Luke Ilardo was selling specialty milled flour at local farmers markets in 2018 when he struck up a conversation with Megan Cowman, who was a regular. “I always like to ask people what they are making,” says Ilardo, whose family owns pizzerias in Baltimore and Reno, Nevada. “Megan, who bought some of our more interesting flours, and I started to talk about cooking and working in restaurants and our cultural backgrounds.”

They hit it off and Ilardo finally worked up the nerve to ask her out. And here’s how you can tell the couple is really into food: On their first date, they bought a used mini refrigerator from Craigslist to convert into a curing chamber for charcuterie. “What’s more romantic than rotting meat?” jokes Ilardo.

From there, the two started cooking together and bonded over their passion for food, especially their love of Sicilian cuisine. Ilardo’s father hailed from Lascari, a small town just outside of Palermo. Cowman’s great-grandparents were from Santo Stefano, about 70 miles from Lascari. And while Cowman says that what she grew up eating was more Italian-American-style, Ilardo experienced the real deal from cannoli to ricotta pie.

Soon, the duo started selling arancini at those same local farmers markets before launching Doppio Pasticceria, their Sicilian bakery-cafe, in R. House last year. As of now, they’re on North Howard Street (in the former home of JBGB’s in Remington), but any day now, they’re planning a move to their permanent brick-and-mortar home at 300 W. 29th Street across from R. House.

“We finally finished the curing chamber this year,” says Cowman with a laugh. “Time got away from us—we just made our first beautiful round of coppa together.”

Why did you decide you wanted to focus on Sicilian cuisine?
Ilardo: I grew up listening to my father, grandmother, grandfather, uncles, and aunts talk about how there’s not a lot of good Sicilian food, and specifically baked Sicilian goods, around Baltimore. It’s such a wide umbrella of so many cultures and cuisines. Sicily has been conquered by everyone and they’ve all left their marks—there’s Greek influence, there’s Roman influence, North African and Arabic influence. [It feels] more Western European, with French and Spanish influences—even the Visigoths were there for a while. This gave us a broad creative license to make whatever we wanted.

Talk a bit about your background.
Cowman: I grew up outside of Westminster and surrounded by farmland. I grew up with my mom’s mom. She gardened and cooked every day. Those are my fondest childhood memories—growing food, picking food, preparing food, especially with my grandmother. At 9, I wanted to cook Thanksgiving dinner.

Ilardo: I started working in my dad’s pizzeria in Pigtown when I was 10. I thought it was the whackest thing just being in a pizzeria all day—I thought it was the worst that my parents made me work. I got burnt-out working in kitchens, but in removing myself and trying a few other things, I realized this is was something I felt deeply connected to.

What do you like about cooking?
Cowman: No matter where I’ve traveled in the world, that’s what you talk about. It also helps me understand my place in the bigger scheme of things. I like seeing how the ingredients, the food, and the land fit together—it makes me feel whole.

Ilardo: It’s the easiest way to connect. Everyone loves food and everyone needs food and everyone is excited to tell you what they like to eat and what they don’t like to eat. It’s a really special thing to share a meal with someone. And if I’m cooking for you, I really care about you—it’s the love language I was taught

Where did the name come from?
Cowman: Doppio means double, and there’s two of us. Doppio has two sides—it’s a bakery and it’s a restaurant. And it’s even a nod to how you order an espresso in Italy.

Ilardo: Sicilian cuisine is influenced by everyone, it has this duality, and at the same time it’s so singularly its own thing.

Right From the Start: My home style tends to roam all over the place. I am a fan of so many eras and styles of design. After selling my 2,000-square-foot home in Butchers Hill, I moved to an apartment in Charles Village for about six years. I seriously downsized and decided to keep only what I truly loved. Though I loved my apartment, I was limited with paint choices and lighting, so I started the search to find a home that I could afford without a partner or roommate.

A Home Run: By chance I was reading the business section in the paper and noticed all of the new homes and small shops opening in Remington. I started a search in that area and a home had come on the market that day. It wasn’t much to look at, but the bones were good. I went and looked at it and that evening I put in a contract.

Right Time, Right Place: The light in my kitchen I saw on eBay a year before I bought my home. I kept going back to look at it but couldn’t justify $125 for a light that I couldn’t hang in my apartment. The day that I put a contract on my house, I went home and purchased that 1929 Napa Valley light fixture.

Dinner at Eight: I love Art Deco; growing up in a home that only had a black-and-white television, the only movies were Hollywood classics. The style and era will always stay with me in some form. I used to buy original furniture from the era but often the upholstery pieces were too big and heavy. I think mixing Art Deco art and lighting with newer pieces of furniture can still maintain the aesthetic.

Creature of Habits: I spend my weekday evenings in the living room, often playing or hanging with my cat, Tater. I wake very early for work—I’m in equipment maintenance for Amtrak/Virginia Rail—so I try to keep a sleep ritual and spend time in my room reading. On the weekend, I spend as much time as I can on my patio. In the last few years, I’ve become a member of the Maryland Bonsai Association and spend my time learning the patience and process.

Do Your Thing: I have heard that there are rules to design, but to me, if it looks and feels right, then go for it. It can always be repainted, moved around, replaced, or sold. I will do my best to make it work but I am not always successful and admittedly have sold some things that were simply an interesting idea that wasn’t for me. Everyone has their own eye and what they want to create for their environment. I think one of the best things is when a friend dropped by and took off their shoes and put their feet on my sofa. At that point, I knew that I had created a comfortable space; the rest is icing with sprinkles.

It’s a few dozen steps down the north slope of the Wyman Park Dell near Charles Village. Upon the descent, the surrounding streets, nearby buildings, and neighboring art museum begin to fade behind a thicket of oak trees, nearly disappearing entirely by the time one reaches the bottom, where, on an early November morning, Bruce Willen stands before the park’s long, low lawn—a sort of sunken oasis in the heart of northern Baltimore City.

“This is the last remnant of the original stream valley,” says Willen, 42, looking around the hillside, speckled with picnics, a playground, and people out walking their dogs. “It’s mind-boggling to imagine, but where we’re standing, right under this walking path, is where it still runs today.”

He’s referring to the Sumwalt Run, a rocky stream that flowed openly from 31st and Charles Streets southwest to the Jones Falls River a century and a half ago. In the early 1900s, the city buried it into underground tunnels—the surrounding land filled in or flattened to build the roads, rowhomes, and neighborhoods we now recognize today.

