stir until sugar dissolves, about 1 minute. Let this pickling brine cool. Cut grapes in half and add to the brine. Let rest 30 minutes to 3 hours. Drain. Discard brine. Garnish citrus chicken with grapes before serving.

Potato Tart

INGREDIENTS
½ cup (1 stick) butter, melted
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
3 Idaho potatoes, peeled
Salt and pepper

INSTRUCTIONS
Stir together butter and thyme. Brush a little across the bottom and sides of a 9- or 10-inch round Pyrex pie plate. Using a mandoline or food processor fitted with a slicing disc, slice potatoes thinly (¼-inch thick).

Fan out potato slices, overlapping just a little, across the bottom of the pie plate in a single layer. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Brush with thyme butter. Repeat, building layers of seasoned potatoes and butter, using all the potatoes, and finishing with the butter. Cover with plastic wrap. Place another pie plate on top to press layers together. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. Lift off top plate and plastic. Bake 375 degrees for 1 hour or until a knife inserted in the center comes out easily.

Lemon Pound Cake

INGREDIENTS FOR CAKE
½ cup butter, softened
¼ cup vegetable oil
1½ cups sugar
3 eggs
1½ cups flour
½ cup milk
2 lemons, zested and juiced

FOR LEMON GLAZE
½ cup fresh lemon juice
¼ cup confectioners’ sugar
¼ cup water

FOR FRESH FRUIT SYRUP
½ cup sugar
½ cup water
5 ounces fresh raspberries
1 pint blueberries (or plums, strawberries, or just about any summer fruit)

INSTRUCTIONS
For cake: Butter a 9-inch loaf pan. Line with parchment paper, leaving some overhang. Set aside. Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or standard mixer), beat butter until soft and fluffy. Gradually pour in oil, beating until blended. Add sugar and continue beating, stopping to scrape down sides of bowl. Beat in eggs, 1 at a time, scraping down sides of bowl. Add flour to butter mixture alternately with milk, beginning and ending with flour. Add zest and juice, beating until combined. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake at 300 degrees in convection oven for 25 minutes (325 for a standard oven). Reduce temperature to 275 (300 for a standard oven) and continue baking until a wooden skewer inserted in the center comes out clean, about 20 more minutes. Cool cake in pan for 15 minutes. Pull cake out of pan (use the parchment overhang as handles). Set on rack.

For lemon glaze: Combine glaze ingredients, stirring until sugar dissolves. Brush glaze over top and sides of the loaf. Cool.

For fruit syrup: Bring sugar and water to boil. Remove from heat. Stir in fruit. Set aside.

Donna Crivello

Concept Director, Cosima / Former chef and co-owner, Donna’s

Though there are chefs who prefer to go it alone when entertaining at home, Donna Crivello loves company in the kitchen. Her “more-the-merrier” philosophy stems not only from her Sicilian roots (making large batches of ravioli and cannoli was a family affair), but from teaching cooking classes throughout her 25-year career. “It’s always good to have an extra hand to stir or ladle something in, and, for me, it really enhances the experience,” says Crivello, the concept director at Cosima who ran the beloved Donna’s Cafe in Cross Keys for 19 years before it closed in 2018. “Especially if you’re around people you don’t get to see often, it’s great to chat about the food and share stories together.”

One of Crivello’s favorite stories is the tale behind her saffron risotto, a recipe inspired by many trips to Venice with her husband, Peter. “That’s where I really got the risotto down,” she says. “It’s a great foundation for vegetables and seafood, and I love the idea of transforming it from such a basic stage. It’s just a little bag of raw rice, but once you add stock and saffron it changes color and volume. I love how it’s transformed into a rich, creamy dish.”

Whether preparing for dinner service at the restaurants or hosting a get-together at home, Crivello says that the key to success is staying organized. “When I’m cooking at home for family, it’s definitely a different pace, but I still have a lot of that same energy.”

Roasted Pear and Gorgonzola Salad

INGREDIENTS
Canola oil
3 firm pears
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
3 cups greens (a mix of baby kale, arugula, and spinach)
Apple-cider vinaigrette (recipe follows)
6 ounces Gorgonzola cheese
¼ cup toasted (or candied) walnuts or pecans
2 tablespoons dried cherries or cranberries

FOR APPLE-CIDER VINAIGRETTE
6 tablespoons light olive oil
3 tablespoons apple-cider vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon honey

INSTRUCTIONS
Lightly oil a sheet pan. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Halve the pears the long way, but leave core, seeds, and stem intact. Sprinkle cut sides of fruit with cinnamon and allspice. Place pears, cut side down, on the prepared pan. Bake until just tender, about 15 minutes. Let cool. Use a small scoop or teaspoon to carve out (and discard) core and seeds. Toss greens with vinaigrette. (You may not need all the vinaigrette.)

Divide greens on to 6 salad plates. Return pears to pan, cut side up. Crumble Gorgonzola on to pears. Set pan under broiler just until cheese melts, about 2 minutes. Set 1 pear on each salad plate. Sprinkle the pears and greens with the nuts and dried fruit. For vinaigrette: Place all ingredients in a jar. Seal tightly. Shake.

Saffron Risotto

INGREDIENTS
8 cups vegetable broth
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons butter
1 small onion, diced
1 small stalk leek, washed, dried, and thinly sliced
2 cups Arborio rice
¼ teaspoon crumbled saffron
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup fresh peas (or substitute diced zucchini, diagonally cut asparagus, or cooked and sliced artichoke hearts)
⅔ cup halved cherry or grape tomatoes
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
3 tablespoons butter, cut into small cubes
¼ cup chopped fresh basil

INSTRUCTIONS
Prepare broth (if making your own). Pour finished broth into a saucepan and keep hot over low heat. Pour the oil into a wide skillet with high sides. Set over medium high heat. Add the 3 tablespoons butter. When the butter begins to bubble, add the onion and leek. Cook until just tender, about 8 minutes. Turn down heat under skillet to medium. Add rice and stir to coat. Add saffron and wine. Stir until rice absorbs all the liquid, about 5 minutes. Ladle about ½ cup hot broth into rice.

