Paige Mason Littleton had never opened a cafe, though her sister had once told her that her home-cooked chicken salad and quiche were so delicious that she should have her own restaurant.

“She’d say, ‘You have to have a cafe and you should serve this,’” says Littleton. “She must have put the bug in my brain, so I saved the recipes.”

Some 10 years later, in January 2021 and long after retiring from working in marketing for a financial firm, Littleton opened the adorable Garden & Grounds Bistro in the former Atwater’s space on Falls Road. (Littleton hired Chadli Sassi, formerly of Brightview Senior Living, as head chef.) The menu features everything from chicken and waffles and fried green tomatoes to avocado toast and acai bowls and smoothies.

“People say, ‘Why would you do this? It’s such a hard business,’” says Littleton. “The main stress is making sure everyone is happy and the food is the best it can be. It’s stressful, but it’s also really fun.”

Why did you want to open in this particular space?
I really love the Falls Road Corridor. I love the community around here, from Ruxton to Pikesville and Roland Park. I’ve never walked into a restaurant and thanked the restaurant for being there, but we get that here every day.

Tell me about the mission of the menu.
I wanted a healthy menu, but I also wanted people to be free to indulge, so it’s healthy with a Southern twist. You can come in and have French pastries or chicken and waffles or just stick to salads. I like to say that we have Coke and Kombucha—whatever you prefer. I want people to come in and have whatever they want.

Where did you get your inspiration for the menu?
I was inspired by Heirloom in Lewes, Delaware, and Egg in Rehoboth, which has great breakfasts and lunch. I love that their portions are on the larger side, and we have that, too. My dad lives in [the South]. There’s a Badass Coffee of Hawaii down there, and that inspired me, too. When we visit he’d try to show us around, but we’d say, “No, we have to get our coffee first.” We carry it now, and I can drink it every day. I ate out at so many restaurants [for research and development], which was exciting at first, but now I’m tired of eating out.

How did you come up with the name?
The garden part of the name is supposed to represent the fresh organic foods and the grounds is for the coffee.

The décor is so light and airy. What were your design goals?
I worked really hard on the décor. I didn’t hire a designer—I planned out every inch myself. I wanted a space where people could come in and forget about their day and their problems and just have fun with the people they are with and relax. I play Diana Krall, not rock and roll—I’m not sure what my employees think.

What lessons have you learned since opening the cafe?
This is a story about how anyone can make their dreams come true—if you really feel it and want to do it, you should just go for it.

“Hello sir, how can I help you?” the man dressed like a conductor asks from just inside the front door of the Baltimore Streetcar Museum. He’s John La Costa, a 69-year-old, semi-retired electrical and systems engineer.

Since the mid-1970s, he and small group of volunteers have spent much of their free time here, keeping alive the history of Baltimoreans’ primary form of public transportation during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Normally, La Costa would talk to visitors while riding aboard one of the museum’s dozen or so authentically restored vintage passenger vehicles. But today, he’s relegated to providing a tour of a few parked train cars inside a covered three-track wide garage as a result of a terribly ironic accident in March.

La Costa, the museum’s vice president of engineering, was on vacation in Germany when he received an email with the news that an empty, modern CSX freight train derailed from the curved line of working rail that spans the museum’s plot of land at 1911 Falls Road. A train car slowly crushed the electrical substation that powers the museum’s historic cars and destroyed more than 500 feet of suspended overhead wire that carries the 600-volt charge to run them.

“It was a great start to that part of the vacation,” La Costa says with a laugh. “I would have liked to be here to try to help.” It could have been worse—no one was injured and the streetcars were spared damage—but the necessary infrastructure repairs meant the museum’s main attraction, the running of those living time capsules, would be closed until further notice and resume only after thousands of dollars in repairs.

Thankfully, CSX offered to pay the bill, and the museum’s visitor center reopened soon after the accident. The museum is planning a grand reopening as soon as its track is operational, but “that still doesn’t help the whole feeling that it was destroyed,” says Ed Amrhein, the museum’s administrative vice president.

“Most of the people at the museum itself have taken it pretty hard,” he says. “We volunteered a long time to build a lot of this stuff, and to watch it disappear in a couple hours was heartbreaking.”