From Spike and Charlie Gjerde to Donna Crivello and Jerry Pellegrino, Andy Thomas has worked for almost every well-known chef in Baltimore. His most recent venture is The Tilted Row, a Bolton Hill gastropub inside The Jordan apartment building. We sat down with Thomas to chat about the concept, growing in the local restaurant industry, and the Tilted Row’s signature crab cakes that pay homage to his Eastern Shore upbringing.

What was your mission with this menu? We know that it has a lot of Middle Eastern influences because owner Ziad Maalouf, who also operates Mt. Vernon’s Cafe Fili, is Lebanese.
Before I even came on board, they had hired a consultant and had come up with the menu. When I came on the idea was for it to be elevated pub food with Mediterranean influences and Middle Eastern spice mixes like Chermoula—paprika, mint, and other things—and Baharat, which blends cumin, cardamom, allspice, cinnamon, paprika, and nutmeg.

I looked at the menu and it didn’t have any vegan or vegetarian dishes, which I thought were important for this neighborhood. I also brought things like fried chicken, zucchini fritters, and duck fried rice like I’d been doing for years. We wanted to have Middle Eastern influences, but we also didn’t want to have our hands tied by them. We didn’t want the menu to be overly complicated. We wanted to keep it simple at a price point that wasn’t too high.

I know you worked at The Elephant for years. Why do you think it didn’t succeed?
I believe that it was hard to convince people that this grand space was a neighborhood place—people only came for their grandmother’s birthday or prom. Two full floors of the space were not being used.

How did you eventually meet Maalouf?
We met on Craigslist. I was looking for a job and I answered an ad. I knew it was still under construction, but I didn’t hear from him. I went to Café Fili to give him my resume but he wasn’t there, then my good friends Jerry Pellegrino and Amy von Lange from Schola talked me up. I got a phone call from him the next day.

So that was it?
I worked part time doing some classes at Schola, then I worked full time at Fili. It was nice to ease into it.

How did you get into cooking?
I’ve always wanted to cook. I had an uncle who passed away when I was a young kid. He was a crab man with a truck that had a steamer and he’d park it on the side of the road and sell crabs. Here was this guy selling something people love. You sit down as a family as an event. He then had a crab steaming shop and he went to work in Old Bowie at this little old place called The Railroad Inn. It was a family-run place and I went there to wash dishes at 14. I made pizzas and got good enough to help the guys on the line. Then, in 12th grade, I did a work-study program at the Holiday Inn in Greenbelt. There was a real chef there and it was the first time I saw the line of people in white jackets. I knew these were my people.

Where did you go after that?
I went to Baltimore International College when it was on Gay Street. I did a two-year program in one and got a job at the Peabody Court Hotel in the brasserie, before going up to the 13th floor to work in The Conservatory. It was over the top with the silver and crystal and food under domes and then it became Michel Richard’s Citronelle, and I learned that it’s not just about cream and heavy meat reductions, but you can use olive oil and it can be well executed. It opened my eyes that food can be fun and fresh.

Didn’t you also work at Donna’s?
Yes, a friend of mine went to work there when it was at the Baltimore Museum of Art and I was his sous chef. Within two weeks, he had a nervous breakdown. I was 24 at the time, and they looked at me and said: “It’s your turn to step up.”

What a story. So now, here you are at The Tilted Row. Talk about some of your signature items, like the burger.
I just wanted to make a good pub burger. This one is from the original menu. It has tobacco onions and pickles. People think that burgers are easy to make, but they’re anything but. It’s the one item that people try to change the most, they try to take it apart and put it back together again.

Your crab cakes with succotash are excellent, but not what we’re used to in Baltimore.
I grew up with a crab cake that was different than the one in Baltimore. I’m from Prince George’s County and have family on the Eastern Shore. The only time we ate crab cakes was the day after we’d eaten steamed crabs on the back porch. We used leftover meat, not just jumbo lump, and would bind it in mayo, mustard, egg, and breadcrumbs. We breaded them on the outside and fried them in a pan. This is very much my version of a crab cake. There are people who are like, “That’s not a crab cake.” People have a very big opinion about it, but I stand by them. I grew up with the succotash, it had corn, tomatoes, and lima beans—but our version uses fava beans.