It’s just one of some estimated 40 waterways that once coursed throughout the city but are now hidden both out of sight and mind. And this one, in particular, has been a wellspring of inspiration for Willen, an Old Goucher resident, Maryland Institute College of Art graduate, and multidisciplinary designer, whose public art installation, Ghost Rivers, was permanently installed throughout Remington last fall.

The mile-and-a-half, self-led walking tour shadows the Sumwalt’s original path—just follow the bright blue lines painted with thermoplastic across streets and sidewalks between 12 decorative, historically detailed metal signs. Funded by various grants, it will be maintained by Willen and the Greater Remington Improvement Association, with materials chosen for durability.

“This project has changed the way that I look at the city,” says Willen, who co-founded the Post Typography design studio, has performed in local bands such as Peals and Double Dagger, and whose other recent installations include the Library of Lost Gloves and Lost Loves at Druid Hill Park. “Now when I walk or drive around town and I see a low point in the landscape, I think, ‘Oh, there’s a stream under there…’”

Willen discovered the Sumwalt on an old city map about decade ago. But it wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic that a stroll over one storm drain on Lorraine Avenue reminded him—with an audible wssshhh—on what is now Site 8 of the Ghost Rivers tour.

“It was exciting, hearing the ghosts of the river, whispering up to me,” says Willen, who spent the next three years conducting research while meeting with city agencies, community organizations, and local residents, who were all equally enthused. “Very few knew about the stream. It’s easy to have no idea it was ever here.”

He hopes Ghost Rivers can bring that forgotten history back to the surface, while also adding context to the conversation. The more he studied the Sumwalt, the more he realized that its story, much like the waterway itself, intersected with an ecosystem of others—industry, immigration, climate—as shifts took place in both the natural and manmade environments.

This stream, for instance, was once frequented for recreation, dammed for agriculture, and harvested for commercial ice during once-consistently cold winters. As populations grew, sewage and stormwater systems were constructed for public health, with these tributaries enlisted as their main channels.

“The histories all weave together,” says Willen. “I hope that this project might inspire someone walking down the street to imagine the space they’re in, even if only for 20 seconds, in a slightly different way.”

And that could include the city at large, which was built around its Inner Harbor and Jones Falls, now buried under a deteriorating I-83, where one of Willen’s last three sites will be completed this spring, and where advocates have joined the growing nationwide call for municipalities to “daylight” these waters.

“Do we want to spend billions to rebuild a highway that cut the city in half,” poses Willen, “or do we want to create an opportunity to reconnect?”

John Ellsberry insists that he didn’t set out to put Remington on the map when he painted his 1987 alligator mural just off the Jones Falls Expressway.

As the Stone Hill artist tells it, the city was offering to pay local artists to paint murals as part of a campaign to deter graffiti on public property, and that got his attention. One commonly tagged site was a long, low concrete retaining wall on the south side of 28th Street just before the traffic signal at Sisson Street.

Given its proximity to the Maryland Zoo, “I kind of wanted [it to depict] some animals escaping,” says Ellsberry. “I also wanted to have an animal that had some teeth, some bite to it, that looked a little scary so that the graffiti people might have a little more respect for it…and also, at the same time, make it colorful and cute.”

Then 32, he won the spot, and with a $5,000 stipend, plus help from fellow local artist Gary Wimmer, he created “The Alligators”—his first of six murals in Baltimore—depicting a trio of gators, one with its jaw open, revealing a formidable set of teeth.

In the years that followed, the work has become something of a symbol for its historically working-class neighborhood, gracing logos for local organizations and even inspiring Peabody Heights Brewery’s “Remington’s IPA,” aka the “Improbable Pet Alligator.”

“It’s an important piece from early in the mural movement here in Baltimore,” says Doreen Bolger, former director of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Not only did it serve as a physical marker on the way to the BMA, she says, but the artwork is also appealing as a metaphor. “Because people are always afraid of alligators, but alligators are actually sort of friendly. In a way, to me, that sort of epitomizes Baltimore City.”

Over the years, between newer stained-glass mosaic projects from his Mill Centre studio, the former City Paper photographer and comic illustrator has visited the mural for routine upkeep—refreshing the paint, mowing the weeds, and removing any trash. And  drivers have come to recognize him.

“They give me the thumbs up, like, ‘Hey, Alligator Man! Alligator Man! How you doing?’” says Ellsberry. “It’s really a rush, getting so much positive feedback.”

And this year, the now-68-year-old received what might be the ultimate confirmation that a work of art has stood the test of time. The Maryland State Arts Council recently awarded a conservation grant of more than $40,000 to the Greater Remington Improvement Association for the full restoration of his alligator mural, to be completed by the original artist himself.

After nearly 35 years, the almost-200-foot-long mural has begun to fade, peel, and otherwise deteriorate to the extent that periodic touch-ups aren’t enough. Once a permit has been approved by the city, with the help of local conservators Lori Trusheim and Gillian Quinn, paint will be removed, the wall will be repaired and reprimed, and then it will receive a new coat of pigment with the original colors, which were once much more vibrant than the hues one sees today. Ellsberry hopes to complete the work in time for a dedication ceremony during Remfest next spring.

“I’m going to try to keep it as close to the original as possible,” he says. Which means that, for the foreseeable future, like the cars that drive beside them, “The Alligators” will continue to wait in line for the light to change. But after all these years, the artist has one clarification to make about his trio, which includes a pair of bright green reptiles, followed by a third brown specimen.

“The reality of it is, two of them are alligators,” he says, “and one of them is actually a crocodile.”

Art Space is a recurring element in the UpFront section of our print publication that spotlights a local artist or project making an impact in the city at large. Here’s what’s going on this month:

In case you’ve ever wondered what the chef who made your Blacksauce breakfast sandwich wears to work, the Remington biscuit business’ ongoing Instagram series, “Work Shoes,” allows for shoe-gazing. Featuring footwear that highlights the wear and tear of the restaurant industry, the series shares images of well-worn and well-loved sneakers, clogs, and boots—often showing evidence of kitchen debris such as flour, grease, or donut glaze—with each featuring descriptions from the employee about the brand, lifespan, and story behind their use. Follow along @blacksaucekitchen.

JBGB’s co-owner/executive chef Tyler Johnson first fell in love with cooking thanks to his mother’s homemade meals.

“My mom worked a full-time job, but she still made everything from scratch,” he says. “From Christmas to Easter, from the time my mom was awake through dessert, there was food on the table. And it was an unspoken rule that if there was food on the table, there was no fighting.”