Stir until rice has absorbed the liquid. Keep adding broth, ½ cup at a time, and stirring until it has been absorbed, until rice is nearly done, about 20 to 25 minutes (taste to check). Add the peas, stir until just cooked, about 3 minutes. Add tomatoes. Add more broth if needed. Stir until everything is hot. Stir in the cheese, butter cubes, and basil.

Panna Cotta

INGREDIENTS
Pan coating spray
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
2 tablespoons cold water
3 cups heavy cream
⅓ cup plus 4 tablespoons sugar
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups fresh berries (raspberries, blueberries, strawberries)
1 tablespoon Sicilian Moscato Passito wine
Optional: 6 mint leaves, ground vanilla bean (or seeds scraped from 1 vanilla bean)

INSTRUCTIONS
Spray 6 ramekins with pan coating. Set on sheet pan. In a saucepan, sprinkle gelatin over water. Let stand 1 minute to soften. Heat over low heat until gelatin has dissolved. Remove pan from heat. In large saucepan set over medium heat, bring cream and ⅓ cup sugar just to a boil. Remove pan from heat. Stir in gelatin mixture and vanilla. Pour into ramekins.

Let panna cottas cool to room temperature. Press some plastic wrap against each panna cotta. Refrigerate 4 to 24 hours. One hour before serving, prepare fruit: Leave raspberries and blueberries whole. Hull and slice strawberries. Toss all fruit with 2 tablespoons sugar and the wine. Cover. Let rest.

To unmold panna cottas, dip ramekins, 1 at a time, into bowl of warm water for 3 seconds. Run a thin knife around edge of each ramekin. Cover ramekin with a plate and, holding tightly together, invert—dropping panna cotta neatly on to plate. Stir fruit and juices. Scoop fruit on to each plate. Scoop remaining two tablespoons of sugar into a sieve and tapping on the side of the sieve, sprinkle sugar on to fruit. Garnish each plate with a mint leaf and vanilla seeds, if you like.

Michel Tersiguel

Owner, chef / Tersiguel’s French Country Restaurant

Just before dinnertime at his Ellicott City home, Michel Tersiguel takes a blowtorch to a hulled-out pineapple filled with peaks of meringue. “This was the first dish I ever made when I was 12 years old,” recalls Tersiguel, executive chef and second-generation-owner of Tersiguel’s French Country Restaurant in Ellicott City—which recently reopened after sustaining damage in the historic flood that devastated Main Street last July.

The Culinary Institute of America grad was introduced to
the pineapple dessert on a childhood trip to his parents’ native Brittany, France. “I remember coming home and making it on the third floor of my parents’ restaurant for my father to sell to special tables,” he recalls. “We had a tiny, old-fashioned oven up there and a little hand mixer, and we had to bake it because, back then, there were no blowtorches. But I just remember it being such a proud moment.”

Though he once dreamed of becoming a professional soccer player, ultimately the pull of the family business was too strong. For Tersiguel, whether cooking at the restaurant or whipping up a meal for wife Angie and their two young sons, food is all about the memories that it evokes. “Cooking is such a large part of us all,” he says. “It was always a connection that I had with my parents, getting stuff from the garden and cooking at home with them. And I love serving dishes that bring people back to that happy place from when they were younger. It’s what I like to call ‘the Ratatouille moment.’ It’s very emotional.”

Beet Soup

INGREDIENTS
6 large beets
¼ cup mild cooking oil (olive or canola)
1 stalk celery, medium dice
½ leek, white part only, medium dice
½ cup diced yellow onions
½ cup carrots, medium dice
4 cups vegetable broth (homemade or purchased)
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil 1 tablespoon red-wine vinegar (or fresh lemon juice)
4 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro leaves
Salt and pepper
Optional garnishes: cucumber, seeds discarded, finely diced; goat cheese, crumbled
INSTRUCTIONS
Scrub beets. Trim away all but 1 inch of stems. Leave roots intact. Place beets in large pot. Fill with cold water to cover by 1 inch. Bring to a boil, lower to a simmer, and cook until beets are tender when poked with a knife, about 45 minutes. Allow beets to cool in water, then peel and dice. Heat cooking oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add diced celery, leek, onion, and carrot. Cook until onion looks transparent, about 5 to 7 minutes.

Add diced beets and vegetable broth. Bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer 30 minutes. Use a stick blender to purée the soup smooth (or let soup cool, then use standard blender). Strain soup through a large-holed sieve. Allow soup to cool to room temperature, then cover and chill. To finish, stir in extra-virgin olive oil, vinegar, and cilantro. Season with salt and pepper. To serve, leave soup cold or reheat over low heat. Ladle into bowls. Garnish.

Halibut with Oven-Dried Grapes

INGREDIENTS
4 6-ounce halibut fillets, about 2 inches thick, bones and skins removed
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Extra-virgin olive oil
6 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon chopped shallots
¼ cup whole almonds, roughly chopped
½ teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme leaves
2 teaspoons verjus (or Champagne vinegar or lemon juice)
¼ cup vegetable broth (homemade or store-bought)
2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
28 oven-dried grapes (recipe below)

FOR OVEN-DRIED GRAPES
28 red seedless grapes
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

INSTRUCTIONS
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Pat fillets dry and sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper. Choose an oven-safe sauté pan big enough to hold fillets in single layer with at least ½ inch space between them. You may need 2 pans. Heat pan(s) over high heat. Add enough olive oil (about 1 tablespoon per pan) to slick bottom. Place halibut in pan(s), flesh side down. Brown for 2 minutes on flesh side only. Move pan to oven and roast until fish is just done, about 10 minutes. Remove pan(s) from oven. Cover the pan(s) loosely with foil to keep fish warm while preparing sauce. Place butter in a sauté pan, melt over medium heat. Add shallots. Cook until golden brown, about 10 minutes. As shallots cook, butter should brown. Add almonds and thyme. Thyme should “pop” in the pan. Carefully add verjus, scraping pan and then add vegetable broth. Bring to boil. Add parsley and grapes. Remove from heat. Lift fish onto plates, turning brown side up. Ladle sauce on fish. Serve immediately.

For oven-dried grapes: Heat oven to 200 degrees. Toss grapes with oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper. Spread grapes on rimmed sheet pan and bake until shriveled, checking every hour. It can take up to 4 hours.

