Deep inside the recesses of Magdalena, pastry chef Emily Heleba stands at the restaurant’s kitchen counter pouring chocolate glaze over disks of frozen chocolate mousse. Once enrobed, the desserts, which sit atop layers of crispy cocoa dacquoise, will be decorated with filaments of gold leaf before they’re served to diners at the fine-dining restaurant at the heart of The Ivy Hotel, a circa-1890s Mt. Vernon mansion.

A Molteni stove—a black-enameled, brass-fitted behemoth made in France to Magdalena’s specifications—fills the center of the kitchen, a vat of stock bubbling away on a corner burner. Across from that stove, Heleba has an entire station at her disposal, as well as a designated refrigerator. That set-up is unusual in today’s restaurant kitchens, many of which don’t have a pastry chef, much less a dedicated pastry station.

A pastry chef, or pâtissier, is an integral part of a classic French kitchen brigade, responsible for all desserts as well as breads and baked goods, plus many batters, fillings, and doughs. But increasingly, due to financial constraints, restaurants have done away with many traditional kitchen positions, consolidating them or outsourcing the work.

When money is tight, the pastry chef is often the first to go, as it is a labor-intensive position that doesn’t bring in a lot of money (people often skip desserts). And high-quality desserts can be purchased from bakeries or private kitchens, as can breads and sweets. These days, pastry chefs are often as much of a luxury as the desserts themselves.

THESE DAYS, PASTRY CHEFS ARE OFTEN AS MUCH OF A LUXURY AS THE DESSERTS THEMSELVES.

The restaurants that can afford pastry chefs tend to be those that use them for more than just the desserts of one kitchen. That includes corporate restaurants that have one pastry chef who bakes desserts for a few restaurants out of one central kitchen or larger restaurants that have private dining rooms for events, such as weddings, birthday parties, and business meetings.

And then there are hotel restaurants like Magdalena, where the pastry chef is also responsible for events such as tea service and hotel breakfasts and gatherings.

“I feel very lucky to have found a place that wants a pastry chef,” says Heleba as she slices strawberries and adds them to profiteroles filled with diplomat cream (a mixture of pastry cream and whipped cream), which will join bite-size scones and tiny tea sandwiches presented on a two-tiered tea tray.

“When I was doing my job search out of school, pretty much every job listing was line cook, line cook,” she says. A graduate of Johnson & Wales, a preeminent culinary school in Rhode Island, she grew up in Ellicott City. “A lot of my chefs at school were very clear that it was going to be a struggle for us to find places where we’re needed and that we would most likely have to pick up savory skills as well along the way.”

At Magdalena, she’s part of an eight-member kitchen staff who serve the 65-seat restaurant, as well as doing events, serving high tea to hotel guests in the well-appointed (hand-painted walls, stained glass windows) lounge on the hotel’s second floor, and, as of this spring, outside diners as well.

Many of the teachers at Johnson & Wales, Heleba says, advised looking at hotels for work. “You’re doing bread, you’re doing desserts, you’re doing breakfast in some cases. There’s a need.”

But that advice applied mainly to big chain hotels like the Four Seasons, so she’s especially grateful to have found a position at a boutique hotel, where she can be part of a small kitchen and do more personalized work. “I feel like it’s so much more meaningful,” says Heleba.

Gunther & Co. in Brewers Hill doesn’t have a hotel to help finance the restaurant’s pastry program, but it does have private dining rooms as well as a huge main dining room in the space, the century-old boiler room of the Gunther Brewing Company.

Longtime pastry chef Jessica Banner has been at Gunther for seven and a half of the nine years it’s been operating, and her pastry program encompasses not only desserts, but breads—including the popular Parker House rolls—and hamburger buns, as well as much of the weekend brunch menu and integral parts of the event menus that fuel Gunther’s engines.

“I like the combination of science and comfort,” says Banner, who credits her grandmother, who worked as a dairy farmer in England, as part of the reason she felt drawn to pastry. A musical theater major in college, she went to the French Culinary Institute and trained in restaurants, including Wylie Dufresne’s legendary wd-50 in New York City.