The Johnsons’ home was a rotating cast of characters constantly stopping by for a meal. “I really liked what coming together to eat did for our family,” says the 31-year-old chef. “And I knew that I wanted to do that for other people’s families, too.”

After graduating in 2012 with a culinary arts degree from Anne Arundel Community College, Johnson worked as a sous chef for Cucina by Wolfgang Puck in Las Vegas and as an executive sous chef at the Kimpton Hotel Monaco in Baltimore, before coming to JBGB’s in Remington.

In addition to working the dinner shift at JBGB’s, Johnson now oversees a new lunchtime sandwich concept—a kind of restaurant within a restaurant—dubbed The Butcher and the ’Wich.

“It’s like a deli inside of a restaurant with the butcher shop up front, but it’s not your traditional Italian deli,” he says. “It’s an Italian deli without the Italian part. It’s the same attention and level of detail you’d expect from a John Brown product, but without the need to label ourselves an Italian deli.”

What’s the secret to making a good sandwich?
For us, it starts with the proteins. We get high-quality proteins and treat them well. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel as much as recreate that feeling of, say, your favorite ham and cheese sandwich. Our ham and cheese is just house ham, Gruyére, Swiss cheese, pickles, and mustard. It’s about creating simple memories and recreating the very best version of what that thing could be.

What should first-timers get with so many options?
Get the roast beef, the turkey, or the ham. You want to get something basic. If a place can’t get that right, there’s no sense in ordering anything else.

Is there one product that stands out as being something that you can only get at The Butcher and the ‘Wich?
Our Italian beef. We treat a chuck roll—that’s the neck of the cow—almost like you would a piece of capicola pork. We take that same cut on a cow, cure it, steam it, and use it for our Italian beef sandwich—it’s delicious.

With the rise in the demand for plant-based cuisine, how do you see the consumption of meat trending?
People are vegan for health and sustainability reasons, but if you go to a local butcher shop, you’ll find they’re sustainable and healthy. If the animals are raised well and the practices are right, it’s a healthy product—not just for us but for the environment. If they’re not over-farmed, and they’re not eating things they shouldn’t be, they’re not causing environmental issues.

Descending the stairs to the subterrain-level Baltimore Photo Space in Remington, you’ll be struck by the surprisingly high ceilings and hip layout of this Baltimore basement, more akin to larger cities like Los Angeles or New York. But the wares sold in this one-room shop—books of and about photography, featuring images of everything from changing seasons to small towns to people’s portraits—can transport customers to other worlds.

“It’s the little details that I really love,” says owner Kyle Myles, holding up a rare-edition, pocket-sized red-linen copy of 22 Days In Between by photographer Salih Basheer, which honors the artist’s memories of his late parents. “These books can be powerful and dark, but also personal and beautiful.”

In 2018, Myles, a self-trained photographer, left his job at the Leica camera store in Washington, D.C., becoming a photographer’s assistant and eventually jumping at the opportunity to rent a workspace in Baltimore. His friend, Sara Autrey, who owns the Get Shredded boutique upstairs, alerted him to the location, and over the past two-and-a-half years, the now-Remington resident has been “learning as I go, in real time,” crediting his shop’s survival to the support of the city’s arts community.

Opened online-only in the fall of 2020, Baltimore Photo Space was originally envisioned as a studio for Myles and a space to sell prints and zines made by his creative friends. But the pandemic spurred “renewed interest in, emphasis on, and excitement about photo books,” he says. And even in a city with no shortage of great bookstores, it was hard to find a dedicated and curated selection.

The retail shop now features an inventory of some 250 books and magazines representing a cross section of both historical and contemporary artists working in both film and digital photography. Rising Baltimore stars like Devin Allen and Curran Hatleberg are stacked alongside industry veterans like Nan Goldin and Lee Friedlander. The entry wall at the top of the staircase serves as a de facto photo gallery.

Holding physical space is important to Myles. His shop is open Saturdays and by appointment, with the tactile shopping experience welcoming people to take their time and browse his stock, even if they can’t afford to buy anything (though his prices begin at $10).

To him, each item is a work of art, based on a particular moment in time and serving as a vessel for an artist’s larger ideas.

Says Myles, “I get just as excited about the physical object of a book as much as what’s in it.”

A few months after JBGB’s, the new Remington restaurant and sister spot to the original John Brown General and Butchery in Cockeysville, opened in the summer, we bellied up to the bar and perused the cocktail menu before dinner. One drink immediately stood out: the Dijon-Vu.

A gin-based concoction made with mustard—you read that right—the cleverly named cocktail is the invention of bar manager Shaun Stewart, who became “obsessed” with it after having a similar drink at an establishment in Philadelphia. He created his own using a mustard syrup he makes that includes agave, fennel, turmeric powder, and, of course, Dijon mustard. Garnished with a pickle chip and slice of sausage, it’s a shockingly refreshing drink that goes down smoothly and excites the taste buds with every sip. And yes, it’s yellow. We’ve never had anything like it. Like literally everything we tried during our trips to JBGB’s, it’s a creative idea that’s executed flawlessly.

Walk into the butcher shop, which is open daily and serves a selection of to-go sandwiches like a classic cold cut and an eggplant po’boy for lunch, or the restaurant, which is open only for dinner Wednesdays through Sundays, and you might experience déjà vu. It’s housed in the same industrial brick building that was home to Parts & Labor, James Beard Award-winning chef Spike Gjerde’s butcher shop-and-upscale-restaurant concept that closed in 2018. While the layout of the butcher shop—with its glass cases of seafood, housemade sausages, salami, and myriad cuts of locally sourced beef, pork, and poultry—and the connected dining room and bar are essentially the same, the look and focus of the restaurant, a one-time auto repair shop, has changed. The bar was repainted, a new mural was added on the back wall, and, most importantly, a wood-fired pizza oven was installed.

“We really wanted this place to be big, inviting, and a little bit louder—just a more comfortable environment,” owner Robert Voss told us last July. “To me, a dinner table should be this last bastion of shared space where we can leave our shit at the door and have a good meal.”