Give us your elevator pitch about why people should patronize The Tilted Row.
The neighborhood is this beautiful, historic place. People need to stop being afraid to come into Baltimore and embrace this town again.

This month’s Baltimore Restaurant Week is going to be a bit different for chef Donna Crivello, who shuttered her 19-year-old neighborhood outpost Donna’s Cafe in the Village of Cross Keys last month. Instead of overseeing two kitchens during the annual dining-out promotion, she is now solely focused on her work at rustic Italian spot Cosima inside Woodberry’s Mill No. 1.

“I have so many mixed emotions about closing Donna’s,” Crivello says. “It was the end of an era for us. But moving forward, it’s nice that I have a lot more time to spend at Cosima.”

Though Donna’s was one of last year’s record-high restaurant closures—among others including Aggio, Parts & Labor, and Wit & Wisdom—the industry is ready to wipe the slate clean. And Baltimore Restaurant Week, which returns January 11-20, will kick off the year on a high note.

“I always like to look at the glass half full,” says chef Robbin Haas, who closed The Nickel Taphouse in Mt. Washington due to financial struggles last October. “Even though there may have been some setbacks, you still have to keep moving ahead. And Restaurant Week is a way to really bring some energy into the restaurants.”

Haas remains a partner at Birroteca in Hampden and Encantada at the American Visionary Art Museum in Federal Hill. Both spots will be participating in Restaurant Week, which offers multi-course lunch and dinner menus at fixed price points ranging from $12-35. The idea behind the winter promotion is to generate business during a season that is notoriously slower for the dining scene.

“You have this natural doldrum after the holidays where people are not going out because they’re watching their weight or their credit card bill,” says Steven Rivelis, co-owner of The Elephant in Mt. Vernon. “It’s a great opportunity to reset things and start them in a positive way.”

Though the dining deal makes it easy to explore restaurants in unfamiliar neighborhoods, Rivelis also stresses the importance of supporting the spots in your own backyard.

“Businesses need our neighbors,” he says. “And neighbors need the businesses, or else you don’t have a thriving community. It’s a reciprocal responsibility, and I think Restaurant Week provides an opportunity for folks to get out and spend money in their own city.”

Crivello agrees, mentioning that Cosima typically sees a spike in reservations throughout the event: “It’s a real boost for January sales,” she says. “If you can get 11 really good days, it makes a huge difference.”

While some might be quick to pass on Restaurant Week because of the increased crowds or limited menu, Crivello assures that most teams anticipate the high demand and plan ahead.

“I think that’s part of the fun of Restaurant Week—that’s it’s always busy and energetic,” she says. “Most of us who run restaurants streamline things so that you’re not going to have to wait a long time.”

From a chef’s perspective, Haas says that the week gives him a chance showcase highlights on the regular menu. Birroteca will feature the signature mushroom bolognese cavatelli and burrata bruschetta, while Encantada will offer dishes like crispy Brussels sprouts and steak frites with onion butter.

“Sometimes some of our dishes get lost in translation a little bit,” he says. “So the Restaurant Week menu is something that we have a lot of fun with.”

Rivelis is looking forward to debuting a few new items, including a lemon-caper chicken with house-made fettuccine and herb butter sauce, which will remain on The Elephant’s worldly menu even after Restaurant Week ends.

As for Crivello, her special prix-fixe features ricotta meatballs, butternut squash soup, roasted pork belly, and the signature spit-roasted chicken with roasted vegetables and saffron couscous. Overall, she hopes that the upcoming event ignites diners to support the industry as a whole.