Like Heleba, Banner feels lucky to have found her current position. When her last job ended after the restaurant closed, “I was like, ‘Oh gosh, what’s next?’” she says. “Because there are so few places that employ just a pastry chef.”

In Gunther’s large open kitchen, Banner whips meringue in a lime-green KitchenAid, then pipes it onto a sheet pan lined with parchment paper for the Pavlovas she’ll serve that evening—gorgeous architectural desserts built of meringue, passion fruit coulis, coconut-milk cream, and roasted pineapple compote, crowned with golden disks of dehydrated pineapple.

“You’ll have small restaurants that don’t want to employ pastry chefs,” she continues. “They put some cook on the team in charge of, like crème brûlée or a chocolate thing and call it a day. Sure, you can make that work. But [dessert] is so important, it’s what you remember; you can really round out people’s experiences.”

Banner’s point underscores the difficulty of consolidating desserts and baking into the job of a restaurant staff without a pastry chef.

“They’re really two different animals, right? To be a chef and to be a pastry chef,” she says. “I don’t pretend for a minute that I can hop behind that line and break out the things that those people do. It’s really a science. You need the space and you need the hours.”

Pastry programs not only require specifically trained pastry cooks, but they also require, as Banner points out, space and time. Pastry chefs need prep time and oven space for baked goods, which is often at odds with what happens in the rest of the kitchen. Working with chocolate and other dessert ingredients can require cooler temperatures—the reason why bakeries often have specific colder rooms and marble countertops—while ovens need higher heat or convection settings for breads and pastries. Flour can migrate, which can be a concern for gluten-free guests.

And then there is the cost—not only of the pastry chef’s salary, but of ingredients like chocolate, butter, and eggs, not to mention gold leaf and high-quality fruit.

“IF YOU WANT TO BE A TOP RESTAURANT, YOU NEED HOMEMADE DESSERTS, YOU NEED A PASTRY CHEF.”

“The art of pastry is dying,” says Gunther co-owner Nancy Hart Trice, a former chef herself. She says when she moved back to Baltimore 20 years ago, many restaurants weren’t able to afford to keep pastry chefs. This has only gotten worse with the pandemic and inflation. “It was very important to Jerry [Trice, her husband and co-owner] and me that we figure out how to make it work, like making the bread and ice cream. We wanted everything to be from scratch, like having a brunch program that has homemade doughnuts. I think people can taste that,” Trice continues. “If you want to be a top restaurant, you need homemade desserts, you need a pastry chef.”

Spike Gjerde, the only Baltimore chef to have won the James Beard Foundation’s award for Best Chef Mid-Atlantic, has always had a designated pastry chef at Woodberry Tavern, where he’s both chef and owner. Gjerde, in fact, started his career as a pastry chef; his first job was at Baltimore’s Pâtisserie Poupon.

“Pastry was always part of our mix,” says Gjerde. “For me, it wasn’t a question of whether we should have a pastry chef. Where it really makes sense for me, is if you have baking kind of baked into the kitchen approach.”

For Gjerde’s pastry chefs, this is feasible because they also bake for Artifact, the coffee shop down the road from Woodberry, which has a stellar menu that includes English muffins and biscuits as well as an elaborate breakfast and lunch menu. The pastry team contributes to Woodberry’s events, and is an integral part of the restaurant’s menu, not only for the desserts, like a spectacular baked Alaska (ginger cake, apricot ice cream, flamed at table), and a popular brunch, but elements of the savory side like the smoked oyster pie.

“I think that has a lot to do with me coming up in the pastry kitchen,” says Gjerde. “It’s definitely the scale that helps. If it was just one [restaurant], it would be a real stretch to have a pastry chef. What it comes down to with pastry is that it’s skilled labor that’s costly, as it should be, and so it’s hard to make it work.”