The pies we tried that emerged from that new oven had perfectly charred crusts, bubbling cheese, and high-quality toppings that blended harmoniously. The sausage variety, one of six pizzas on the menu, includes fontina, white sauce, sweet Italian sausage, cherry peppers, onion, and thyme. The mushroom also has a white sauce and is topped with fontina, sweet and sour onions, and thyme. There were several people waiting at the bar to take a pizza (or three) home, but these beauties are best tasted seconds after they come out of the oven, when the crust is extra pillowy and piping hot. The pizzas are substantial in size, as well as flavor. One pie is enough for two people, though leftovers are highly likely.

Meat from the butcher shop is used in several of the appetizers. Beef tartare is mixed with shallots, garlic, and Worcestershire and served with crostini. It was decadent but not overwhelmingly so. A pâté plate featured several wedges of the house-made country variety, which was rich yet subtle. It came with pickled kimchi, melons, onions, and tomatoes, all of which were pleasingly pungent.

Along with the pizza, executive chef Tyler Johnson (formerly of B&O Brasserie) offers six approachable entrees. There’s a smashed cheeseburger with two four-ounce patties and mac sauce, and a sausage of the night from the butcher shop (which comes with collard greens and ham hocks). We opted for the brick chicken, which was served with schmaltz rice in chicken jus. It was one of the freshest, juiciest, and most remarkably cooked birds we’ve ever eaten, beautiful in its simplicity and expert preparation. We also ordered the rigatoni Bolognese. The ingredients—beef and pork Bolo, Parmesan cheese, olive oil—mesh perfectly to create a dish every bit as tasty as one you’d find at a restaurant in Little Italy. After one of our dinners, we were talked into trying a slice of pastry chef Rebecca Karten’s chocolate mousse cake. After a few bites of silent bliss, all we could muster were moans of appreciation—it was that good.

Following another meal, we passed on dessert and instead revisited the enticing cocktail list. A special fall-inspired Old-Fashioned made with apple brandy was the perfect after-dinner drink, warming our bones and bellies. A Bae City Rollaz, made with vodka, raspberry, elderflower, pineapple, and lavender bitters, was sweet yet tart at the same time.

“When I was trying to put this menu together, I wanted to feel like we were being that side dish to the food, where you could have a cocktail that is fantastic by itself, but when you have it with a meal it brings that cocktail to a new level,” says Stewart.

At JBGB’s, just about everything is already reaching those lofty heights.

When Carlos Raba was forced to close Guardian Baltimore on March 13, 2020, the Clavel co-owner-chef was devastated.

Just a few weeks before the pandemic shut down the city, the new community gym nonprofit, which offers free Brazilian Jiu-jitsu classes to kids, had finally gotten off the ground after years of planning.

“I felt defeated,” says Raba. “I ended up with this beautiful space and started to see the kids and their excitement. When it shut down, the only thing I had was empty walls with no energy. I cried.”

Fast forward to this spring, Raba and his pint-sized practitioners are back in bloom. (He also trains adults who, along with donations, help sustain the gym.) It’s been a particularly emotional year for him, as after 23 years of living in America, he also became a U.S. citizen in March, exactly one year to the date after having to reinvent his restaurant next door due to COVID-19.

When Raba first discovered the martial art, it was nothing short of life-changing. “Playing sports kept me out of trouble in high school,” says the former wrestler and football player. “But after high school, I was missing something. I had so much energy, and when I was grumpy or angry, I’d drink with friends, because we had nothing to do. Until one said, ‘Have you heard about Brazilian Jiu-jitsu?’”

Raba, who now holds a black belt in his practice, has continued to train ever since. Three years ago, he came up with the idea for Guardian, based on a sister dojo in Oakland, California, started by a friend from Bethesda. “What we have in Baltimore is kids with nothing to do but hang out on street corners,” he says. “I wanted to give them a passion that has helped me.”

“I HAVE A KID FROM GILMAN ROLLING WITH A KID FROM EAST BALTIMORE.”

Raba, who was raised in Sinaloa, Mexico, before coming to the U.S. at the age of 16, grew up with his own share of struggles. His mother, an accomplished journalist, fled Mexico with the help of Amnesty International in 2000 after Raba’s father was murdered during a home invasion. Raba and his older brother were offered political asylum, too, although life in America, where they soon found themselves in a Detroit shelter and, later, homeless in Washington, D.C., wasn’t exactly easy either. Thanks to a chance meeting, they were taken in by a young lawyer who worked at an immigration law center in Georgetown, and they stayed with her for several years.

“Without even knowing us, she put us in her car and took us to her home in Takoma Park,” he recalls.

The lesson of giving back—something Raba had also seen as a child in Mexico—is one he’s never forgotten.

“My grandfather was a doctor who gave free consultations to lower-income families,” he says. “My grandmother was a nurse who adopted kids. It’s natural for me to want to help.”

At Guardian, kids ages 4 to 17 can train for free, and Raba gives a free “gi,” or uniform, to every student who enrolls.

“The program is for anyone,” he stresses, being particularly proud of the gym’s diversity. “I have a kid from Gilman rolling with a kid from East Baltimore. Both have struggles, but very different struggles. Both can learn from each other about life.”

In the coming months, Raba hopes to offer not only a safe haven for his current roster of 20-some kids to train and do homework, but a space that will expand their world in other ways. He’s thinking about forming a poetry or photography club, or running a barista class with his friend Kris Fulton, the owner of nearby Sophomore Coffee. He’s also considering offering an incentive to keep kids coming to the mat.

“If you come and you’re consistent, you’re going to get a burrito a week,” says Raba, whose taqueria is mere steps away from Guardian. “The burrito might be the thing that gets you in the door, but I’m hoping they’ll get hooked on Jiu-jitsu.”

In early February, Thibault Manekin, sporting a mop of dirty blond hair, wearing a beaded shark tooth’s necklace and blue T-shirt, sits in a crowded family room in Brazil, trying to secure some semblance of privacy for this Zoom. Manekin, 43, and his wife, Lola, along with their young sons, Finley and Durban, have spent nearly the past year in his wife’s home country. When they had children, he promised Lola that they would spend a year there, so the kids could know her family and that part of their cultural heritage. It just happened to coincide with the coronavirus pandemic.

Every so often, the conversation is interrupted by the sounds of his boys, arguing in the other room. He then quietly and politely asks in Portuguese for a little help controlling the ruckus.

Not that the trip looks as if it has been hard on Manekin. Trading in the Baltimore winter for a Brazilian summer amid COVID-19 certainly has agreed with him. He’s chatty, relaxed, and appears infinitely more comfortable than when his typical days as a principal at one of the region’s most innovative real estate development firms, Seawall Development, thrust him into the limelight.

