It may come as a surprise that interior designer Patrick Sutton’s office is a bit generic.

“It’s basic,” he admits from behind his simple wooden desk that’s stuffed inside the Federal Hill rowhouse his company has been occupying since September 2001. “We definitely didn’t try to design a showcase—it’s basically a vessel to create design.”

And create design Sutton has—after 30 years in business, his portfolio is as thick as it is impressive.

It turns out Patrick Sutton is both a “normal guy” who likes football and baseball games, hanging with his kids, vacationing with his wife, and calling his 13-year-old dog, Stella, the “center of my world”—and a world-class designer with movie-star hair, a résumé full of industry awards and accolades, and a roster of clients that could best be described as fancy.

“I’m going to tell you this—you’re going to laugh at me,” says Sutton. “I’m 61 years old but I still think of myself as 25 trying to make it.”

He says this as his staff—17 workers “shoehorned like Keebler elves” into the building, he jokes—work on some 40 projects, including six currently for the Baltimore-based Atlas Restaurant Group.

While Sutton reflects on three decades in the business, he looks around the room. Yes, the space is surprisingly no-frills, but not without its personal touches. He gestures to a photograph by contemporary Dutch visual artist Hendrik Kerstens depicting a stoic-looking woman in a red turban, a playful nod to the works of the Dutch Old Masters. “It’s art I can afford,” he jokes. “It’s in the tens of thousands, not hundreds.”

On a side table between two bookcases, sits Footloose in France, the first book written by his father, Horace Sutton—a travel writer and a huge influence on Sutton’s life. “When I went on my book signing across the United States, I carried this to honor his memory, which I thought was kind of cool.”

Next to the book is a candy corn lamp he bought at auction. Yes, the entire base is the shellacked Halloween treat and the shade a fuzzy yellow and pink. “My favorite is when the air conditioning turns on—those feathers dance a little bit.” It’s garish and a bit of surprising décor until Sutton adds, “I put that there so that when people come in here, they know I don’t take myself too seriously.”

From afar, Sutton’s childhood seemed glamorous. His father was a pioneer in transatlantic travel journalism, so young Patrick grew up tagging along on his overseas trips to the most beautiful places in the world—“hotels, restaurants, palaces, things like that,” he recalls. He remembers as a little boy just soaking in all the sounds, sights, and smells.

“You’re wandering down beautiful hallways or strolling through gardens, and you just get a sense of the design and the romance and the lifestyle.”

But the other part of Sutton’s upbringing was his mother’s ongoing struggle with mental illness. He didn’t know any other life, but suspected something was different at his home. “It made me an avid listener and observer,” says Sutton, qualities that serve him well in his work.

And there was something else he came to realize after years of therapy. “I could never heal her, so I’ve been trying to heal everybody else through design,” he says.

His first foray into design came in high school when a teacher recognized a natural talent in his architectural drafting class. After a summer program at Harvard called Career Discovery, Sutton headed to Carnegie Mellon University to study architecture.

“I did really, really well there,” says Sutton. He was so immersed in his studies he would keep a sleeping bag under his drafting table so he didn’t need to waste any time walking back to his dorm to sleep. “I just wanted to get all this design out. Like, if you talk to any artists, they’ll tell you that they have this overwhelming need to get it out. And I had that.”

After graduation the job offers rolled in. Sutton didn’t want to go back home to New York, so he figured Washington, D.C., was the next best option—close enough to visit his family but “far enough away that I can make my own path.”

But he didn’t feel a connection to the city when he visited. One of the firms pitching Sutton mentioned their headquarters were in Baltimore—“just an hour up the road,” they told him. Sutton went to take a look.

“I had just spent four years of my life in Pittsburgh, which is just like Baltimore. It’s a working-class city of neighborhoods. And so, I saw something very familiar, and I thought it was charming. And I said, ‘Okay, I’ll give it a year.’ That was 1985.”

He lasted at the firm for nine months, but hated how corporate it felt, so he switched to a smaller agency, Robert Kaplan & Associates. Within three years, he was a partner.