Getting creative is part of the program. At Foraged in Station North, that creativity is on display with pastry chef Josi Stewart’s desserts, but also with her hours: To go full-time, she also works the front of the house. Stewart, who is self-taught, bakes the bread as well as making desserts to pair with chef Chris Amendola’s seasonal menu, but she knew from the start that the restaurant wasn’t big enough to justify a full time pastry chef. She’d worked front-of-house before, though, and enjoys that aspect of the job, which allows her to speak with guests—some- times even about her desserts.

“Getting that one-on-one contact with the guests when they’re actually having the [dessert] is huge. A lot of people want to talk about it.”

Foraged makes its own ice creams and also has a prix-fixe menu that always includes a dessert, as well as a cocktail menu that can include small dessert items, like pairing prosecco with sorbet.

“Because of how seasonal things are and how often the menu changes, there would be no other way to do it,” Stewart says about having an in-house pastry chef, noting Amendola’s emphasis on hyper-seasonal and foraged ingredients.

Like Gjerde, Ammoora’s chef Matthew Milani was originally a pastry chef. The Syrian restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton Residences in Federal Hill, which was named to The New York Times’ 50 Best Restaurants list in 2024, has a strong pastry program that encompasses a large dessert menu as well as house-made pita bread that is an essential part of the Levantine menu. That Milani started in pastry—he has a degree in pastry from Le Cordon Bleu in Lyon, France—helps maintain both the quality and focus of the dessert menu.

And those desserts are like nothing else in Baltimore. The asha bil asal is “a play on a pastry cream mouselline,” describes Milani, crowned with rose petals, pistachios, and a stunning thatch of delicate Arabic cotton candy; and the ruz bil karaz is a dessert of coconut rice pudding, confit sour cherries, and a coconut-caramel tuile. Then there’s the pastry kitchen’s masterpiece, a version of the TikTok sensation Dubai chocolate bar, with toasted knafeh, pistachio-tahini batter, white chocolate cremeux, chocolate ganache, caramel espresso, and crushed pistachios.

“I love the position; I wish they got more recognition,” says Milani of pastry chefs, as he takes a break in the restaurant’s foyer one weekday mid-afternoon. He just finished Baltimore’s Restaurant Week, when he and his staff made hundreds of Dubai chocolate bars. “It was the greatest and worst decision ever. I think everybody got covered in pistachios at some point, just trying to keep up,” he says.

“It doesn’t have to be a 15-tier wedding cake,” he says of a restaurant’s dessert menu. “A plated dessert can really go a long way.”

Restaurateur Tony Foreman says he values investing in a pastry program because he appreciates “the care, the intentional ‘I’m going to treat you better’ ethos that there is in pastry.”

What allows Foreman to have executive pastry chef Maiya Lonesome on staff, plus a three-person team supporting her, is that they make desserts for all five of his restaurants and do it all from the huge Harbor East production kitchen at Cinghiale. Lonesome has been with Foreman for three and a half years, having graduated from Johnson & Wales in pastry and worked in D.C. hotels before coming to Baltimore.

“Every holiday is always insanity,” says Lonesome of her job. “Five restaurants, easily over 400 covers per restaurant, and everybody gets dessert,” at least during those holidays. Not only is the high cost of ingredients an issue, says Lonesome, but even finding people trained to work in pastry is difficult these days.

“The pastry kitchen is the first to get cut,” says Lonesome. “I have friends who got out of the industry. Their biggest thing was feeling like they weren’t getting paid enough. The hours are grueling. The work can be really hard on your body. It’s not conducive to having a family. So that left us with a big gap going into the pandemic, and then that happened, and then the gap just widened more.”

Another issue, she says, is the availability of outsourced desserts. “The introduction of a lot of convenience products dug a little bit of a grave for some of the pastry chefs out there,” says Lonesome. It’s a common concern.

“In a lot of restaurants, the desserts are coming from elsewhere,” says Woodberry’s Gjerde. “You can get it from Sysco, like everything else. Take it out of the freezer, and who’s gonna be the wiser?”

“THE HOURS ARE GRUELING. THE WORK CAN BE REALLY HARD ON YOUR BODY. IT’S NOT CONDUCIVE TO HAVING A FAMILY.”