Despite the roughly 13-hour flight away, Manekin’s hometown of Baltimore is never fully out of mind. That’s due in large part to his company tackling its highest-profile project to date, leading the $40-million redevelopment of Baltimore’s hallowed Lexington Market.

“Everybody in Baltimore has a Lexington Market story, and everybody in Baltimore has a reason they do, or don’t, go there today, but they all have an opinion about why it’s important that Lexington get back to the place that it really once was for our city,” Manekin says.

It’s a daunting task, but one that Seawall Development, the firm that Manekin co-founded with his father, Donald, in 2007, has handled well so far.

Founded in 1792, Lexington Market served as a hub of Baltimore life for generations. It was the place to grab fresh fruits, vegetables, and specialty items like raccoon or muskrat. It was the place to stop for lunch after weekend day trips to one of the department stores in what’s now downtown Baltimore’s Westside.

First, Seawall forged plans for an affordable development after the initial cost swelled beyond what the city was willing to pay. Their proposal for a new market shed harkens back to what Lexington Market looked like in 1910—a modern take on the turn-of-the-last-century structure. Renderings depict barn-like architecture, flooded with natural light and constructed with materials such as brick and metal to reflect the surrounding neighborhood’s industrial-age aesthetics. Construction continues despite having broken ground in early 2020, shortly before the pandemic, and they’re still on track to open in early 2022.

As is his tendency, at least publicly, Manekin downplays the difficulty of the project. While he admits “the last year was really scary,” he is also adamant that he approaches challenges with an open mind, setting the company, and its projects, up for whatever the post-pandemic world holds.

“We’re on fire now, you know, there are projects that we can’t wait to talk about,” he says. “I really think that we are just beginning to hit our stride.”

What’s positioned Seawall to succeed, particularly with Lexington Market, is an emphasis on community inclusion in real estate development through hours spent engaging residents via various outreach efforts. Via surveys, town halls, and feedback sessions, they’ve worked to create a vision for the public market that features a diverse array of vendors and an environment that is welcoming to all. Both points were of particular concern to the many Black residents of surrounding neighborhoods, who feared they suddenly wouldn’t feel welcome in a market that’s become a piece of their cultural heritage.

This sensitivity to neighborhood concerns, evidenced in its earliest and highest-profile projects in the city’s Remington neighborhood, has furnished Seawall with a largely positive reputation as transparent and accommodating. That standing is rare in real estate development, an industry that many residents remain skeptical of for a variety of reasons, ranging from the impact of gentrification on long-time residents to developer’s outsized influence at City Hall.

Seeking out community engagement, however, is more than just sound business practice. It reflects the ideals that Manekin consciously pursued after graduating from Lehigh University with a degree in marketing in 2000. At the time, he and brothers Sean and Brendan Tuohey started the D.C.-based nonprofit PeacePlayers, where they traveled to countries ranging from Northern Ireland to South Africa, teaching kids to play basketball to promote conflict resolution.

When Manekin returned home, he was struck by the incongruity of healing wounds in other parts of the world while his hometown struggled with many of the same problems of poverty and trauma. On one visit, as he passed through West Baltimore, he began to realize how the real estate industry, which his family had deep ties to, could bridge divides in Baltimore.

 

“WE WANTED TO BE NEIGHBORS, NOT GUESTS IN THE COMMUNITY.”

 

“I remember coming back from South Africa, I was on North Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue,” Manekin says. “I had this epiphany—that real estate is the most powerful, connected industry on the planet, but it’s done more to divide us than actually bring us together as human beings.”

In 2007, he coaxed his father into joining him in launching Seawall Development. It was a natural fit, as Donald had spent decades at the helm of the family’s real estate development company, Manekin Corporation. After its sale in 2000, he also served as Baltimore City Schools interim chief operating officer.

When his son asked him to join the company, Donald says, he felt “an instant sense of gratification.” He had long believed that the Manekins were more than just landlords, but stakeholders in the community’s success. “This was a natural opportunity to be part of something larger than ourselves,” he says.

From the start, Seawall’s founders emphasized listening to local needs over forcing their vision on residents, working to connect neighbors and garner community support for projects.

“I’ve always been fascinated with this idea of reimagining industries where we take something that we know, flip it upside down, and insert our own kind of purpose into it,” says Manekin. “We had no idea what we were doing, but we were driven by this purpose of rewriting the script to see what that might look and feel like. That was 14 years ago, and we’ve been on this wild ride ever since.”

Seawall’s first high-profile undertaking was the overhaul of Remington’s 100-year-old American Can Company on Howard Street, which they turned into the mixed-use Miller’s Court in 2007. Two other developers had previously abandoned projects because they couldn’t get neighbors to buy in. In early meetings with Seawall, residents vocalized their desire for a locally owned coffee shop, which Manekin didn’t think would work at the time. But when Charmington’s opened as a worker-owned co-op in the building’s first-floor corner at West 26th Street, it quickly thrived. Five years later, President Barack Obama sat in the cafe, promoting guaranteed paid sick leave for American workers.

“Baltimore just hit the jackpot with that group at Charmington’s and how much love they put into that project, and that just propelled us forward,” says Manekin.

From there, Seawall also redeveloped Hampden’s Union Mill in 2011, where Artifact Coffee now stands, using a similar model as Miller’s Court. Drawing inspiration from Donald’s work with public schools, the company also redeveloped a block of rowhomes in Remington to help teachers achieve homeownership, all done with community feedback.

“We wanted to be neighbors and not guests in the community,” Donald says, before echoing a sentiment his son has also emphasized: “None of these ideas are our own.”

By 2015, the company took on the ambitious, $60-million, mixed-use Remington Row, seeing the neighborhood’s potential in its proximity to Johns Hopkins University and I-83. The overhaul would come to include the $12-million R. House food hall, which quickly became one of the city’s most popular gathering spaces. “Those [projects] were the neighborhood’s master plan,” says Manekin. “They wanted to create a walkable urban boulevard.”

It was the success of R. House that attracted the attention of Lexington Market Inc., which for years had been struggling to breathe new life into the fading landmark.

For much of the city’s nearly 300-year history, Lexington Market was a cultural linchpin, beginning as an open-air market bustling with horse-drawn wagons hawking local goods, before becoming the center of Baltimore’s thriving retail sector, just a stone’s throw from the theater district and a convergence point for the city’s transit system.

