Pickled vegetables are having a moment—and local restaurants are paying attention to the culinary possibilities.

“They’re versatile,” says chef Robbie Tutlewski, owner of Little Donna’s in Upper Fells Point. “They make a showcase.”

The house pickle plate on Tutlewski’s menu is a prime example. Heaped with pickled baby carrots, watermelon rind, baby cucumbers, beets, and whatever else strikes the chef’s fancy, the dish is a satisfying palate pleaser, complete with creamy deviled eggs.

“Pickles are super [food],” says Tutlewski. “They’re good for you. I’ve been eating them from the time I was a kid.”

He’s not the only restaurateur who’s been devouring pickles since childhood.

“When I was a kid, I loved pickled beets,” says chef Jesse Sandlin. “My mom would send me to school with a jar of beets in my lunchbox.”

That food fondness stuck with the Baltimore-bred chef, who now features pickled vegetables on her menus, including “lunch-box beets” at Sally O’s in Highlandtown. At Bunny’s Buckets & Bubbles in Fells Point, she fashions a container of mixed tart veggies with bell peppers, carrots, and radishes.

“It’s a nice little appetizer because it doesn’t fill you up,” Sandlin explains. “It adds acid and gets your appetite going a bit.”

Chef Jeremy Hoffman, who operates Preserve in Annapolis, taps his childhood.

“One of my earliest memories is going to the grocery store to the deli section when they used to have big barrels of dill pickles,” he says. “I remember opening the lid and loving the scent. Everything is made better with pickles.”

Hoffman carried over that idea to Preserve, where “pickling, preserving, and fermenting is a passion.” His icebox pickles showcase cucumbers, carrots, red peppers, and onions. His house giardiniera is a jumble of cauliflower, olives, pickles, and peppers in an olive brine.

“Vinegar-based pickles lend themselves to be an accent to other dishes,” Hoffman says. “People’s flavor profiles and what they’re willing to eat has really expanded.”

At first blush, it seems odd that there’s no bar inside Garten, the new German beer garden-inspired restaurant in Severna Park. Also, where are the waiters wearing lederhosen and the waitresses dressed like the St. Pauli Girl? Aren’t German beer gardens venues to, well, drink beer and party?

While you can indeed tip back cans of Kolsch and hefeweizen imported from the Motherland (as well as enjoy drafts from local breweries, including the Gambrills-based Pherm Brewing Company, which makes the house’s signature dry-hopped pilsner) and will undoubtedly have a great time here, Garten is not a typical German beer garden. Rather, it is husband-and-wife owners Jeremy and Michelle Hoffman’s take on a contemporary, elevated form of the concept. Elevated being the key word here.

The Hoffmans, who opened Annapolis’ fantastic Preserve in 2015, met at the Culinary Institute of America. After graduating, they moved to Queens, where they fell in love with places like the Bohemian Beer Garden in Astoria.

“I just love German cuisine in general,” Jeremy says. “We’ve always had a desire for a spot like that. We had the concept of Garten before we had the location.”

They couldn’t have imagined a better one than the acre or so off Baltimore Annapolis Boulevard that once housed Café Bretton. A garden, where Michelle plans to grow herbs, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetables that will be used in dishes and to garnish cocktails, sits behind the parking lot. Patios with picnic tables under a pergola greet visitors before they walk through the front door into a room with a fireplace and a wooden-domed ceiling.

A mixture of tables and high-tops fills the dining room and attached retail wine store that focuses on natural, organic, and biodynamic wines, but also stocks traditional varietals from around the world. Sake, amaro, vermouth, and other spirits also are available for sale. (There’s a $15 corkage fee if you’d like to drink your purchase with your meal.)

Garten also offers several interesting cocktails concocted by bar manager Delaney Pendry. The Tipsy Winnie, made with gin, bitters, Meyer lemon, chamomile, cava, and honey, was our favorite, in large part because of the cute Pooh-shaped jar in which it’s served.

Jeremy and chef de cuisine Greg Anderson, who, like Pendry and general manager Chris Walker, is an alum of Preserve, have created a menu that infuses the core of German flavors with local ingredients and their own sensibilities. This becomes evident immediately.

The smoked salmon dip, made in the tradition of European fish spreads with salmon sourced from Chesapeake Smokehouse in Annapolis, is topped with capers and roe. Dill, sea salt, and olive oil add to its richness. If you can manage not to eat all of it, take some home and smear it on a toasted everything bagel the next morning. (You’re welcome in advance.) During a brunch visit some of that smoked salmon was served atop crispy potato cakes and topped with whipped crème fraîche and dill. After one bite we decreed that this should become a standard on Hannukah menus.