In Cinghiale’s kitchen, Lonesome places a tray of 40 individual chocolate cakes filled with chocolate Bavarian cream in the freezer. Once frozen, they’ll get topped with chocolate mirror glaze, then driven to Sparks for The Milton Inn, where they’ll be decorated with white-and black sesame tuilles for the chocolate gâteaux.

Lonesome, who usually comes into the kitchen in the early morning to make her desserts long before the dinner team arrives, expertly spreads an Earl Grey sponge cake onto parchment-lined trays. Nearby are sheet racks of cherry crostatas for Cinghiale and cookies for Johnny’s, Foreman’s Roland Park restaurant; one tray is stacked with blocks of butter like an architect’s stash of bricks. Taped to the side of the freezer is a series of production schedules as well as photos of wedding cakes: Lonesome and her team also bake for weddings and events.

She first got interested in cooking in her eighth-grade home-ec class and decided to be a pastry chef while still in high school. “I wanted to do wedding cakes; I wanted to do chocolates and sugar.”

Back in Magdalena’s kitchen, Heleba turns her attention to a tray of banana slices, which she brûlées with a Home Depot-sized torch before tweezing them alongside rectangles of banana cake.

Under her expert touch, the cakes are outfitted with toffee ice cream, espresso crumbles, and shards of house-made toffee, then showered with Maldon salt for the finished banoffee desserts.

“I feel sad when I go to a restaurant and they have this beautiful menu with all these fresh ingredients and techniques, and then at the end there’s these same four desserts that you could get anywhere,” she says, spooning the ice cream into perfect oval-shaped quenelles. “I think you should end a meal with a reflection of what you’ve just enjoyed.”

OPEN

The Tilted Row: The Bolton Hill dining scene continues to soar with new culinary concepts like Noona’s, which opened last winter, and CookHouse, a spinoff of On the Hill cafe slated to debut this fall. Adding to that momentum is The Tilted Row, which is now officially open on the bottom floor of the Jordan apartment complex on McMechen Street. Decorated with warm woods and pops of navy and gold, the bistro is the brainchild of Ziad Maalouf—who owns Cafe Fili in Mt. Vernon. Chef Andrew Thomas, previously of Donna’s and The Elephant, serves up dishes like lamb ribs with smoked tzatziki, duck fried rice with kimchi and wild mushrooms, and a sorghum-brined pork chop with roasted asparagus. There are also fine-tuned iterations of Charm City classics like crab deviled eggs with Old Bay mousse and cast iron crab cakes served alongside a colorful succotash. At the bar, Woodberry Kitchen alum Hannah Baker features creative cocktails, 10 beers on tap, and a collection of more than 120 single malts and bourbons.

Honey’s Cafe: This new Pigtown hangout is continuing the lively spirit that Cafe Jovial left behind. Honey’s replaced the longtime neighborhood favorite on Washington Boulevard earlier this month, serving breakfast and lunch fare in the cozy cafe that offers plenty of natural light. Owner Bri Ash features dishes including red velvet waffles, French toast topped with fried apples, shrimp and grits, and steak and eggs. To pair with the food, a lengthy list of specialty coffee drinks includes dirty chai lattes and black-and-white “Tuxedo” mochas.

NEWS

Mouth Party Caramel at The Spotlight Shop: Locals strolling around the Inner Harbor might have noticed M&T Bank’s new Spotlight Shop—a 24-by-20-foot custom boutique that is stationed at 300 East Pratt St. Through September, six small businesses will set up shop inside the retail space to peddle their locally-made products. The rotation started out with The Dollhouse Boutique earlier this month, and through June 25, Mouth Party Caramel will be showing off its custom confections in the space. Other merchants on deck to take over the pop-up this summer include Zeke’s Coffee, Cake by Jason, Becket Hitch, and The Charmery.