But after World War II, and particularly following the integration of city schools, many of the department stores followed affluent white residents to the suburbs. By the 1990s, most were closed, along with many of the other smaller retailers, leaving a wake of vacant or deteriorating buildings.

Through it all stood Lexington Market and its venerable vendors, such as Faidley’s Seafood, circa 1886. But business at the market precipitously declined as concerns about safety started to outweigh the allure of crab cakes. Decades of neighborhood disinvestment spurred a rise in crime that scared off customers, causing the number and quality of market vendors to plummet.

Serious efforts to revitalize the space began with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake in 2010. In 2013, her administration hired urban planning group Market Ventures Inc. to conduct a study, which called for a complete overhaul of the market. Firms were then selected for architectural, engineering, and specialty consulting, and to serve as construction managers.

In late 2016, Baltimore City and Lexington Market Inc. unveiled their plans, but the proposed cost quickly escalated from about $35 million to as high as $60 million, which Lexington Market couldn’t afford. In desperate need to regain momentum, and shave millions off the price tag, the city sought a new company to steer the redevelopment. By the fall of 2018, Seawall was officially on board.

Over the next few years, Manekin and his team launched into community outreach efforts, similar to their previous projects, including multiple public meetings to gather input on a new Lexington Market. At these events, residents did not shy away from demanding that executives directly address issues of race and class in their plans, with many often bluntly sharing their concerns that the new market would not be welcoming to people of color, as has been expressed about other new developments in and around the Inner Harbor.

“It takes a long time to build trust, and we don’t have everyone’s trust yet,” Manekin admitted at the time, before vowing to deliver an inclusive space. More recently, he said he feels those conversations about inclusion served as “driving forces” behind plans for the market, ranging from aesthetics to the price point of the vendors.

The town halls continued, with community feedback incorporated into the design and development processes, as well as vendor recruitment, with the company aiming for a diverse lineup that resembles the demographics of the city. Two rounds of applications attracted 300 submissions for some 45 stalls. Seventy percent of applicants were Black, and more than half were women.

At the same time, Lexington Market isn’t the sole focus for Seawall, which also played a role in the development of Union Collective, a 138,000-square-foot former Sears warehouse near Hampden turned thriving retail-manufacturing complex. Seawall continues to consider new projects they are “spiritually aligned with,” in Baltimore and beyond.

But despite projects in other cities, and being on another continent for now—a pre-bedtime squabble between his two sons briefly requires his attention—Manekin stresses his continued passion for his hometown. After all, Baltimore is not just his home. It was his grandfather’s home. It’s where his father was born, raised, and still lives today.

Growing up, he remembers his grandfather and father both telling stories about weekend trips to Lexington Market. With construction on the new shed set to finish in under a year, Manekin hopes to be able to continue that tradition with his own sons. “It needs to be the heartbeat of the city,” he says.

On March 16, when Orto owner Elan Kotz learned that bars and restaurants would be closing with the exception of carryout and delivery, he was on-site working at his new project to bring back The Dizz in Remington.

“When we got the news, we immediately had to pivot into, ‘What were we going to do at Orto?’” says Kotz. “That Monday, I got with the team and my brand new executive chef, Chris Audia, and I just decided, ‘Let’s do this thing.’ He and I ran the phones and he cooked and packaged every meal for our first carryout—and it was a great night. It was a very humbling and beautiful experience. It was really hard work, but it was satisfying to know that we were still able to feed our guests.”

Kotz is confident that diners will be ever eager to eat out once restaurants reopen. “Whether your restaurant is big, medium-sized, or small, every restaurant has a soul and a heart,” he says, “and guests who have become family will come back to support them.”

How are you?
I’m doing well. Every day is a new adventure. Each day presents its own challenges, but at the same time, I am super grateful that we are able to feed our guests and provide work for a portion of our team.

It seems like you’ve mastered the carryout format—I’ve had it myself and it’s excellent. You’ve told me that you even have “carryout regulars.” Why do you think you’ve been so successful?
I really attribute a lot of the success of this to our team. Chris Audia, our sous chef Kris Calivo, and our pastry chef Theresa Louis—Chris Audia’s wife. My GM and I focused on the front-of-the-house logistics and packaging. For us, the most important part was sticking to our guns and cooking the food that we’ve always cooked. We offer a chicken parm family meal to make people feel comforted and warm them up, but we’re also still offering the dishes we love to provide to our guests. We are just cooking what we know, and the response has been incredible.

“Orto is a very small, intimate space that feels really cozy, but are people going to want to sit close to each other? When are we going to be able to do that? What does the timeline look like? Those question marks are why it’s been really hard to make any sort of a real plan.” —Elan Kotz

Tell me more about your new chef.
Chris was our opening sous chef and he went to Chez Hugo for a little while. He and Theresa, who was also at Chez Hugo, started back with us on March 4. We had one week of solid time working together, and then they were confronted with the challenge of the global pandemic—they’ve handled it beautifully.

How are your revenues?
Our revenue is down about 50 percent now from where we were because we’ve moved to a five-day week. The weekdays have been inconsistent, but weekends are holding us up. We reduced our labor and are mindful about purchasing. We’ve been able to make it work—some weeks we were able to break even. In the beginning there were some hard weeks, but we’ve really hit a good rhythm.

What has it been like to be in the space without most of your staff and no guests?
Every day is different. March 17th was one of the hardest days of my life and career. I had to lay off a large portion of our staff and that was a really, really tough day for me.

It took us a while to readjust all lights, which are on automatic settings and dim throughout the evening. The first time the lights dimmed on that Tuesday, March 17th at 10 of five, letting us know that we were five minutes out from opening, it was an incredibly emotional thing for all of us. And then, that first Saturday night being in that space, the same space that we’ve served so many incredible people and made memories and had this beautiful food on the table, it was 8:15 p.m. and we had pushed out all of our catering. We didn’t have any more orders—I looked at everyone and was like, ‘This would be our biggest push right now.’

“The first time the lights dimmed on that Tuesday, March 17th at 10 of five, letting us know that we were five minutes out from opening, it was an incredibly emotional thing for all of us.” —Elan Kotz

What do you recommend for first timers taking out?
The chicken Parm dinner has been a hit for tons of guests. It’s served over house-made rigatoni with garlic buns that Theresa makes, a Caesar salad, and a revolving dessert. For two people, it’s $40. We are trying to deliver value, as well as comfort. Also, we have revolving batch cocktails. My go-to is a black Manhattan that we do with an Averna Amaro instead of the vermouth. We also just added little after-dinner drinks—three ounce pours of house-made limoncello orangecello, and grapefruit pompicello—which have always been part of our experience here. We’re also adding a cheese and salumi plate and a grilled swordfish loin with fregola and mussels.