“I was gung-ho about it, but I started getting a little disillusioned on the architecture piece, because I would design these houses, and then they would hand it off to some interior designer whose vision was completely left field of what I thought the project wanted to be,” says Sutton.

And so, he began adding interiors to his architectural projects. “That was the first time that I started to realize that there’s a whole story here about the people that are living in these houses that need to be crafted and curated as a whole,” he says. He found that he was drawn to the more human aspect of interior design.

“I think that this is going to be an unpopular thing to say, but I think it’s true that most architects have to disassociate a little bit from the owner and think a little bit more abstractly than someone in the interior design business,” he says. “We really focus on lifestyle, and how are people going to live in these spaces and have meals and entertain and raise their children.”

For Sutton, architecture was about order and structure, but design was about living and connection—and he craved the latter. So, he officially switched from architecture to interior design.

“I approach each project like a story that’s waiting to be told,” says Sutton, who has truly leaned into the idea of storytelling through design. (His second book is due out next year.) With every client he asks about their “hopes, dreams, and aspirations” and couples that with the house’s energy—“that genius loci,” he says referring to the protective spirit of a place. It sounds a little woo-woo until you see the unbelievable spaces he’s created that are luxurious yet comfortable.

“It’s not surprising that my childhood was in palaces, restaurants, and hotels, and the three things that I do are luxury residences, restaurants, and hotels,” he says.

He attributes a lot of that success to staying firmly planted in Baltimore. “If I had gone to New York, my career probably would have started faster, but look at all the opportunities [Baltimore] gave me,” he says, mentioning Pazo, his first restaurant design collaboration with Foreman Wolf. That place had a festive decadence, a far cry from other bars and restaurants in the city, says Sutton.

When he first started, he had to “smuggle design in the projects” because Baltimore was so conservative. He designed the entire Pendry Hotel for Kevin Plank and penned the vision statement for Port Covington, one of the city’s newest developments. He has now designed countless restaurants with Atlas Restaurant Group, too.

“What sets Patrick apart is how well-traveled he is,” says Alex Smith, Atlas’ president and CEO. “He’s seen so many different concepts through his travels around the world, and he brings that global perspective into his work. He’s not just focused on one aspect, like fabric or décor—he thinks about the entire experience. From lighting to candles to artwork, he creates an immersive environment that feels cohesive and thoughtful.”

Clients also hire him because he gets what restaurants and hotels have to do—it’s about the immediate wow. “You’re designing for a shorter period of time,” says Sutton. “So, it’s kind of like, if you’re a guy, and you walk into a bar and it’s dimly lit, you see this hot, beautiful woman at the bar, and you’re like, ‘Oh, I’d love to spend a night with that person,’ but you don’t necessarily want to marry them.”

There’s a different design aesthetic when you are capturing someone’s attention for a few hours or days verses day in and day out. “So, in a restaurant or hotel, there’s more eyeliner, you’re really pumping up the volume…in a residence, you’re creating a background for life.”

He smiles. He loves good metaphor almost as much as he hates the word legacy, a word often used to describe his body of work.

“It sounds a little haughty to me. I don’t even know what that means.” But he understands how lucky he is to still be busy, relevant, and even revered 30 years into a career—and as much as he loves the big, glitzy projects, he’ll never stop designing people’s homes.

“You know I’m going from Pazo to the Pendry to writing this vision brief for an entire community, but meanwhile, like my day-to-day, I’m picking out the trim that goes on the edge of a drapery.”

Two ends of the spectrum, but all important. Thirty years of hard work and therapy have gotten him to a great place.

“I became a happier person. I calmed down. I had nothing left to prove,” says Sutton.

He also finds joy in mentoring the next generation of designers. “I can move from being quarterback to coach, and I think that’s fulfilling.”

When restaurateur Tony Foreman and chef Chris Scanga toured The Milton Inn prior to purchasing the property last year, they shared a lightbulb moment. As they walked through the historic home with its massive hearths and fieldstone exterior, they were in total agreement.

“We came to the same conclusion that we should serve game here,” says Scanga. “It reminded me of French hunting lodges I’d seen in Languedoc, France,” says Foreman. “The inspiration is about having an idea that feels right and honest, where it feels like something it should always have been.”