Pineapple Surprise

INGREDIENTS
1 whole fresh ripe pineapple
1 tablespoon kirsch
1 quart vanilla ice cream (or blackberry sorbet)
6 egg whites
1 pinch cream of tartar (optional)
6 tablespoons sugar

INSTRUCTIONS
Halve the pineapple the long way, leaving the stem attached. Using a melon baller, carve out the tough core and discard. Carve out the pineapple flesh, reserving it in a bowl. Now you’ve got 2 hollow pineapple boats and a bowl of pineapple flesh. Toss kirsch with pineapple flesh and set aside. Set pineapple boats on a sheet pan. Fill each with 3 scoops of ice cream. Spoon pineapple flesh over ice cream. Freeze filled boats at least 30 minutes. To make meringue, set egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer. Add cream of tartar, if using. (It helps the meringue keep its shape.) Whip with the whisk attachment to soft peaks. Slowly add sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time. Continue whipping until meringue forms sturdy peaks.

Use a soft spatula to pile the meringue into a pastry bag (if you’ve got one) or a gallonsized zip-top plastic bag. Snip 1 corner of plastic bag. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Remove pineapple boats from freezer. (If you took them off sheet pan to freeze, put them back on sheet pan.) Pipe meringue to cover the surface of pineapple. Set the pan in the oven and let the meringue turn golden brown (or use blowtorch to brown, if you have one on hand), about 5 minutes.

Zack Mills

Executive chef / True Chesapeake Oyster Co.

When Zack Mills landed the executive chef gig at Wit & Wisdom in 2013, he and his wife, Alexandra, ditched their D.C. digs and started house hunting in Maryland. Mill’s only requirement: a gas stove. “I can’t cook on electric,” he says with a laugh. “If I walked into a house and saw an electric stove, I just turned around and walked out.”

In addition to a gas stove, his Annapolis kitchen is equipped with all of the essentials, including blenders, food processors, scales, and an impressive collection of cookbooks penned by the likes of the late Michel Richard and his mentor, Michael Mina. “Our house is very food-centric and it always will be,” says Mills, who also shares his space with his Boston Terrier, Pickles. “Whenever I get ideas in my head, if I can’t wait to work on them at the restaurant, I like to play around at home. I have to make sure that I have enough tools so I can almost treat it like a commercial kitchen.”

Mills’s love of experimentation comes in handy when it’s his turn to prepare Sunday dinner, a family tradition that has stuck since childhood. “All family gatherings revolved around food, so as far back as I can remember, the two things have always gone hand in hand,” he says. “I remember my grandmother used to say, ‘If you don’t have an appetite, you must not be happy.’” Though choosing one menu to satisfy upward of 14 people can be tricky, Mills says that these dishes are definite crowd-pleasers. “There has to be an hors d’oeuvre, that’s just a thing in my house,” he says. “The soup is as traditional as it gets, and the braised pork pasta is a really comforting, easy, one-pot thing.”

Cream of Crab Soup

INGREDIENTS
½ cup butter (1 stick) butter
¾ cup flour, sifted
2 cups whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
1/3 cup sherry, plus a bit extra for the side
1 pound picked crab meat
1 ½ tablespoons Old Bay seasoning
2 teaspoons salt

INSTRUCTIONS
Melt butter in a large saucepan set over medium-low heat. Sprinkle in flour, whisking constantly, to a thick paste, called a roux. Switch to a wooden spoon. Cook roux, stirring constantly, until it gives off a nutty fragrance, about 3 minutes. Slowly whisk in milk and heavy cream until smooth and thick. Simmer for about 15 minutes (more if you like your soup thicker). Add sherry, crab meat, Old Bay, and salt. Cook until crab is warmed and flavors meld, about 5 minutes. Serve with extra sherry on the side

Smoked Salmon Crostini

INGREDIENTS
1 red onion, thinly shaved
6 slices crusty country bread, ¼-inch-thick
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
1 cup crème fraîche
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
½ pound smoked salmon
¼ cup capers, drained and patted dry
1 bunch dill sprigs
3 tablespoons salmon roe

INSTRUCTIONS
Cover onion slices with ice water. Let soak 30 minutes. Drain. Pat dry. Brush each bread slice with olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Grill bread directly over a medium-hot fire (or under the boiler) until grill marks (or a nice golden brown) appear, about 1 to 2 minutes per side. Let cool to room temperature. Whisk together crème fraîche, juice, and zest. Spread each slice of grilled and cooled bread with lemon crème fraîche. Top with (in order): smoked salmon, capers, dill sprigs, red onion, and salmon roe.

Pappardelle & Braised Pork

INGREDIENTS
1 pound boneless pork shoulder cut into 1-inch cubes
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
½ cup plus 1 tablespoon canola oil
½ cup finely chopped yellow onion
¼ cup finely chopped carrots
¼ cup finely chopped celery
¼ cup finely chopped fennel
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
¾ cup red wine
1 14-ounce can whole tomatoes in juice
1 sprig rosemary
1 sprig oregano
1 bay leaf
5 tablespoons butter, divided
¼ pound assorted wild mushrooms
1 bunch lacinato “dinosaur” kale, stems removed, cut into 1-inch-wide strips
1 pound pappardelle pasta
½ cup finely chopped fresh parsley
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh rosemary
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh chives
¾ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus about 6 tablespoons for serving

INSTRUCTIONS
Season pork with salt and pepper. Heat ½ cup canola oil in a Dutch oven set over medium-high heat. Add pork cubes and sear on all sides until golden brown, about 7 minutes. Drain on paper towels. Reduce heat under pot to medium. Add onion, carrots, celery, fennel. Season with salt and pepper and cook until vegetables begin to brown, about 10 minutes. Add garlic and continue to cook, 1 minute. Deglaze pot with wine, scraping up browned bits. Add tomatoes (along with their juices) and crush with a spoon.