How does your chef stay inspired?
We did have to turn into a carryout model overnight. We are joking internally that when we get through this thing, we are going to wear matching track suits and get patches that say, ‘1,000 chicken Parms served!’ It’s delicious, but it’s not the most technical thing to make. Chef is still inspired to cook seasonally, seeing the ingredients that have been available and getting inspired from there. Last week we rolled out a new lamb sugo pasta dish.

What’s happening with your project to bring The Dizz back in Remington?
In this current climate, I did just put it on hold. I started the project 11 days before the coronavirus hit. For now, I am slowly picking it up, but I don’t have a sense of a timeline yet. In the first 11 days of working there, we got everything off the walls and started cleaning.

What will the culinary landscape look like when the pandemic is over?

I don’t think any of us know what this looks like on the other side. Every restaurant is unique. Orto is a very small space and it’s intimate and feels really cozy, but are people going to want to sit close to each other? When are we going to be able to do that? What does the timeline look like? What does the rollout look like? Those question marks are why it’s been really hard to make any sort of a real plan. We’re taking it day by day, week by week.

I don’t think it’s going to go right back to what it was at all for a while, and I do think restaurants will have to continue to do carryout as part of their regular offerings just to ensure that they are making it work and making ends meet. I want to do a hybrid restaurant once we are able to.

“We cannot wait to serve people back at a restaurant table—that will be one of the very best days.” —Elan Kotz

What changes do you think will happen as a result of the pandemic?
I know there will be changes as it pertains to how people want to be served. There will be touchless bathrooms and a forever focus on everything cleanliness, which we’ve always done, but now it has to be even more visible and transparent for the comfort level of our guests. I believe we will still have restaurants to eat out in, although things might change a bit—they will have to for a while. But can we tell what the future holds? Absolutely not. Is there a chance that we have to pivot again? Maybe. Some iconic restaurants may never reopen.

There’s also a massive cost associated with a restaurant reopening. You have to restock everything. A lot of it will come down to the diner and their comfort level and ability. There’s also an economic implication. People need to have the money to eat out. I’m hopeful. I’m an eternal optimist. I know this will be just fine and we will get to the other side and be stronger for it. And hopefully a lot more grateful.

Why do restaurants matter?
Restaurants matter for multiple reasons. They’re a place where people who love to give and nourish can work, whether they’re a bartender, a cook, or a dishwasher. There’s this built-in feeling of giving to people when they come in and dine here. It’s a social gathering—people love to connect over food. Food memories are made in restaurants over birthdays and special occasions, but eating out is also a thing to do when you’ve had a hard day at work and don’t want to go home and cook something. Also, for me, we employ so many incredible human beings who’ve built their careers and spent their lives in restaurants, and they matter because we have to make sure that all these people have somewhere to go on the other side of this thing. We cannot wait to serve people back at a restaurant table—that will be one of the very best days.

6:15 A.M. FRESH START

This is way earlier than I usually wake up. The store opens at 11, and my sleep schedule has definitely adjusted to the later start. That said, the past two years have seen a lot of good habits fall by the wayside. A 7 a.m. class at Pilates House in Fells Point is an attempt to get one of them back.

9 A.M. PLAYTIME

Time to walk the dog in Patterson
Park. Audie is pretty much my
constant companion. As much as
she likes being in the shop and
getting love all day every day
from her regular visitors, I try to
give her enough outdoor time to
keep her energetic and healthy. Plus, she loves to watch the squirrels run around.

10:30 A.M. BACK TO WORK

Head to the Remington store to open up and begin the day. I start by filling special orders and reordering anything we need back in stock. A few vendors come by and drop off products. I love working with other small businesses in the city; it’s such a collaborative and supportive environment.

12 P.M. IN THE WEEDS

Meet with a publisher’s sales rep to go over my order for the upcoming season. I heard a bookstore owner joke once that opening a bookstore means you stop reading books and start reading catalogs. That’s not entirely, or even remotely, wrong.

3 P.M. HUSTLIN’

Leave the store in the capable hands of my new booksellers to run errands. The second store has been a big adjustment to my schedule; I’m busier but also have more time and flexibility to get housekeeping and administrative things done.

5 P.M. AFTER HOURS

Pick up Audie and walk to the Fells Point store. I’ve been doing special evening hours for book club members. It’s a fun way to see and thank this great group of people who have become my reading community.

9 P.M. IN A DAY’S WORK

Home. Take out the laptop to answer emails and do some buying for the store. I read for a while, but my eyes and brain are tired. I’ll fall asleep to the dulcet tones of Paul Hollywood critiquing people’s proofing times on the Great British Baking Show, and get ready to do it all again tomorrow.

This month marks the third anniversary of your wellness and fitness studio, Movement Lab.
What do you think draws people to it?

Everything we carry emotionally is in our bodies. We can process that mentally, but until we move a heavy emotion out of our bodies, it’s still stuck somewhere. Anytime we’re opening our bodies, it’s like we’re digging deep into those places and we don’t have to hide anymore, the emotions
just come on up. And our students come back. That’s how we know that they’re understanding—it’s physical. A class can be a deep, deep experience, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be a girl’s night out and you sweat it out and grab a beer downstairs later. Whatever people need in
that moment, we got you.

What aspects of your hometown, Florianópolisi, Brazil, have influenced your vision for the lab?
If you watch Brazilians, there’s a lot of freedom in their bodies. I think that’s the biggest gift—their authenticity as a culture. If I am to be in Baltimore, it’s about how I can bring as much of that experience here. I grew up free on the island Florianópolisi, where our movement was running in the dunes and jumping on trampolines. There’s always much more fun in the movement that we do there. I never feel like I’m getting a workout. I think by now [Movement Lab] is known for offering unique classes. We don’t have conversations about weight loss, and it’s not even fitness—it’s like this is your playground. We want everyone to come in and belong somewhere, feel like a part of something bigger than themselves, and work, dance, sweat, and do good.

Where did your wellness journey begin?
We grew up in this natural world and my mom would take us to every shaman to heal us before we took aspirin. So, that was behind it all. When I studied natural therapies in college, that’s what I thought I’d do for the rest of my life until I found Nia. My sister-in-law had taken this [fitness] class in New York, she’s like “it had dance, and yoga, and martial arts,” so I Googled it and I discovered Nia. I immediately signed up for training. There were no classes here, so I went, and I fell madly in love with it and I knew I wanted to share that.