So, on the spot, they, along with Foreman Wolf partner-chef Cindy Wolf of Charleston, decided to reincarnate the once-legendary restaurant into something that had the feel of those French lodges but would be equally at home in Maryland hunt country, where the property is located.

“We envisioned a space that would feel elegant and rustic at the same time,” says Foreman, “a place where we could hang antlers on the wall, and where it would feel cool to do that.”

That concept came to life when The Milton Inn reopened its doors in July. (Chef Brian Boston served his last meal there in spring of 2020, when it became a casualty of the pandemic.) With its intimate dining rooms, plush textiles, impeccably sourced European oil paintings, a menu of French gastronomy’s greatest hits, and, yes, a collection of antlers artfully mounted on the wall ascending the staircase, the iconic Sparks restaurant is back—and better than ever.

It’s a happy ending for a space that dates back a few hundred years when the circa 1740 mansion was first a Quaker coach stop, then a boarding school (The Milton Academy for Boys, infamously attended by John Wilkes Booth), an antiques shop, and finally, a fine- dining fixture that, while beloved by many, was well past its prime.

After a complete restoration and reimagining of the space—this version of the storied restaurant is the same in name only. And somehow, Foreman Wolf’s first foray into Baltimore County manages to feel both current and timeless. Gone are the doilies, white tablecloths, and Eisenhower-era offerings like oysters Rockefeller of yore.

In are the craft cocktails (and an impressive French-accented wine list and Parisian maître d’hotel), rechargeable table lamps, and old-school Francophile favorites, which while deeply rooted in the past, have been updated for modern diners. In fact, Scanga describes the menu as “peasant food dressed up to be Instagram-worthy.”

 

“WE ENVISIONED A SPACE THAT WOULD FEEL ELEGANT AND RUSTIC AT THE SAME TIME.”

 

The atmosphere is equally posh. The talented Katie DeStefano created a series of seven spaces to choose from—the dark and dramatic Stable Room, the Hearth Room with its taxidermized pheasants, the genteel main dining room, and the airy Garden Room. (There’s also a lovely weatherproof outdoor patio area, for those who prefer eating en plein air only.)

In addition to reimaging the space, Foreman and Wolf have given the 32-year-old Scanga a platform for his talents. Prior to this gig, Scanga worked in the kitchens at Foreman Wolf’s other properties, including Petit Louis Bistro, Johnny’s, and Charleston.

He was also classically trained at the famed Culinary Institute of America, which makes him well-suited to design a menu of French comfort foods that pulls from the borders of southern and southwestern France, including the Basque Country and the Rhône region.

Think of Scanga’s perfectly rendered dishes—seared foie gras in plum sauce, grilled venison with chanterelles and sour cherries, duck leg confit with plums, and a succulent roasted guinea fowl—as an edible love letter to French fare.

“My style of cooking is doing stuff that is like grandma food that we can doll up,” he says, “but the flavor is classic French cooking.”

Scanga displays a deft artistic approach to his plates, but nothing is overdone—and every ingredient has a raison d’être. Take for example the divine steak tartare, a playful toad-in-the hole preparation that features a buttery brioche atop a luscious lobe of ruby-red beef, Ossetra caviar floating in black truffle vinaigrette, a quail egg at its center, and sorrel leaves that act as both garnish and a citrusy palate cleanser to cut the richness between bites.

The Pâté en Croûte (“pie in crust”)—a mixture of ground venison and pork pâté encased in a decorative puff pastry—is a work of art that takes days to prepare. This melt-in-your-mouth version honors the centuries-old French culinary tradition. On the seafood side, the Saumon la Cr me d’Oseille, a crispy-skinned piece of salmon sitting in sorrel sauce, is a delicious nod to the famed Michelin-starred La Maison Troisgros in Roanne, France, believed to be the birthplace of salmon in sorrel sauce.

Louis lovers will rejoice that many of that bistro’s flawlessly executed classics—the onion soup, the quiche, the steak frites—have earned a spot on the menu here. Also, familiar is Foreman Wolf’s gracious and caring service that never fails to make the meal. (We were so happy to see the suave Nezam Mojarrad, who has worked all over town, take command of our table.)