Add pork back to pot. Wrap rosemary, oregano, and bay leaf in cheesecloth, tie with twine and add to pot. Add enough water to just cover pork and bring to a simmer. Place a lid on pot and place pot in a 375-degree oven. Cook until meat is falling apart, about 2 hours. Remove from oven, remove lid, and place back on stove over medium heat. Using a spoon, break up pork until a thick ragu sauce forms. Heat remaining 1 tablespoon canola oil and 1 tablespoon of the butter in sauté pan set over medium heat. Add mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper and cook mushrooms until they are golden brown, about 10 minutes.

Add mushrooms to the pork ragu. Add kale to the ragu. Bring a pot of heavily salted water to a boil. Drop in pasta and cook until al dente. Scoop out 1 cup pasta cooking water and set aside. Drain pasta and add to ragu. Add some cooking water, if needed. Add remaining 4 tablespoons butter, chopped herbs, and ¾ cup Parmesan cheese. Scoop pasta into serving bowls. Sprinkle with additional cheese.

Illustration by Danielle Dernoga

Whether preparing a dinner for two, or a holiday feast for the masses, it’s important to have a carefully curated cupboard. To find out which ingredients are absolutely essential, we turned to chef Jerry Pellegrino, co-owner of Schola cooking school in Mount Vernon. “A smartly stocked pantry allows you the ability to whip up meals without much planning on any given night, add some excitement to standard recipes, or just make a quick snack in between meals,” says Pellegrino. Salt and pepper aside, here are the items that no home cook should go without.

Spice Blend

“Choose one depending on what you like or try a new one each month,” says Pellegrino. “But whether it’s herbes de Provence, garam masala, Creole Seasoning, or Italian herbs, having one of these in the cupboard allows you to add instant excitement to any dish.”

Garlic and Onion Powder

“So many dishes start out with onions and garlic,” says Pellegrino, “but keeping the fresh ones around can be a challenge. Although not as good, these two powders get you pretty close to the real thing.”

Honey

“Vinaigrettes, stocks, soups, stews—they all can benefit from a little sweetness to balance them out,” says Pellegrino. “You could just keep sugar on hand, but honey provides an added complexity to foods. And since it is the only natural product that never goes bad, it’s perfect for the pantry.”

Extra-Virgin Olive Oil

“We pour this on everything,” says Pellegrino. “Although it’s not the ideal oil to cook with, buying a price-conscious brand like our local Pompeian makes you feel good about it. Drizzle it on bread, cheeses, and salads, or sauté anything to make a quick meal.”

Dried Pasta

“One big and one small shape—pasta is the perfect foil for anything you have left in the fridge; chop it up, sauté it, and toss with cooked pasta—easy meal,” says Pellegrino. “For the big version, we prefer bucatini or penne. For the little version, it is hard to beat the delicious taste and texture of Israeli couscous.”

Yellow Cornmeal

“Maybe you’re not in the mood for pasta but need to get rid of leftovers,” says Pellegrino. “Making polenta can fix that. But cornmeal has other uses. Make a batch of skillet cornbread, [or make a] cornmeal crust and fry anything from oysters to onion rings.”

Balsamic Vinegar

“Vinegars are good to have on hand, but balsamic is king,” says Pellegrino. “It adds dimension to sauces, makes the perfect vinaigrette, and can be reduced to a syrup served with fruit and whipped cream.”

Canned Fish

“Use these in a pinch to add protein to salad or pasta, puréed to make dip, or mix with simple ingredients for a sandwich,” says Pellegrino. “There’s tuna, King Oscar sardines, Double ‘Q’ wild caught Alaskan salmon, and Trader Joe’s has a great proprietary smoked canned trout.”

Dijon Mustard

“Dijon’s acidic, sharp taste adds great flavor,” says Pellegrino. “Start with honey and Dijon mustard vinaigrette, then move onto using it to glaze hams, add it to pan sauces, mix it into potato dishes, and rub it on lamb as the ‘glue’ to hold on an herb crust.”

Your Favorite Hot Sauce

“Whether it’s Tabasco or Sriracha or Louisiana, there’s always the need to provide heat to certain dishes,” says Pellegrino. “They also provide heat to sauces where pepper just won’t work; hollandaise, cheese sauces, béchamel. We also stir them with mashed potatoes and add them to marinades.”

“My resolution for life is to try my best to not be a robot.” —Abdu Ali, musician

“Go on a truffle hunt in France, vote for a forward thinking President, teach city kids about gardening (right after I learn how to), drink some old, great Burgundy and be more environmentally responsible.” —Cindy Wolf, co-owner of Foreman Wolf/executive chef at Charleston

“More films and filmmaking in Baltimore.” —Jed Dietz, founding director, Maryland Film Festival

“2016 will be all about ‘lines and licks, prose and punk’ I resolve to turn up my writing another notch and, after thirty years, pick up the guitar again. Watch out Dylan, or at least Paul Westerberg. ‘These go to 11.’”—Gregg Wilhelm, founder and executive director CityLit Project

“I have learned that resolutions can be the perfect ego juice for lazy overachievers such as myself. In 2015, my resolution was to ‘spend less time interacting with people and more time with my iPhone’ which, much to the dismay of all of my loved ones, I totally slam-dunked this year! So much so, that for 2016, I’m stepping up my game and challenging myself to successfully finish a ChapStick. Here’s hoping!” —Deana Haggag, director, The Contemporary

“In my job, I get to throw some of the city’s biggest festivals, and it lets me celebrate everything I love about Baltimore. I’m going to take it to the next level in 2016 by upping my Instagram game: more posts, better posts about living, working, and promoting Baltimore. #goals” —Kathleen Hornig, festivals director, Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts

“I am over New Year’s resolutions. Done. Made too many resolutions that were history by February. I’ve read the articles about how doing a new routine for seven day locks it in as a habit. Nope. Doesn’t work. Maybe I’m a slow learner. Or maybe that habit-forming formula only works for something you’d secretly want to do anyway, even if it wasn’t a good-for-you resolution. Napping, for example. I could probably lock in a napping habit inside a week. A daily dose of treadmill, not so much. But hope springs eternal, so I’ve got a compromise resolution for 2016: Breath. Just breathe. Deep. Let that diaphragm drop, those lungs expand. Don’t wait for choir practice to be reminded. Don’t wait for yoga class to find the groove. Just in. Sloooww. And out. Slooww. Until it’s a habit.” —Sheilah Kast, host of Midday on WYPR