Ravage Deli Brings Back Breakfast Pop-Up: It’s going to be a great weekend for this foodie haven in Perry Hall, which has become known for its mile-high sandwiches and massive orders of duck-fat fries. This Saturday at 4 p.m., the Travel Channel is re-airing an episode of Food Paradise that features Ravage. Then, the deli—which is typically only open for lunch and dinner—is bringing back its occasional breakfast pop-up menu on Sunday from 7:30-10:30 a.m. Rise early to feast on creative morning dishes like BLT Quiche, Belgian waffles topped with Oops All Berries cereal, and a “Maryland Mash-Up Wrap” that bundles steak, scrapple, and crab dip inside an Old Bay tortilla.

Magdalena Launches Sunday Supper: Historically, Magdalena in Mt. Vernon has been closed on Sundays. But recently, executive chef Mark Levy has opened the restaurant on Sunday evenings for a traditional supper service inspired by his native England. As a nod to gatherings with the whole family at his grandmother’s home outside of London, he’s launched a menu of UK favorites with a fine-dining spin. Among them are fish and chips with pea puree and tartar sauce, English pea ravioli with wild mushrooms, and crispy duck leg confit with house-made tater tots. Diners can order from an a la carte menu, or opt for the three-course prix-fixe for $58.

EPICUREAN EVENTS

6/29: Rye Street Cookout
Nothing says summer like taking in waterfront views from an Adirondack chair. At Rye Street Tavern’s recurring community cookout in Port Covington, you can do just that while enjoying live music and classic barbecue bites. The next iteration will feature the soulful sounds of Joi Carter Trio and one-day-only specials like Virginian chicken, seasonal burgers, and a crab boil in a bag. Bring the family (dogs included) and a lawn chair or blanket for the lush lawn.

6/29: Checkerspot One Year Anniversary Party
This South Baltimore brewery is celebrating its first birthday in style with an all-day block party from 12-11 p.m. The festivities will kick off with a ceremonial tapping of the kilderkin at noon, followed by The Racket and Q Randall playing live music outside, and DJ Mikie Love spinning in the taproom all day long. Smoked meats will be provided by the local barbecue experts with Team Loud Que, and, of course, there will be plenty of beers flowing in the first and second-floor taprooms throughout the entire party.

SHUT

Blue Dog BBQ Co.: Unfortunately, it seems that this barbecue joint near Little Italy had cards stacked against it from the start. Just five days before its grand opening last October, the city’s Departments of Transportation and Public Works began a large-scale infrastructure improvement overhaul just outside of the space on Central Avenue. The owners have struggled to make up for the loss of foot traffic since then, and last week, they officially closed the restaurant for good. “It saddens us to announce that Blue Dog will be closed indefinitely,” reads a sign posted to the front door. “Thanks for your support.” Throughout its short run, reviewers raved about Blue Dog’s ribs, sausages, chicken, and pulled pork, which were all prepared using a wood smoker in the building’s adjacent courtyard.

Chef Catina Smith spent a few years refining her skills in kitchens all over the city—working at spots like Guy Fieri’s Kitchen and Bar inside Horseshoe Casino and Dovecote Cafe in Reservoir Hill, where she served as the executive chef. But, even with an impressive resume, when she saw an opening at Magdalena inside Midtown’s posh Ivy Hotel, she was admittedly hesitant to apply.

“It took several times for me to even think that I could work there,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh this is some fancy place. I don’t belong in that kind of establishment.’ And I’m sure a lot of black women think that we only belong in certain types of kitchens just because that’s what we see. I still can’t even name a black woman executive chef leading a fine-dining restaurant. So it makes you think, man, representation really does matter.”

Now an integral part of Magdalena’s culinary team, Smith has launched Just Call Me Chef, an entire movement geared toward empowering female, African-American chefs and providing opportunities for future generations to work in whatever kitchens they choose.

“I want to shatter that stereotype and show people that you don’t have to be a white male to work at a fine-dining establishment,” she says. “We’re just as capable. People always say, ‘Oh, a black woman cooked this.’ But why do I have to be differentiated? I’m a chef just as much as anyone else. So that’s why I was like oh, ‘Just call me chef.’”