The Milton is an instant classic. As it was in the past, it’s a place to return to again and again.

THE MILTON INN 14833 York Rd., Sparks- Glencoe. HOURS: Sun. 5-9 p.m.; Tues.-Sat.: 5-10 p.m. PRICES: Appetizers: $11-24; entrees: $16-45; desserts: $11.

Last week, many area restaurants quickly responded to the COVID-19 crisis, taking precautionary measures by increasing sanitation efforts, printing disposable menus, sanitizing surfaces, and distancing tables.

As concern heightened throughout the weekend, some restaurants announced voluntary closures, including Fells Point businesses Max’s Taphouse, Kooper’s Tavern, and The Horse You Came in On Saloon.

Tony Foreman, whose Foreman Wolf Restaurant Group owns Charleston, Petit Louis, Cinghiale, Bar Vasquez, and Johnny’s, says there was a major downturn in diners over the weekend.

“Saturday night was fine, but you could feel it coming,” he says. “On a typical Sunday at Johnny’s we do 150 to 180 dinners. Last night we did 35.”

And then today, the hammer dropped.

While many restaurants continued to weigh what to do, Governor Larry Hogan ordered the closing of all Maryland bars and restaurants by 5 p.m. on Monday, March 16 to slow the spread of COVID-19. The deadly virus has wreaked havoc on businesses across the state—and nowhere is this more acutely felt than in the restaurant industry, a business based on social contact.

According to figures from Resy, a national reservation platform for higher-end restaurants, as of last Wednesday business was down by 20 percent across the United States from a year ago, by 30 percent in New York City, and as much as 60 percent in Seattle, with the highest reported number of cases and deaths in the country.

At his press conference Monday morning, the governor said the unprecedented steps “may seem scary,” continuing that the state has never faced anything like this before. “This is going to be much worse than anyone is understanding,” Hogan said.

Hogan is allowing for area businesses to stay open for delivery and curbside takeout. Many restaurants have been making the switch in the past few days, including The Corner Pantry, Foraged, Baby’s on Fire, Bon Fresco, Nepenthe Brewing Co., R. House, Stone Mill Bakery and Cafe, Orto, Sobo Market, and Clavel, which is offering its signature dishes along with special batches of spicy mezcalitas to-go.

In Little Italy, Aldo’s chef/owner Sergio Vitale is leading the charge with a new website for patrons to get food delivery and curbside pickup from neighborhood favorites including Aldo’s, Café Gia, La Scala, and Lew Gambino’s.

“Gia [Fracassetti] and I came up with this in response to these challenging times,” says Vitale, who points out that his full menu will be available to patrons. “My own father, chef Aldo, is 75 years old and at risk. We must all do our part to mitigate and combat the spread of COVID-19.” Vitale also points out that purchasing online gift cards to Little Italy restaurants is “another way to support the businesses you love.”

Even restaurants that don’t usually do a big takeout service are encouraging diners to place orders and pick them up curbside. All Foreman Wolf restaurants, with the exception of Charleston, for instance, will offer takeout, as well as delivery services at their Bin 201 and Bin 604 wine shops in Annapolis and Harbor East.

Josh and Stephanie Hershkovitz, the siblings who own Hersh’s in South Baltimore, embraced the carry-out only model over the weekend, even before Hogan’s mandate.

“It was a difficult decision to close,” said Josh, in a lengthy email filled with emotion. “At the end of the day, we both feel that if you believe in the human endeavor of science, you have to live by the practices that bear the best results, with respect to pandemic mitigation.”

This past Friday evening, Hersh’s saw a packed house and hosted a rehearsal dinner in the upstairs dining room.

“This crazy night filled us with joy at our restaurants’ impact on our community, but also a sense of dread as we watched folks waiting for tables, reaching over each other to get drinks, and rubbing up against each other as servers walked by them to get food to tables,” Josh added. “It was this packed night that steeled our resolve and made us commit to closing. We put so much love into our food and our hospitality that we have no doubt that our customers will see this move out of love, as well.”