“As a member of the Baltimore City Council, I am lobbied almost daily by email from various constituents, sometimes by scores of emails on a given legislative or policy issue. And we pay attention. The currently muted voices in this culture, however, are those failing to participate in the personal electronic communications in which so much ‘business’ is generated and conducted in this day and age. Not surprisingly, in a recent house meeting with constituents in a proud but cyber-deprived neighborhood, a group of active leaders complained of feeling ‘left out’ and ‘forgotten’ by city government in general. These residents go to community meetings and stay in phone touch with elected officials and community leaders. They are diligent. What’s missing is the ‘buzz’ of back-and-forth electronic communications with each other and the world outside. My resolution to these leaders and to myself: To help promote a critical mass of neighbors in my cyber-deprived neighborhoods to get online (with phones if not laptops) and join the conversations that daily lead to attention and even resolution from city agencies, private service providers, and elected officials. Until then, active residents are foregoing that communication with each other which leads to the concerted impact of their ‘electronic’ voices on the outside world.” —Mary Pat Clarke, city councilwoman, 14th District

“I have resolved to look for the best in each person I meet and for the positive in every situation—and to see challenges as opportunities for growth. I am determined to find the inner strength I’ll need for the work ahead.” —Freeman Hrabowski, president, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Hours before dinner service begins, Cindy Wolf prepares herself for a night of feeding 95 guests at Charleston. With a bar mop thrown over her left shoulder and pavé diamond studs adding a hint of sparkle to her ears, she moves meticulously around the kitchen, preparing a cognac cream sauce, taste-testing a sliver of Vallée d’Aspe cheese, and showing her staff how to artfully arrange a ballotine made of chicken and foie gras with chicken-liver mousse.

“People debate over whether cooking is art, but I know it’s art for me,” says Wolf her resonant voice a vestige of early childhood singing lessons. “It’s not that I reinvent things—I’m creative from the standpoint of working with a product that just came in the door or doing something with a foie gras that I’ve never done before—that’s the art form.”

Charleston is Baltimore’s high temple of fine dining, a sacred space of sorts for classic French food with Southern inflections. And Wolf, arguably Baltimore’s most highly hailed chef (major industry awards, a guest gig at the White House, personal praise from Julia Child and wine guru Robert Parker), presides as priestess of the palace. She’s also the person, along with co-owner and ex-husband Tony Foreman, often credited with creating a restaurant renaissance in town when the two of them operated Savannah at the Admiral Fell Inn in 1995, followed by the ownership of their first restaurant, Charleston, two years later. (The duo also own Pazo, Cinghiale, Johnny’s, and two Petit Louis Bistros as part of their Foreman Wolf Restaurant Group.)

Ask other chefs about Wolf and hero worship ensues. “From early on, Cindy set a new standard for Baltimore dining,” says John Shields, chef/owner of Gertrude’s and a native Marylander. “She’s an extraordinarily talented chef with a passion for excellence, both with food and service.” Adds Linwood Dame of Linwoods, “When Cindy brought her skills to the city, she elevated Baltimore’s dining scene with her passion for cooking, her quest for excellence, and her commitment to quality. She is an inspiration to young chefs, especially women, who are gaining ground in a traditionally male profession.”

Wolf has earned accolades outside of Charm City, as well: She’s a three-time James Beard Award finalist for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic—the first chef in Baltimore to be nominated, though she says that she has long lost count of how many times she’s actually been up for the award. (“I’m like Susan Lucci,” she cracks.) And through the years, famous fans have flocked to Charleston including actor Daniel Craig, who visited while in town to promote Skyfall. “I served him a special course so I could take it out to the table,” she says smiling. “I took a slow walk to the table.”

But while she’s happy to let her perfectly executed plates of pan-roasted magret of duck catch the stardust, she’s not someone who loves putting herself in the limelight. In the words of her longtime employee, Charleston captain Peter Keck, “She’s the first to say, ‘It’s not about me—it’s about what we produce and what we do.’ She’s not inking out a book deal or a TV spot.”

When she’s not at Charleston, most mornings Wolf sits at her kitchen table in her elegant 1905 Roland Park home (you could call it “the house that beurre blanc built”) eating bacon and eggs, as she writes the next day’s menu and pores over one of the hundreds of cookbooks—Child, Alain Ducasse, and Joël Robuchon—she keeps in her library for inspiration.

This chalk-gray morning, however, away from the hustle and bustle of her otherwise hectic life, Wolf is makeup free and in casual clothes, caught in a moment of quiet reflection. While she has struggled with the idea of revealing painful issues that have formed the subtext of her life, the famously private chef has decided it’s finally time to get personal.

“Having cancer is central to my story,” says Wolf, who has not come to this confession easily and has the clarity that comes with years of contemplation. “Growing up in my family, we didn’t talk about illness, and the only reason I could think about talking about it was because Angelina [Jolie] wrote that article in The New York Times [about getting a preventative double mastectomy]. Now, I’m willing to talk about my health and how my life has progressed, because I’m very fortunate.”

Four months after realizing her life’s dream of opening her own restaurant with Charleston in 1997, Wolf, now 50, was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was 33 years old at the time. Right away, her primary concern was for her staff and the fate of the newly opened restaurant. Other than family and close friends, Wolf guarded the diagnosis closely. Tony Foreman recalls their discussion at the time. “When Charleston opened she said, ‘I don’t want to be known as ‘the cancer chef.’ I just want to be known as ‘a great chef,’” he says. The cancer, says Wolf, was “very aggressive—I’m lucky I lived through it. The day I went in for my first chemo, I felt like I was going in for a lethal injection—I was scared.” Then, in 2008, there was more bad news. “It was not a recurrence, but a new cancer 10 years later,” she says. “The second time, I just didn’t talk about it at all.”

Despite undergoing extensive and grueling treatments including chemotherapy, multiple surgeries, and rounds of radiation, Wolf found solace in Charleston’s kitchen, her diagnosis lending her already prized work a new depth. “I worked every day,” says Wolf, whose Charleston kitchen staff wore bandanas to cover their heads in solidarity with their then-bald boss (and continue the sartorial tradition to this day).