As one of the first fundraising initiatives, Smith has teamed up with local photographer Daniel McGarrity to create a wall calendar showcasing portraits of a dozen female chefs and some of their signature recipes—which she hopes will serve as a daily reminder of racial and gender equality.

Slated for release in November, the calendar will benefit local nonprofits Black Girls Cook, which teaches city teens about the importance of sustainable food and nutrition, and She Chef, an organization working to spotlight diversity in the culinary industry.

Many of the women featured in the calendar—which includes Keme Jones-Evans of Soul Kuisine Cafe, Jasmine Norton of The Urban Oyster, Amanda Mack of Crust by Mack, and LaShauna Jones of The Sporty Dog Creations—are gathering for a fundraiser at Showroom inside Motor House in Station North this Wednesday, October 10. From 5-7 p.m., the bar is donating $1 of every drink sold to Just Call Me Chef.

“I know what that feeling is like when you’re passionate about something but you’re not able to get a chance because you’re a woman or you’re black or whatever judgment they want to pass on you,” says Jones of Sporty Dog. “That’s why this movement is so amazing. We’re all able to speak out about how women chefs are putting together meals and concepts that are just as big and bold as anybody else.”

Building a network, says Smith, has been one of the most rewarding parts of the project. She has particularly enjoyed seeing how all of the women support one another—whether that means showing up to each other’s pop-ups or helping out with catering gigs.

“It’s always been important to me to bring people together,” Smith says. “It’s nice to know, if I can’t do something, that I can turn it over to somebody in the group. We kind of make sure that we never say no to a job so that we can always keep the money in the family.”

In the future, Smith has big plans to facilitate workshops, organize chef-to-chef mentorship, and establish scholarship funds for aspiring chefs to be able to cook in any kitchen, no matter what type of cuisine it focuses on.

“Everyone is teachable,” she says. “We just have to break down that belief that we don’t belong in certain spaces. I feel like my calling isn’t necessarily to be an executive chef of some restaurant. I think my calling is this right here. Putting people together and helping them out.”

With their abilities to bake, broil, and roast, most stoves are the worker bees of the kitchen—far less sexy than, say, that dual-zone wine fridge or your built-in red espresso machine.

That is, unless your kitchen has a Molteni, aka the Rolls-Royce of the oven world. If ever a range deserved to be called hot stuff, the black enameled, brass-fitted, European-style “cooking suite” installed in the kitchen at The Ivy Hotel’s elegant Magdalena is the one.

Outfitted with a built-in, gas-fired grill, a fryer, two deck ovens, two planchas, a salamander broiler, and a water boiler, the range—made by artisans in a small workshop in Saint-Uze, France—was handmade to the specifications of Magdalena chef Mark Levy. In business since 1923, Molteni makes, on average, between 100 and 120 ranges annually, and no two are alike.

“The Molteni is designed with whatever the chef wants,” says Angelo Grillas, director of marketing for Electrolux Professional, which makes the Molteni. “It’s completely customizable.”

And though Levy doesn’t cook and tell, the ranges have been known to go up to $500,000 and have been installed everywhere from five-star hotels to Beverly Hills manses.

“We had to put in something as decadent as the hotel,” says Levy. “This is the focal point of the restaurant. It’s an honor and a once-in-lifetime privilege to work on this. It might sound silly to say about a stove, but it’s going to be hard to walk away from one day.”

Although Baltimore has seen a spate of swanky restaurants open in the past few years, true fine-dining dens have been eclipsed by eateries adopting a more casual ethos. (Sayonara, silver. Later, linens.) Enter Magdalena, a sumptuous spot inside Mt. Vernon’s luxe Ivy Hotel. While Magdalena puts the fine in fine dining, it’s formal without the fuss, an of-the-moment fine-dining destination where woven plastic Chilewich placemats keep company with refined black Bernardaud porcelain plates.