At La Cuchara in Hampden, chef/co-owner Ben Lefenfeld said he and his team spent the whole morning preparing to shut down well before the governor made his announcement.

“I think that Governor Hogan is doing the right thing,” Lefenfeld says. “As a business owner, it was tough to figure out what to do. I’m glad we finally got some guidance.”

On a good day, the service industry operates on razor-thin margins. As workers scramble to make a living, employers are no doubt facing the tough decisions of laying off staff.

Alex Smith, president of Atlas Restaurant Group, concurs with Lefenfeld. “I agree the governor made the right decision for everybody,” he says, adding that his restaurants tried to stay open as long as possible to support their hourly employees, who rely on a base wage and tips from customers. “As a business with 1200 employees we can’t afford to pay all of them without revenue coming in.”

Lefenfeld adds that he and his team are weighing whether or not they will be open for carry-out next week, but for now they are selling gift cards.

“Twenty-five percent of the sale of the gift cards is going to our staff,” he says. “We are doing all that we can to keep people afloat.”

With regard to his 60 employees, Lefenfeld says that he is attempting to not let anyone go. “Everyone is using paid time off and we are hoping to pay our salaried employees through this entire ordeal,” he adds.

The Hershkovitz’s are trying to create other employment opportunities for their team.

“Being creative, we’ve come with several options for each staff member, from temporary unemployment to being part of our carry out/delivery operation to working at our father’s supermarket, which has no lack of positions for folks interested in working,” says Josh. “We have predicted our temporary closure will last about two weeks, but we will monitor the situation as it progresses.”

Though many chefs and restaurateurs are working diligently to secure employment for their staff, there is still a fear that some might not survive an indefinite shutdown: “This will close a lot of restaurants,” Foreman says. “A lot of places won’t be able to sustain this.”

Adds Smith, “It’s going to hurt.”

While the impact will be felt for some time to come, Lefenfeld points out that Charm City is uniquely resilient.

“The Baltimore restaurant community is a pretty tight-knit group,” he says. “People will rally, not just around the restaurants, but all of the small businesses in the city and support each other.”

When Clavel’s head bartender Dre Barnhill heard the news that the Remington mezcaleria had been nominated for a James Beard Award this morning, he was almost speechless. The beverage team is one of only 20 throughout the nation to be named a semifinalist in the category of Outstanding Bar Program, with other nominees spanning from the sophisticated Columbia Room in Washington, D.C. to the tiki-inspired Lost Lake in Chicago.

“My reaction? Oh, man, this is so cool,” Barnhill told us, still seeming to be in a slight daze. “There are such talented people on the list. I love some of those bars.”

Co-owner Lane Harlan was also admittedly shocked: “I don’t even know how this works,” she said. “I messaged the entire bar team. Half of them were awake, the other half were not, but I told them that they are amazing and that I’m so proud.”

Although this is Clavel’s first-ever nomination for the prestigious awards, it isn’t the only Baltimore name that appears on this year’s list of semifinalists. Chef Cindy Wolf, executive chef/owner of Charleston in Harbor East, also received her 12th nomination for Best Chef: Mid Atlantic. This time around, Wolf is up against contenders including chef Jon Sybert of D.C.’s Tail Up Goat and chef Matthew Kern of Heirloom in Lewes, Delaware.

While Wolf—who often quips that she’s the Susan Lucci of the category—has yet to bring home the medal, she remains humbled to be recognized for her unique take on Lowcountry cuisine at Charleston.

“Every time I am up for the award, all I can think is that I want to get up on that stage so I can honor and thank my Dad,” she says, “and all the people I work with who are also my family. Hopefully I’ll get to wear those new red jeweled shoes again that I found for Duff [Goldman’s] wedding.”

Clavel co-owners Harlan and chef Carlos Raba are also humbled by the acknowledgement, both emphasizing how proud they are of their staff.

“Our team works their butts off in the bar,” Raba says. “They have workshops for hours planning beers and cocktails. We never expected this, but it reflects the hard work that they do and the passion for the team—it’s such an honor.”