“When Donna’s closed, I had a lot of people say to me, ‘Well I guess I didn’t come often enough,’” recalls Crivello. “You don’t want people to feel bad, but it’s true. You have to get out and support the places that you like, and visit the places that you haven’t been yet. Our city needs that energy.”

After a 19-year run in The Village of Cross Keys, Donna’s Cafe is closing its doors at the end of this week.

“In dog years, it’s almost like we’re 104-years-old,” says co-owner Alan Hirsch in an exclusive interview. “It’s been a great ride. The hardest part is separating from the employees and customers. Some of our customers eat here three, four, five times a week, and we’ve had so many life events here, from engagement parties, to christenings, to shivas.”

When Hirsch and his business partner Donna Crivello opened the first Donna’s in Mt. Vernon in 1991, Crivello once admitted that at the time, “We had no idea what we were doing. We hired some people to put stenciling on the windows, and that same day we opened for business. We didn’t even know we were doing dinner until 5 o’clock on our first night when a customer asked, ‘Do you do dinner?’” Donna’s mother said, “‘Sure, we do dinner,’” recalls Hirsch.

But despite the seat-of-the-pants approach, Donna’s thrived and other locations followed in Towson and Charles Village, as well as inside The Baltimore Museum of Art, the University of Maryland Medical Center, and four locations inside Bibelot bookstores.

The closing of the European-style cafe, which is known for its salads, sandwiches, and upscale coffees, comes as the space struggled for business. “Emotionally, this is very difficult,” says Hirsch, “but from a business decision, it was pretty clear.”

While Hirsch can’t say for certain why business slowed down, he has his theories.

“Restaurants get old,” he says, “Customers get old, and it can be hard to transition to the next generation. I think that’s part of what happened here.”

The explosion of new restaurants on the scene hasn’t helped, says Hirsch.

“With the way that retail is, brick-and-mortar stores are really struggling,” says Hirsch. “That means that developers turn to restaurants as tenants, and sometimes anchor tenants, when they open a space. That’s, in part, what’s fueling the increase in restaurants. They can’t get a clothing store or a shore store in, so you see more restaurants.”

For now, Crivello will continue to focus on her other restaurant Cosima along the banks of the Jones Falls, while Hirsch, a founder of City Paper, says he plans on helping other area restaurants. “It’s been a great ride,” he says.

On a crisp November day, Donna Crivello is dressed head-to-toe in black—“my uniform,” she calls it—but as she stands in her stunning Canton Cove kitchen, the light streaming through the windows reveals that she’s also lightly coated in a layer of white flour. The dust storm extends to most of the surfaces in her black-lacquered and cream-colored kitchen. For the co-owner of Donna’s Coffee Bar and Restaurant, this is all in a day’s work of testing recipes for her new Southern Italian restaurant Cosima. “My cabinets are covered,” she says, while assembling a fig-and-pear pizza with pomegranate glaze and Gorgonzola. “When I cook, I end up touching every one of my kitchen cabinets.”

Despite the fact that she has forgotten her proper pan in the car and has had to improvise by baking the pizza on the back of a panini press in its place, Crivello’s midday feast seems effortlessly assembled. Food arrives magically, masterfully, and fully formed, as the diminutive dynamo (measuring a mere 5 feet in height) oversees a frittata flecked with fennel, feta, spinach, and tomatoes; browns red potatoes roasted with rosemary and sprinkled with her own blend of salt; and pulls chocolate and hazelnut biscotti out of the oven, all in the name of a “simple lunch.”

Indeed, after standing at the stove for most of her 63 years—24 of them professionally at the helm of 10 or so different Donna’s (she has the burns on her forearms to prove it)—Crivello has left her mark on more than her clothes and cabinets. There’s very little of the landscape Crivello hasn’t touched. And while most who have been in the food industry for that long might dream of slowing down, the restaurateur is just catching her second wind with Cosima. It’s named after her beloved nonna and set inside the historic Mill No. 1, one in a cluster of mid-1800s mill buildings that were once the largest manufacturers of cotton duck and sailcloth in the world.