It’s tough to decide the best part of the spinach and sauerkraut dip. The dip’s flavors and creaminess are excellent, but would it taste as good on anything other than the impossibly pillowy pretzels made at Hyattsville-based Lyon Bakery it’s served with? Happily, we’ll never know.

The menu is divided into starters, salads, sandwiches, and platters, and everything we tried hit the mark. The chicken schnitzel and classic burger, each served with a bag of piping hot and properly greasy fries, were both excellent, but even they were outshined by the G Burger—two flattened, grilled bratwurst patties topped with provolone, pickles, onion, lettuce, mayo, and curry ketchup. We’ve never had anything quite like it.

More traditional German dishes like sausage platters, kebabs, and falafel are available as well. Garten gets its sausage from Binkert’s in Rosedale, a legendary purveyor of German meats since 1964. Needless to say, the knockwurst and weisswurst we tried were as delicious as they were authentic. Platters come with two sides—make sure one of them is the hot German potato salad. Apple cider vinegar and sugar give it just the right hint of sweetness. (No matter what you order, do yourself a favor and get as many sauces, like the wonderfully garlicky Dutch labneh, as possible.)

During both our visits, Garten was bustling. Despite the crowds, the service was stellar. If you’re sitting outside and get a little chilly, a server will offer you a blanket. If you’re too warm, they’ll be happy to turn the outdoor heater down.

The employees get to pick what they’d like to wear (using earth tones as a guideline) because, “We do like our staff to be able to express their personalities as much as possible,” Jeremy says.

Less than a year after opening, Garten’s personality is already firmly established, redefining what a German beer hall can be.

GARTEN: 849 Baltimore Annapolis Blvd., Severna Park, 443-261-3905. HOURS: Wed.-Sun. 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 5-9 p.m. PRICES: Starters: $9-21; Sandwiches: $14-21; Platters: $18-36; Desserts: $9-10. AMBIANCE: Contemporary German.

Roasted Cauliflower Panisse Cake from Preserve

“The original play was on a French panisse cake,” says Preserve chef Brian Cieslak of this recipe. “It shows that vegetables don’t have to be one-dimensional.” To pretty up the plate (pictured above), Cieslak suggests dotting the plate with miso paste, a shower of parsley and scallions, plus pickled cauliflower stems.

INGREDIENTS
1 pound cauliflower
1⁄2 cup white onion, diced
2 cups chickpea flour
5 cups water
5 garlic cloves
11⁄2 tablespoons salt
1⁄4 cup, plus 1 tablespoon EVOO
11⁄2 tablespoons lemon juice
1⁄4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1⁄2 teaspoon onion powder

DIRECTIONS
1. Roast cauliflower in oven set at 350 Fahrenheit. Roast until golden.
2. Set aside onion, and in a blender (in batches if necessary) blend all remaining ingredients. Reserve.
3. Spray a 9.5” x 13” pan with oil.
4. In a pot that preferably has a wider bottom that can hold at least 4 quarts, sweat onion with 1 tbsp. oil.
5. Add chickpea our/water mixture.
6. While keeping on medium/ medium-high heat, continue to whisk and boil until mixture becomes extremely thick (up to 10 minutes).
7. Once firm, fold in cauliflower.
8. Pour in greased pan. Allow to completely cool in fridge.
9. When cool, griddle in a pan on low heat until golden.
Serves 4. 

For the garlic confit sauce: In a small sauce pot add 1⁄2 cup garlic cloves and 1⁄2 cup neutral oil. Place on low flame. Heat slowly for two hours and cook garlic until golden. Cool. For sauce, blanch 2 cups cauliflower florets in salted water. Cook until very tender, then toss in ice bath. Place cauliflower in a blender, blend until nearly puréed. Emulsify in garlic confit cloves and oil. Season to taste.

 

Beet Terrine from The Corner Pantry

If you’re still scarred by those childhood beets that came from a can, this stunner from chef Neill Howell at The Corner Pantry is a surefire way to reimagine the root vegetable. “I wanted to create a fun, vegetable-centric dish that isn’t a salad,” says Howell. “Don’t rush the chilling process,” he adds. “It needs time to chill and firm up.”