Since opening in 2015, Clavel has not only gained a reputation for having some of the most authentic Mexican cuisine around, but it’s also become known as the restaurant that put mezcal on the map in Baltimore. The group is so dedicated to the spirit, in fact, that they take routine trips to Mexico each year to meet with farmers and become more familiar with the intricacies of the agave plant.

“Our goal is to make things that are inspired by our journeys and these collections of memories that we have together,” Barnhill says. “Clavel just seems to have this certain kind of magnetism that draws people in.”

All of the on-site research is showcased in Clavel’s new expanded mezcaleria, where Barnhill and his team offer one-hour tasting sessions from their library that is categorized by species of agave plants.

“We don’t do what we do to get an award, that’s so alien to us,” Harlan says. “What drives us is that we push each other and do the best we can. That’s our world, and it’s pretty rad for that to be acknowledged.”

Harlan also mentions that working together creatively is a huge part of the restaurant’s success.

“We do everything collectively,” she says. “From day one that has been the number one driving factor. We’re continually evolving, holding each other accountable, embracing experimentation, and sharing ideas. We all accept criticism and take it as a challenge to be better.”

Finalists in each category will be announced on Wednesday, March 27, and this year’s James Beard Awards Gala will take place in Chicago on Monday, May 6. No matter the outcome (here’s hoping both Wolf and the crew at Clavel medal this year), the nominations are already a huge win for the Baltimore restaurant scene at large.

“When we started people said that it would be impossible to have a good place in the middle of nowhere,” Raba says. “And now to be recognized not only for the hard work that we do, but nationally, it’s amazing.”

Think naming a restaurant is simple? Think again.

“It’s as agonizing and thought provoking as naming a child,” says restaurant consultant Arlene Spiegel of New York-based firm Arlene Spiegel & Associates. “Typically, stakeholders go through a number of brainstorming sessions to get it right.”

Foreman Wolf Restaurant Group named two of its six spots after the animal kingdom. The first, Cinghiale, is an Italian eatery whose name translates to “wild boar” in Italian. “You see them all over the Northern part of the country from Tuscany up through Piedmont,” says co-owner Tony Foreman.

When the group decided to rebrand its second Petit Louis location in Columbia earlier this year, Foreman wanted another animal name. The space was transformed into a Roman trattoria named Lupa, which translates to “she-wolf” in Italian. “A she-wolf has always been Rome’s symbolic calling card,” Foreman says. “Legend has it that Romulus and Remus, the twins who founded the city, were suckled by a she-wolf. So the she-wolf and the twins were on all of the coins of the republic before there were emperors.”

While there are plenty of ways to successfully play up the animal concept (Spiegel advises putting the word “bubbly” in front of any animal moniker to project a celebratory vibe), some species should never be used to name a new spot. “Snakes, spiders, and similarly feared reptiles and bugs should be avoided at all costs,” she says. “They evoke a negative image regardless of the venue.”

When it comes to eateries named after mammals, amphibians, birds, and others, Charm City is turning into a veritable zoo. Here are names that have us crowing:

Massive Mammals

Lobo: Restaurant and cocktail bar whose name, which means “wolf” in Spanish, serves as a nod to the bar’s location on Wolfe Street.
The Elk Room: Harbor East speakeasy that features a massive taxidermy elk overlooking the front bar.
Cinghiale: Harbor East Northern Italian destination that translates to wild boar.
Fat Tiger: The centerpiece bar inside newly renovated Broadway Market—which also boasts an outdoor sister spot, El Tigre.
TigerStyle: Chef Chad Gauss’ wok-inspired eatery located in an alley behind the Avenue in Hampden.

High-Flying Haunts

Iron Rooster: Breakfast-all-day spot with several locations, including Canton.
Bird in Hand: Charles Village coffee corner named after a town in Lancaster County.
Bluebird Cocktail Room: Literary-themed Hampden cocktail bar honoring Charles Bukowski’s poem “Bluebird.”
Duck Duck Goose: Chef Ashish Alfred’s French-inspired brasserie in Fells Point.
The Owl Bar: Prohibition-era speakeasy inside the Belvedere Hotel.
Cardinal Tavern: Canton corner bar with red-wing accents and a Southern menu.