“That was part of what helped me to survive,” she says. “I needed that distraction. I needed to do what I loved, even though when I would walk through the back hallway and smell chicken stock I would be nauseated.” She recalls: “There’s a reason I didn’t go out to the dining room very much back then. When you lose your hair as a woman, you don’t feel very good about yourself—it’s very hard to go through. When you lose your hair, you don’t feel normal anymore, and you have this screaming card that says, ‘I have cancer.’”

In addition to feeling fortified by Jolie, Wolf’s older sister, Julia, recently encouraged her to open up about her experience. “My sister said that I should talk about my story,” sighs Wolf. “I’ve been through some very serious struggles in my life, and my sister felt that, if nothing else, other people could see that I worked though being sick twice. If it happened for me, it might happen for them, too.”

As she discusses her life, her rescue tabby cat Louis Deux nesting on a posh pile of pillows nearby, Wolf seems a study in contrasts. She is demanding in the kitchen—“I expect the best, but I apply that pressure to myself, as well,” she says—but she tempers that toughness with a softer side. (“Be patient with people,” she often reminds herself. “Especially waiters.”) She’s serious (“intense, bright-eyed, and not fooling around,” is how Foreman describes her), but also disarmingly funny. (“You’ll cry [with joy] if you eat my scrambled eggs,” she says. “My brother-in-law once asked me if I had added whipped cream to them.”) She’s cagey about naming what kind of cereal she eats (“I’m not telling you,” she says when asked to substantiate a certain rumor regarding her affection for sugary cereal), but fearless when it comes to discussing the most intimate parts of her past.

She also bemoans the fact that when you’re a top chef, no one wants to cook for you. “No one invites me to dinner,” Wolf says, “and, yes, I do want people to invite me over. I don’t know what I’d do if someone invited me to dinner at this point—I’d probably be nervous myself.”

Early on, Wolf learned about loss. When the Virginia-born chef was six years old, her eldest sister, Cathy, died of leukemia. “That was at a time when people didn’t talk about someone having a health situation like that,” says Wolf, “and that shaped my thoughts about illness later.”

Despite the loss of her sister, Wolf says she had a “wonderful, happy, healthy childhood,” and one in which food was at the fore. Her mother, Jean, was a stay-at-home mom and an excellent cook known for her Pennsylvania Dutch recipes, including potpies and homemade chicken-noodle corn soup. “My mom’s job was to cook,” she says, “and that’s what she did, so I grew up loving food.” Her late father, Robert, who was the vice president of Hardee’s Restaurants, and her absolute idol, was also a strong influence. “My father did tremendous things in that position,” she says, admiration still evident in her voice. “This is a company that owned thousands of restaurants.”

By the time Wolf was in the fourth grade, her father had taken a new job as the vice president of Ponderosa Steakhouse, dictating a move to Northern Indiana, and, eventually, Charleston, SC. “My father did a lot of business in Chicago, so I ate in all the good restaurants in Chicago at a time when French restaurants were still popular in the United States,” says Wolf, who grew up eating at the membership-only Whitehall Club and the storied Le Perroquet.

In the fabled dining rooms, she soaked in the splendor. “You would walk in and all the waiters would be in tuxedos,” she recalls of the Whitehall Club, “and the restaurant was beautiful. It was dark and opulent with crystal everywhere and beautiful woodwork. There was a beautiful mahogany bar on the right and a big round table in the center that always had smoked salmon laid out.” She also indulged in other items that few kids her age were consuming. “I was eating sweetbreads,” says Wolf. “I was eating hearts of palm. I was eating smoked salmon as an eighth grader.” It was that early exposure that helped Wolf acquire a sophisticated sense of taste, as well as tremendous insight into the industry. “I was very fortunate that I had these experiences, because I was developing a palate and an understanding of what is good food and an understanding of the table and what great service is,” she says. “I’ve been around food my entire life. I was born to be a chef.”

With the goal of one day opening her own restaurant, Wolf pursued a degree in business management at the University of Evansville, but academics eluded her. “I sat there and dreamed of the two cookbooks my mother had sent me away with,” she recalls. “I dreamed of Le Perroquet and talked to my friends about the restaurant I wanted to do.”

Realizing that college wasn’t her calling, she dropped out by 1984 and moved home to Charleston, soon landing an apprenticeship at Silks, a high-end Low Country cuisine restaurant in the legendary Planters Inn, then the city’s finest dining establishment. Although Wolf was 19 at the time, and had never worked in a kitchen, she impressed the sous chef. “She said, ‘With your background eating at all these restaurants all your life, you’re going to be a great cook,’” recounts Wolf. “She said, ‘I’m hiring you.’”

Starting as garde-manger working at the cold station (and eventually working at all stations), Wolf learned lessons she draws on to this day. “I learned everything,” she says. “Everything about speed. Everything about being organized. Everything about doing things the best possible way you could do them. I learned the discipline of working in an excellent kitchen.”

After a year and a half at Silks, Wolf furthered her knowledge formally at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in 1985, where she first became enamored with classic French cooking and the principles of Auguste Escoffier, the father of modern French cooking. “Every day I walked through the front doors of that school, I loved every single minute,” she says. “It was my foundation.”

From the CIA, Wolf moved on to fine-dining jobs in Charleston, Knoxville, TN, (where she became an executive chef by 25), and Washington, D.C., where she met Foreman, who was managing the Southern spot Georgia Brown’s. The duo, who moved to Baltimore in 1994 to start Savannah, were married for 15 years, and though the personal partnership didn’t work out, the professional partnership has continued to flourish and the two remain friends, making frequent trips to Europe for the business every year and even cohosting the weekly radio show Foreman and Wolf on Food and Wine on WYPR. Did they ever consider not working together after their divorce? “No,” asserts Wolf. “Never. Not once.”

Wolf has nothing but respect for the man who proposed six months after their first meeting. “Tony is one of the best at what he does that I’ve ever known,” she says. “And his love of the table is the same as my love of the table. At the same time, we are two very different people, which is why I think we make very good business partners. He is extremely intelligent and very knowledgeable. We are both strong-willed, so we both have our opinions and ideas, but I think those two things coming together make for a very good idea. It’s a pleasure for me to work with Tony.”