As we tooled down I-97 toward Annapolis and Preserve, I was a bundle of nerves. I pondered the wisdom of testing out a tiny, popular new restaurant on a Friday evening—one that didn’t take reservations—with a carful of friends old and new. And I worried, too, about dragging everyone to yet another farm-to-table eatery. At a time when even McDonald’s touts its “locally relevant” offerings, maybe being locavore isn’t something to highlight anymore. I pictured the five of us lined up for an hours-long wait on Main Street after circling the city for parking, only to be confronted with boring borage salads and pallid plates of air-chilled chicken.

But that’s because I hadn’t counted on the smarts and ingenuity of Jeremy and Michelle Hoffman, the husband-and-wife team responsible for this sophisticated, high-energy gem, whose calling card is a focus on pickled, fermented, and, as the name suggests, preserved preparations, and whose menu also boasts contemporary twists on homespun comfort food—another culinary cliché the Hoffmans
finesse with wit and wisdom.

As my buddy Charlie slipped into a miraculously open parking space directly in front of the restaurant, I began to feel a tad more optimistic. Our party of five was seated immediately—arrive early and that can happen—and relaxed into this brightly sleek but subtle jewel box of a restaurant, with its whitewashed brick and golden maple. It was a lovely early fall evening, and the restaurant’s roll-back windows were open to the breeze. Within the hour, the place filled with happy, handsome diners enjoying and sharing deeply satisfying food.

If you’re with a crowd, order up as many of those pickled and preserved things as you can: exemplary sauerkraut dressed up with bright dabs of grain mustard; draped ribbons of silky kimchi; a brilliant “quick pickle” platter of every vegetable under the sun, each bathed in a singularly inventive brine. The pop of these bracing items contrasts beautifully with a smoky lentil dip. The platter also includes another farm-to-table mainstay, deviled eggs, stuffed with a surprisingly addictive mix of minced turnips in chili-garlic sauce. Queen of the starters? An even more addictive pile of crispy kale gilded with giant dollops of cumin-spiced yogurt and generously sprinkled with a dice of red onion. Everyone at the table loved it so much that fights threatened to break out. (Fancy that, Mom: fighting over kale.)

Entrees kept the good vibe going strong. A dish of fork-tender braised pork and more of that sauerkraut was home-styled into nirvana by superlative mashed potatoes. The perfectly pan-roasted rib-eye features a fine potato salad to soak up the steak’s jus, and this, too, became a coveted item as we passed around our dishes. Vegetarians (and meat eaters) have at least two meatless choices for dinner that show off the menu’s way with texture and contrast: Pillowy gnocchi nestled on a bed of Parmesan cream get an extra kick from roasted cherry tomatoes that burst pleasantly in the mouth and a pile of microgreens. Griddled rice cakes were garnished with fried sunchoke chips and sparked with spicy harissa, yogurt, and mint, combining heat and cool, crunch and lushness.

These are simple dishes elevated by great ingredients and the obvious care the Hoffmans lavish on every component. The two boast excellent pedigrees: Both trained (and met) at the Culinary Institute of America, followed by stints as chef (Jeremy) and manager/maître d’ (Michelle) at some of New York’s most fabled restaurants. They were a constant presence in the exhibition kitchen and on the floor at Preserve, overseeing both the expert food and service. Our lovely and knowledgeable young waitress ably shepherded us through the menu, including a list of colorful artisanal cocktails and a compact but sophisticated wine list.

The only misses on our visit were a starter of charbroiled oysters lost beneath a gratin of garlic butter, Parmesan, and breadcrumbs and a fairly ordinary entree of cornmeal-crusted catfish, both of which suffered in comparison to the inventiveness of everything else. We were split on the desserts. The Tandy Cake is a clever play on a Tastykake: yellow sponge cake with chocolate icing. Too cloyingly sweet for some of us—me included—but eagerly set upon by the sugar lovers in our little group. A mound of house-made ricotta ringed with fresh peach preserves spoke to me but others found it too savory for dessert. But the mistakes and missteps were small and few, and we all agreed we’d travel again to Annapolis for dinner at Preserve in a heartbeat. This is one farm-to-table restaurant that doesn’t shout its trendiness—it goes about its business as a matter of course, quietly reminding you of why the trend took hold in the first place.

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PRESERVE 164 Main St., Annapolis, 443-598-6920.
HOURS Wed.-Sat. 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 5-10 p.m.; Sun. 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 5-9 p.m.
PRICES Appetizers: $4-16; entrees $19-29; desserts $5-6.
ATMOSPHERE Farmhouse chic.