Equestrian Eateries

The Horse You Came in On Saloon: Pre-Prohibition bar dating back to 1775, which is rumored to have been the last spot where Edgar Allan Poe drank before his death.
McFaul’s Iron Horse Tavern: Convivial Cromwell Valley destination whose name refers to the old Iron Horse train that frequently stopped near the property.
Stalking Horse: Federal Hill staple whose name references the screen that a hunter hides behind when stalking prey.

Aquatic Appellations

Minnow: South Baltimore seafood shack brought to you by La Cuchara’s Ben and Jake Lefenfeld.
The Greene Turtle: Sports bar with multiple East Coast locations.
Fish Head Cantina: Rocking UMBC Halethorpe hangout featuring gourmet tacos, giant burgers, and even bigger drinks.

Walking into Bar Vasquez off Aliceanna in Harbor East is like entering another world. A photograph of a gaucho girl wearing a wide-brimmed hat and sitting atop a white horse draws you in at the door. Lavish leathers, cowhide rugs, Brazilian tigerwoods, and 15-foot palm trees further the fantasy. Live Latin music and the intoxicating aroma of grilled meat permeate the place. Topping it all off is a kitchen crew wearing Boca Juniors caps, in support of the celebrated soccer team. Are we in Buenos Aires or Baltimore?

Welcome to Bar Vasquez, the newest eatery in the Foreman Wolf empire. With its latest spot, the restaurant group focuses primarily on the region in and around Argentina, a place that offers a confluence of cuisines heavily influenced by Spain, Italy, and France. It’s a logical follow-up to the Mediterranean-centric Pazo that formerly sat on this site.

Whether it’s France (Petit Louis, Charleston) or Italy (Cinghiale), when business partners Tony Foreman and Cindy Wolf fall in love with a place, they don’t settle for bringing back a few simple souvenirs. (Foreman has visited Argentina more than 20 times through the years.) Instead, to promulgate their passion, they open new eateries.

It will take more than one trip to Harbor East to get the full experience. Named for chef Wolf’s beloved mentor, Marcelo Vasquez, this spot—featuring former Pazo chef Mario Cano Catalán—offers a variety of eating and seating options. While the menu is the same wherever you sit, the lively downstairs area with banquettes, benches, booths, and a commodious bar is more casual. The upstairs, with velvet chairs and white tablecloths, and a DIY whiskey and bourbon bar, feels more fine dining.

There are also decisions to be made when it comes to ordering. If you enjoy grazing, there are plenty of approachable ceviches, soups, and salads. Another option is to commit to a coursed meal with a variety of generously portioned meat, seafood, and pasta entrees, many of which marvelously mesh smoke, sweet, and heat.

Over the course of several Vasquez visits, I kept coming back to an assortment of empanada starters. By far my favorite was the one stuffed with minced Uruguayan beef and onions, and spiked with cumin and smoked paprika. My dining companions and I also enjoyed the delicate tostadas de cangrejo. Topped with blue crab, avocado, chili, corn, and cilantro, it was the ideal prelude to the heartier entrees. For a sophisticated starter, try the hearts of palm salad with poached shrimp, butter lettuce, avocado, and an ambrosial Russian-dressing-style rosé sauce, comprised of house-made mayo, ketchup, and a tinge of Tabasco and cayenne pepper.

As for entrees, eating meat is pretty much compulsory here. The main attraction is high-quality beef, sourced from world-famous meat metropolises including Kansas (corn-fed T-bone), Chile (wagyu), and cuts coming from Uruguay, a country known for its lean, grass-fed, free-range beef. One caveat: The prices are high—the majority of steaks are in the $59 and upward range—but so is the quality of the product. And the steaks, which can be served sliced, are eminently shareable.