Back at Charleston, just before dinner service, Wolf—that’s “Chef Wolf” in this domain to everyone including Foreman—puts her ideas into play, leaving nothing to chance as she reviews the night’s lineup during “menu meeting.” “I put the roasted red-beet tartare on the plate,” she explains as staffers furiously scribble in notebooks while sitting in Charleston’s luxe dining room after “employee meal” (the staff meal before dinner service). “That’s ‘tartare’ in quotes—it’s not really raw, it just looks like tuna tartare. It’s a brunoise of roasted red beets mixed with just a tiny bit of mayonnaise, salt, pepper, capers, a brunoise of cornichons, and a little bit of chives.” She goes on, as her staff hangs on every word. “It will have a blood-orange supreme as a garnish made of a reduction of orange juice, fresh pomegranate that I puréed in the blender to make fresh juice, and a little bit of sugar, so it’s a pomegranate-and-blood-orange reduction.”

Twenty minutes or so later, she’s lectured on the intricacies of not only that dish, but the entire menu (at which point, maître d’hotel Kalada Nemieboka quizzes the staff, dish by dish, as they practice their patter for patrons). “She is super focused on ingredients and their expression,” says Foreman.

Regardless of the context, absolute excellence is her aim. Erik Oosterwijk, president of Fells Point Wholesale Meats, has worked with Wolf for years. “Even in a relaxed setting, like when she’s working to please the crowd at a Christmas party at her house, she’s very serious about food, because she wants it to be perfect,” he says. “It’s amazing to watch her as a tray of goodies comes out of the kitchen. Even at home, she’s checking them out as if they were going to the dining room at Charleston—it all has to be just so.”

And though Wolf and Foreman are credited with kicking off Baltimore’s food scene and were sourcing products locally long before “locavore” became a part of the lexicon, Wolf doesn’t pay much attention to it. “I don’t know what the scene is, and I have never known what the scene is because I have worked the entire time I have lived here,” she says. “In the 20 years I’ve lived here, I can name how many times I’ve eaten somewhere other than my own restaurants. When I was married, we traveled to Europe when we weren’t working.”

With dinner service in full swing, Wolf takes her command post in front of the pass line. Like a well-timed pas de deux, she calls out orders and inspects each Bernardaud plate (made with real copper, gold, and platinum powder) before runners take them to the tables. “Nine rockfish, two turbot, two duck,” she calls out, as she instructs a runner on the proper angle to deliver the magret of duck and then repositions the garnish with tweezers. “Keep the medallions at six o’clock, with the steep grade of greens in front of the guest,” she says, choreographing every movement.

As kitchens go, Wolf’s is markedly quiet and calm. “She’s not hellfire and slamming things around,” says Keck. “She is there for the betterment of the staff.” And to please her patrons. “Feeding people is the reward for cooking,” she says. “People telling you that that’s the best they’ve ever had is the most incredible thing.”

Though Charleston’s inner sanctum is a hushed place, Wolf can’t contain her passion for food. “I love the way that food looks,” she gushes. “I love cutting open a truffle and seeing what the interior of that particular truffle looks like. I love the smell of it. I love the way it feels in my hands. I love the sound of it—I love every part of it.”

As Charleston celebrates its eighteenth year of success, Wolf is far from ready to throw in the (kitchen) towel. In fact, she’s just warming up. “I hope 18 years at Charleston is only the beginning,” she says with conviction. “I don’t plan on going anywhere. I hope I am still in the kitchen when I am 70, and all the guys that work for me, too—may they never leave.”

When Cindy Wolf and Tony Foreman, co-owners of Foreman Wolf Restaurant Group, imagined Pazo, it was a time when Harbor East was just beginning its renaissance from urban no-man’s land to dining destination. When it opened, with its focus on tapas inspired by Mediterranean peasant plates, and a Patrick Sutton-realized ambiance that awed, Pazo was a revelation. In short, eating at Pazo—a Catalan word meaning “grand house”—was as close to experiencing sunny European coastal climes as one could come without wielding a passport.

Fast forward 10 years, and it’s hard to believe that Pazo is one of the grande dames of Harbor East. Despite its years, Pazo is still the fun and festive sequel to the more serious scene surrounding some of Foreman Wolf’s other outposts, including Charleston and Petit Louis Bistro.

To keep things fresh, in June, Foreman Wolf introduced a menu that aims south of Rome and tapped the talents of Julian Marucci, who is Pugliese (and was already working in-house at Cinghiale), to serve as executive chef.

Wherever Pazo takes us, we’re happy to go along for the ride because we know we’ll be in good hands. From the welcoming valets who whisk us off Aliceanna Street to a waitstaff that strikes the sweet spot between overly attentive and laissez-faire, and a kitchen crew that takes an almost academic interest in why we haven’t eaten every morsel off a particular plate (more on that later), service is rarely anything other than faultless.

The new menu kicks off with a series of stuzzichini (starters), while the middle of the menu highlights a selection of Neapolitan pizzas, and the lower portion of the menu is a price-fixed, three-course, $45-per-person affair highlighting hand-formed pastas and wood-fire grilled meats and seafood. (One caveat, as is the case with many spots these days, seasonal specialties flit on and off the menu, so don’t get overly attached to any one dish or preparation.)

On our first visit, we stuck to the starters, including the wood-grilled octopus—a clever combination of smoked potato and celery heart, with a whisper of heat from some chili oil—before moving on to an exquisite P.E.I. cold mussel salad with green beans and crushed Marcona almonds. We also sampled the salmon crudo, bite-sized chunks of Vancouver salmon served tartare and mixed with chili oil, cucumber, celery root, and pistachios. While the fish was fresh, it lacked flavor, so after a bite or two, we left most of it uneaten. (Still, we were impressed when the waitress, in an effort to report back to the kitchen, showed an earnest interest as to why we hadn’t finished the dish.)

Pazo is still the fun and festive sequel to the more serious scene surrounding some of Foreman Wolf’s other outposts.