From the food and drink (in a word, spectacular) to the décor (staggeringly beautiful) and the service (impeccable), we looked for flaws and couldn’t find any, though we wouldn’t advise giving up that gym membership any time soon; when devising his dishes, classically trained English chef Mark Levy (formerly of the luxury five-star Adirondack Mountain resort The Point) takes a devil-may-care approach to calorie counting. But this is no time for weight watching. With Levy at the helm, Magdalena, which opened in June and is named for co-owner Eddie Brown’s grandmother, is not only the best new fine-dining bistro in Baltimore, but one of the best restaurants around—period.

Spanning land, garden, and sea, the menu shows off the range of Levy’s considerable talents, which are grounded in classic French cuisine along with touches of Italy, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan, depending on seasonal availability. On any given night, you might find Nova Scotia salmon sashimi with cucamelons (bite-sized watermelons) and Asian pears or pub-influenced fare from Levy’s native England (where he won Gastro Pub Chef of the Year in 2007). And while Levy was schooled in the culinary classics at Colchester Institute back in the mother country, his real muse has been eating his way through more than 150 Michelin-starred restaurants, not to mention working in one of them himself (namely the famed Michel Rostang in Paris).

From the food and drink to the décor and the service, we looked for flaws and couldn’t find any.

Over the course of two visits, we were dazzled by Levy’s ever-changing and inspired fare, including a corn velouté appetizer with robust maitake mushrooms and pork belly; a house-made ruffled ravioli stuffed with sweet, sizable chunks of Maine lobster sitting in a pool of lobster and lemongrass bisque; and a chanterelles starter of tiny, golden Saskatchewan mushrooms topped with a dainty morsel of buttery brioche toast smeared with endive marmalade and capped by an teensy sunny-side-up quail egg. (This dish exemplified earthy and sweet and was a play on the traditional pub dish mushrooms à la crème.)

Other comestibles coming out of Levy’s custom-configured Molteni oven included a wild rockfish entree paired with crabs, capers, watercress, and candied eggplant, and a Korean-style wagyu flank steak served with chili jam and also accompanied by a cooling counterpoint—French bean and enoki mushroom sushi-style summer rolls. And while those dishes were divine, the vegetarian offering (at most places, more often a humdrum concession than a menu marvel)—a risotto with shaved truffles, fresh peas, and a fried poached egg—formed the perfect marriage of field and farm. The egg was both crisp and meltingly marvelous, the risotto was slick with truffle oil, and the peas added a hint of sweetness to ground the truffle.

After fare this rich, dessert might feel like an impossible dream, but press on—or miss out. In the course of our visits, we sampled a decadent raspberry and Valrhona chocolate torte toned down by a refreshing house-made almond ice cream. We also enjoyed a lemon cream with pistachio, slow-cooked pineapple, and yogurt sorbet—so pretty we didn’t know whether to frame it or eat it. (We chose the latter.)

The ambiance here is as sophisticated as the food—whether you sit in the airy Garden Room among potted herbs and Matisse-like murals painted by a Maryland Institute College of Art professor and her protégés, or nestle in The Tasting Room, a pillowy paradise with brightly colored Ethiopian hats hanging dramatically against stark white walls.

The service is equally stellar. Our waiter, Nezam, who tended to us on both visits, couldn’t have been more doting—even proffering pashminas to ward off the air-conditioned chill. And while both of our trips to Magdalena were memorable, our second stay was particularly pleasurable. Sensing our appreciation for the lavishness of the space, Nezam offered an unexpected extra—a chance to tour the hotel. A fresh-faced Ivy staffer, a former history teacher and lover of time travel, he whisked us away across inlaid floors to the Gilded Age, sharing stories about the former private 1889 mansion belonging to banker John Gilman.

It was the perfect nightcap to one of the nicest nights we can recall in our 16 years of living in Baltimore.

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MAGDALENA 205 E. Biddle St., 410-514-6500.
HOURS Tues.-Thurs. 5:30-9:30 p.m., Fri. 5:30-10 p.m., Sat. 5-10 p.m.
PRICE Starters: $18-25; entrees: $34-49; desserts: $13-17.
ATMOSPHERE Elegant eclecticism.