Back in the dining dark ages, Donna was the first of Charm City’s one-name wonders.

So why, after more than two decades, is the coffeehouse queen charting a new course? “I’ve always wanted to do this kind of restaurant,” says Crivello, who is married to educational consultant Peter Adams. “But I got swept up by the coffee bar/cafe thing. The timing of this just seemed right.”

Back in the dining dark ages—as recently as the early ’80s, that is—before Cindy (Wolf) and Spike (Gjerde)—Donna, who moved from Boston to Baltimore to work as the art director and food stylist for The Baltimore Sun, was the first of Charm City’s one-name wonders. “In Boston, there were these little cafes on every corner, but there was really nothing in Baltimore food-wise,” recalls Crivello. “I thought, ‘I have to do something, somewhere, somehow like that here.’”

The opportunity presented itself when, in 1991, friend and co-worker Elizabeth Large, then-food critic at The Sun, introduced Crivello to Alan Hirsch, a fellow foodie and co-founder of City Paper. “When we met, we couldn’t stop talking about food,” says Crivello. “Alan had the coffee idea. I had the fresh European-style cafe concept where you could have salads and great breads and pastries. We felt like there was this major void to be filled. There was the Bun Penny and that was [about] it.”

Later that year, during a period of mass layoffs, Crivello took a buyout from The Sun, clearing the coast for her and Hirsch to act on their idea. On November 5, 1992, Donna’s opened—all 1,200 square feet of it—inside the Park Plaza Building at 800 N. Charles Street in Mt. Vernon. The menu of Mediterranean fare, designer coffees, and fresh-baked bread served with olive oil for dipping was a novel concept and made the cafe an instant hit in the Mt. Vernon ’hood. “I’m not saying that I brought people out of the depths of culinary ignorance,” says Crivello with a laugh, “but, at the time, there were people who’d never heard of tapenade or focaccia.”

At the same time, Crivello and Co. experienced a learning curve of their own. “We had no idea what we were doing,” she admits, recalling that the space was so tight, that the telephone often fell off the wall into the mixer. “We hired some people to put stenciling on the windows and on that same day, we opened for business.” While Crivello was busy broadening Baltimoreans’ taste buds, behind-the-scenes, the operation was completely seat-of-the-pants. “We didn’t even know we were doing dinner until 5 o’clock on our first night, when a customer asked, ‘Do you do dinner?’” recalls Hirsch. “And Donna’s mother said, ‘Sure, we do dinner,’ so Donna ran down the street and bought some pasta and tomatoes—that’s literally how we started doing dinner.” Chimes in Crivello, “From that point on, it was crazy busy, and people lined up out the door to come in.”

Despite the trial-and-error approach, Donna’s thrived and other locations quickly followed in Towson and Charles Village, as well as outlets inside The Baltimore Museum of Art, University of Maryland Medical Center, and four locations inside Bibelot bookstores. But by the early 2000s, after a string of successes, Bibelot went bankrupt, and Crivello and Hirsch fell on tough times. “It was devastating,” says Hirsch. “We probably should have declared bankruptcy, too.” Another blow to the business was a fire in 2010 that severely damaged the original Mt. Vernon coffee bar. “At the time, we thought we would replace Donna’s with something more ambitious in the same space, but it was too expensive,” says Hirsch. “Cosima is, in part, an outgrowth of the original Donna’s burning down—what we never got to do.”

These days, though only one Donna’s remains, and despite fire and bankruptcy, Crivello has never forgotten why she took to the table in the first place. “I love thinking about food,” she says. “When I was doing the food styling for The Sun, there was something so great about letting food show up on its own—the sun hits a berry that’s wet, the olive oil glistens on a fig. Through it all, I never stopped loving it.”