Other wow-worthy dishes were the house-made ricotta (imagine eating a cloud) drizzled with honey, and punctuated by almonds and arugula, as well as a bowl of burrata (a creamier version of mozzarella) flown in from Puglia twice weekly and tossed with heirloom cherry tomatoes and fresh basil.

On a second visit, we followed the price-fixed route (including a starter, a small portion of pasta, and a choice of fish or meat). Among our favorites was the golden-and-red-beet salad with house-made ricotta, arugula, and walnut pesto. The sweet beets, paired with the ricotta and earthier flavors of arugula and slightly piquant pesto, could make a root-vegetable convert out of anyone.

Among the pastas, the real stunner was the house-made basil fettucine bathed in a spicy tomato sauce and strewn with chunks of sweet Maryland crab. But our favorite dish of the night, hands down, was the grilled branzino. The delicate fish dish came with a complement of fanned potatoes, fava beans, roasted cherry tomatoes, and basil purée, and showcased a crisp, crackly skin thanks to its preparation in the wood-fired oven.

Because we wanted to sample all aspects of the menu, we returned to try Pazo’s weekday happy hour when select pizzas cost a cut-rate $5 in the lounge and bar. On this visit, we split the verde pizza, an inventive take on a farmers’ market pizza, topped with fava beans, snap peas, pesto, arugula, and ricotta, and the funghi pizza with forest mushrooms, fontina, and white truffle béchamel. Both were delicious and filling, though that didn’t prevent us from ordering a luscious slice of dark chocolate mousse cake, served with a silky Sicilian pistachio gelato on the side.

Though the menu has changed, Pazo’s new wine list remains epic, with the regions of Puglia, Sardinia, and Calabria well represented. A favorite glass of wine was the Tenuta delle Terre Nere, with red grapes cultivated from the volcanic soils of Mt. Etna. In the final analysis, Pazo is the epitome of evolution. At 10 years and counting, we’d say the girl is still going strong. As the saying goes, there ain’t nothing like a (grande) dame.

On a dark and stormy night—thanks, Snoopy—we scurried under the almost-garish, red-white-and-blue awning to gain entrance to the Foreman Wolf restaurant group’s latest venture: Petit Louis Bistro on the Lake. We’d been to the original one in Roland Park several times and were curious to see how this outpost in Howard County compared. The setting on Lake Kittamaqundi in the heart of Columbia is beautiful, even during a spring downpour. And when we went back a second time, a sunny day even increased the scenic benefits of its location.

But the real discovery is that, while the Columbia and Roland Park restaurants share the same name and menu, there is a certain joie de vivre at the lake that’s lacking in Baltimore. The city spot is fun, too, but it’s crowded, noisy, and clearly a who-knows-whom spot. You can feel like an outsider if you’re not a regular diner.

At Petit Louis Bistro on the Lake, there’s a diversity of customers and conversations, similar to what you might actually find in a Parisian wine bar. In fact, the restaurant’s Belle-Époque décor is reminiscent of renowned places like Les Deux Magots and Café de Flore in the Sixth Arrondissement. At Petit Louis, the deep reds, gilded-gold details, marble, and handsome woods make you feel as if you’ve stepped across the ocean into a time of American expats like Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Fitzgerald.

The space is much larger, too, with a spacious bar, a front room with a view of the lake, and cozy, convivial dining areas in the back. And the staff, in typical Foreman Wolf fashion, is congenial and professional in all areas of service, from the maître d’hotel to the sommelier (making suggestions from the 300-plus labels of French wine) to the waiters and waitresses. But with all their perfunctory performances, there’s no pomposity present at all.

The casual French fare also lives up to expectations under executive chef James Lewandowski—though Tony Foreman and Cindy Wolf run the whole shebang. You can dine inexpensively and satisfyingly with an omelet du jour or an inches-high quiche Lorraine, or indulge in a multi-course, à-la-carte meal, starting with a fine selection of hors d’oeuvres.

We began our own food journey with some impressive starters, though one, in particular, stood out—the beignets de crevettes, a wonderful mélange of savory fried fritters, including shrimp and asparagus, in a garlic aioli sauce. We also appreciated the simplicity of the Roquefort salad (salade au Roquefort) with romaine, endive, walnuts, and an exquisite blue cheese.

Everything on the menu is listed under its French name with the ingredients in English. For ease of reading, I’m going to describe the dishes so you won’t need a translator.

Instead of aubergines croquantes, for example, let’s just say that this is a delicious stacked dish of crispy eggplant slices, tomatoes, and chèvre with a pungent pistou of crushed basil, garlic, and olive oil. The lentil salad, while pedestrian looking, was an enticing mix of lentils, duck confit, and sherry vinaigrette. And the white asparagus with béarnaise sauce gets an A-plus with a poached egg on top.

The seduction continued with our entrees. The salmon grille capitalized on the latter appetizer above, minus the egg, marrying the pink fish with the delicate asparagus. The kitchen also excelled in braised meats—from the short-rib special of the day to a succulent lamb shoulder rubbing elbows with sunchokes and a mint pistou. The duck-leg confit, a cooking method that delivers fall-off-the-meat results, played well with potatoes au gratin, while the steak frites starred a robust New York strip with a lush pat of herbed butter capping the meat’s grill marks, along with crunchy, salty fries, of course.

We have to give a shout out to the vegetable of the day—roasted carrots—and the mushrooms of the day—hen of the woods. Both were notable preparations. I hope they’ll be back on the menu soon.

We’re not sure why we’re suckers for a cheese cart. But we are, probably because of the delectable selections you see as it trundles by the table like a pram with a cute baby. We settled on a wedge of full-flavored Camembert, a creamy cow’s milk cheese from Normandy.

If you need to satisfy your sweet tooth, Petit Louis has you covered with exquisite French classics like profiteroles with coffee ice cream and warm chocolate sauce and a lemon tart with toasted meringue. For a nibble, try the bonbons, including a chocolate-salted caramel, hazelnut-praline orange, and cherry Kirsch ganache, all sampled on the night we were there.There’s also Comptoir, a bakery/cafe attached to the main restaurant—a casual, go-to place for sandwiches, pastries, breads, and coffee. Petit Louis on the lake captures what Foreman Wolf does so well: offering stellar food, ambiance, and service to diners. It’s worth a visit wherever you live.