The Uruguayan-sourced ojo de bife is a dark and deliciously charred rib steak sitting almost Zen-like on a white plate with nothing but a line of herb salt. With its juicy center and sublime balance of texture and flavor, it induced serious swooning at our table. For those who like a leaner, lusher cut, go for the melt-in-your-mouth filete de bife, a 10-ounce filet mignon so tender that chewing seems almost optional. While steaks arrive à la carte, they do come with your choice of salsa. Go straight for the spicy chimichurri. The sauce of olive oil, vinegar, garlic, parsley, and basil is basically the state condiment and this version should be bottled.

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Charred Local Cauliflower

Cauliflower acts as an agent for whatever you add. This dish with lemon chili oil and Parm is a study in taste and texture.

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Nonmeat eaters will be rewarded with seafood specialties, including the plancha-grilled shrimp from Argentina. Served in a lemon sauce on top of an herbed spaetzle, the sweetness was amplified by lemon juice and hot chili pepper. Side orders are similarly spot on. The simple steamed spinach with lemon and garlic chips and the more decadent smashed potatoes, mixed with house-made ricotta and black olive tapenade, dazzled in their supporting roles.

All of the familiar Foreman Wolf high notes are hit on here—and nothing is left to chance: the impeccably sourced ingredients prepared with care; the polished server who notices that a steak knife has been prematurely used on a starter and replaces it without us ever asking; the pristine table linens steamed before service; the expertly curated wine list (about half of which is well-priced at $50 and under); and the presence of Foreman—a host with the most—as he visits tables and spins his narrative of cows roaming the pampas, an image etched indelibly from his travels across Argentina. “This is the restaurant I’ve been wanting to do for a long time,” he says with palpable pride.

It was worth the wait.

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BAR VASQUEZ 1425 Aliceanna St., 410-534-7296.
HOURS Mon.-Thu. 5-10 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 5 p.m.-midnight.
PRICES Appetizers: $6-18; entrees: $25-79; desserts: $3-10.
AMBIANCE Gaucho glam.

Though the space was transformed seemingly overnight, Foreman had been mulling the project for years, but never moved forward due to ongoing cardiac issues, including four open-heart surgeries.

“About a year after the last operation, I was like, ‘Okay, this recovery is very incremental, one-365th at a time,’” he says. “I was like, ‘When I look back now, I feel better than last year, and I’m going to continue to feel better. I’m going to have the energy and the appetite to do this,’ so we planned to do it in the summer.”

While there are still vestiges of the former Pazo décor, with intricate ironwork and some extant coffee tables, the space has been dramatically reimagined by Katie Destefano, interior designer and owner of Curiosity, also in Harbor East.

The two-story, 230-seat spot mixes modern glamour with rustic and natural elements such as 15-foot palm trees, gold-leaf mosaic stenciling along the pass to the open kitchen, cowhide, Brazilian Tiger wood, and petrified wood side tables. Various touches feature the work of local artist Kelly Walker.

“I wanted it to be more modern, more glamorous than it was,” says Destefano. “But we also wanted to respect the industrial aspects of the space. And a huge thing for us was color—we needed to transform the reds from Pazos to these blues and dark greens.”

The downstairs space is more casual and social with a large bar and lounge area, a stage for live Latin music (flamenco, bolero, violin), and tablet-carrying waiters who can easily follow patrons from barstool to booth.

The emphasis upstairs is on fine-dining with more formal “team” service, silver candlesticks on the tables, and an impressive whiskey bar featuring build-your-own Manhattan and Old-Fashioned cocktails, where guests can choose base liquors, simple syrups, and bitters to their liking.

Similarly, the menu has something for everyone with small plates such as ceviches, croquetas, charred vegetables, and fugazza, or Argentine street pizza. The main courses highlight simply grilled meats and game (some sourced from Uruguay), as well as shrimp sourced from the Patagonia region.

Former Pazo executive chef Mario Cano Catalán (a one-time dishwasher at Charleston) is at the helm in the kitchen.

“It’s a very complete cuisine,” says Foreman. “There’s this incredible diversity. Argentina is the size of the U.S.—there are penguins and there are palm trees.”

And as for saying “ciao” to Pazo, Foreman sums it up like this: “There’s only one most beautiful lady, and to get to dress her a second time is great.”

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.”