Though she majored in early childhood education at Boston State College and went on to study graphic design, Crivello fantasized about opening a restaurant. “My mother is a great cook, and she always wanted to have her own cafe called Rosie’s Cafe,” says Crivello. “A space became available in Revere, MA, where I grew up, and she said to my dad, ‘Joe, I want to open my own restaurant,’ but my father said, ‘no,’ so she didn’t do it.”

While her mother’s dreams were dashed, Crivello came to share her mother’s passion for the plate. (In a surprise twist, her dad actually worked as a host at Donna’s Cross Keys and other locations for years, while her mother ran the food and helped in the kitchen.) “I got that gene that my mother has,” says Crivello. “For years, I had wanted to open my own restaurant.”

And although she took a few cooking lessons here and there, most of what she gleaned was from watching her mother and Italian relatives cook in their home kitchens. “I watched my mother make the sauces and the gravy and the meatballs, and my father’s mother, Cosima, always made ravioli on Sundays,” she says. “In my head, I have this image of her going into her bedroom on a Sunday. In a dark room, she kept a white sheet on the bed to spread out rows and rows of these little white pillows of ravioli.”

“She watched closely,” recalls Crivello’s mother, Rosemarie, who has passed along old family recipes like pasta fagioli, braciola, and zeppole for Cosima’s menu. “I guess observing made it all sink in.”

With Cosima, Crivello hopes to make more memorable meals, while also helping to interpret a little-known cuisine. “People don’t really know what true Sicilian food is,” she says. “Even the Sicilians in the U.S. don’t really know. Sicily was invaded and occupied by lots of different cultures from the Greeks and North Africans and Arabs, and everyone who occupied the land brought things that no other parts of Italy seemed to have—the agrodolce [a sweet vinegar sauce], the oranges, lemons, and almonds. I hope I can do it justice.”

“People don’t really know what true Sicilian food is. Even the Sicilians in the U.S. don’t know.”

Clearly, Crivello has what it takes to please even the most discerning critics. “She was one of the few people who wasn’t afraid to cook for the restaurant critic,” says Large. “No one else ever invited me over for dinner. I remember two early meals, in particular. One was a pasta with roasted vegetables over it. I had never had anything like it, and it was delicious. The other was a variation of a classic Italian Christmas Eve dinner, pared down a bit, with guests bringing other dishes. But the fresh salmon, huge shrimp, pasta with a light tomato sauce, great bread—those contributions of hers I still remember.”

In late December, prior to the grand opening, the excitement is palpable. Situated on the backside of Mill No. 1, in an idyllic courtyard that resembles a piazza, with the swift currents of the Jones Falls river passing by, the restaurant’s setting could easily be mistaken for a tiny Italian town. When Hirsch initially saw a photo of the spot, he told their business partner, Judith Golding, (also a partner at Donna’s), “That’s bullshit, it’s been Photoshopped.” Says Hirsch: “I said, ‘I’ve been in Baltimore my whole life. I don’t know this space.’” But when Golding encouraged him to go see it for himself, he was impressed. “It’s magical,” he admits.

As the trio gets ready to open in February, they proudly show off the space that’s a great mix of modern and historic. A steel sculpture over the bar made by Woodberry’s Gutierrez Studios echoes the original steel girders. The brick pizza oven has been retrofitted into the site’s original chimney, and the blend of materials—marble counters and stone floors—mingle marvelously with the historic fieldstone walls. At 5,700 square feet, this is the restaurateur’s largest venture yet. As workers ready the 12-burner range and put the finishing touches on the space, for Crivello, it’s the culmination of a career. “You have this excitement about it,” she says, “but it’s like when you want to have a dinner party and you think it’s a great idea, and there’s 10 minutes to go, and you still haven’t taken a shower.”

Regardless of opening-day jitters, Crivello couldn’t be happier about her new spot. “I can’t imagine what else I would do from here,” she says. “This space has the pizza oven I’ve wanted for years and years. I’m with great people, I’m right on the water, I’m in an old building—just like the first Donna’s in Mt. Vernon, which had old brick, and stone, and the original wood. I’ve come full circle.”