How has immigrating to America shaped your views as a business owner?
Part of my process in becoming a citizen was gaining so much gratitude. I moved to Florida in 2004 just to get work experience. I took jobs as a waiter, cleaned houses, and babysat. But I had finished college [in Florida] in natural therapies and, when it was time to go home, I decided to stay for massage school. Along the way, I just kept meet- ing the most amazing people who would open more and more doors to me. Everything that I’ve done and what has influenced me comes from a tremendous amount of gratitude.

Movement Lab also hosts some really cool events that branch away from fitness. What do these events and “playshops” bring to the experience?
As a culture here, it’s deeply ingrained that self-care is an act of selfishness and everybody else comes first. There’s an unequal weight of giving, giving, giving and not enough receiving. The massages and coaching are how can we support each human being to come back home from the disconnection to our bodies from various things: abuse, trauma, thinking “my body doesn’t look perfect.” It’s that idea of teaching that self-care is essential to a person’s wellbeing. The workshops we offer usually find ways of getting the mind, the emotions, and the spirit through the body.

How do the particular classes at Movement Lab promote a mind-body wellness connection?
When we go on vacation and we take those ten days, we’re rested. And then we come back and think of how to sustain those moments of feeling like you have yourself together. But days go by and life happens, and we forget. What if you can’t go to Costa Rica once a month, how do you get that experience? But it has nothing to do with Costa Rica—it has to do with how you felt there. It’s a feeling that we can get back to in some ways in our everyday lives. If we try to talk about it, it becomes mental, instead [I want my students to] feel it in their bodies. It’s physical. It’s not a conversation of “don’t forget to reach deep into yourself,” it’s “take the medicine and see what happens to your body.”

Reflecting on the journey of Movement Lab, what kind of growth have you experienced?
It’s teaching me what deep commitment looks like. I’ve always been a free butterfly and wherever the wind took me I went. So there’s a level of commitment and discipline that hasn’t really been a part of my DNA. It’s trusting the process. Surrendering more. Letting go of trying to control everything and micromanaging everything. Every time I find myself doing that, I lose track of the bigger picture.

What’s the bigger picture for you?
One of my favorite quotes is [by Howard Thurman]: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” There are many moments where I wonder how I am contributing to the world by owning a studio. And then I had this realization last year that the way I am contributing is by having a space for people to come into their aliveness, so then they can be themselves. That’s my contribution here—reminding people who they are.

When Julia Fleischaker first saw the Fells Point space that would become Greedy Reads, she had an immediate vision for how her store would lay out and where everything would go. Eighteen months later, Fleischaker had a similar picture in her head when she came upon a space across the street from R. House in Remington, which will soon serve as the second location for the independent bookstore, set to open in late fall.

“I love my Fells Point store—I’m obsessed with it,” Fleischaker says. “It’s incredibly beautiful and I love the vibe. But the one thing I can’t really do is the events that I want because it’s a smaller space.”

That will change in Remington, as Greedy Reads will take over the front half of the former Twenty 20 Cycling space. The new location will be twice the size of its Fells Point counterpart, around 1,300 square feet, which will allow for more inventory and a bigger selection. The stage from the cycling space will remain, giving Fleischaker the opportunity to put on a whole host of events, from author readings, stand-up comedy nights, to even jazz trio performances.

This news also comes on the heels of Baltimore County’s The Ivy Bookshop’s recent announcement that it will move to a bigger space two blocks south of its original location. In total, it’s proof of Baltimoreans’ willingness to support local, independent bookstores.

“I think there was this kind of recognition over the past 20 years where communities were losing their bookstores and saying, ‘Wait a second, this isn’t what we wanted—we didn’t realize that this is the consequence of bargain shopping online,'” Fleischaker says. “I think that Baltimore is particularly conscious of that dynamic.”

Fleischaker says the reception to the expansion has been overwhelmingly positive, a testament to how the bookshop has ingratiated itself within the Fells Point community and beyond. She hopes to collaborate and work together with R. House and her future neighbors like Mount Royal Soap Co. and B. Willow, and is excited to establish new connections in Remington. Fleischaker picks and curates every book in her flagship store along with personalized recommendations, and that won’t change at this new store.

“I love books and talking about books,” says Fleischaker, a Chevy Chase native. “Getting to know this community of people and getting to know the city a little bit, it’s exciting for me to expand. The way I set up the bookstore allows for discovery and happenstance. I feel like that’s reflected itself in my life in the last few years. I’ve been fortunate to stumble into these two great locations.”

COMING SOON

Tire Shop Pop-Ups at Parts & Labor: We’ve been keeping tabs on this former car-and tire-repair-shop-turned-Remington restaurant since Parts & Labor served its last cuts of meat in the space last summer. A new pop-up series is preparing to reactivate the space with public food events featuring local purveyors. The first of many such events is scheduled for August 10 from 12-5 p.m., when the barbecue buffs with Bark BBQ will serve up their Texas-style smoked meats with signature sides like pickled cucumbers and corn on the cob. Joining them for the inaugural celebration will be Locust Point’s Diamondback Brewing and R. House’s R. Bar. Hopefully we’ll see a more permanent revival soon, but, for now, it will be nice to see (and smell) meats being smoked in the space again.

Koba BBQ: It’s been quite some time since we’ve seen a restaurant operate inside the standalone building at Belvedere Square—which has become notorious for its turnaround rate throughout the years. North Baltimore locals might remember as far back as 2004, when it operated as Taste. Concepts that followed included Crush, Demi, Spike Gjerde’s Shoo-Fly, and, most recently, Starlite Diner. Now, the space is straying from its previous life as a cocktail bar and diner with an entirely new on-trend theme. Koba BBQ, a locally owned Korean barbecue concept is slated to open in the space by the end of this year. The spot adds to the development’s diverse lineup of food offerings, which include Ejji Ramen, Atwater’s, Grand Cru, and Neopol Smokery.

Brazil Gourmet Marketplace, Cafe, and Coffee Bar: Baltimore’s Brazilian food offerings will expand in the coming weeks with the arrival of this multi-use concept on Eastern Avenue. The Fells Point shop will be home to a market featuring authentic Brazilian grocery items like coffee, yucca and tapioca flours, smoked and dried meats, and mango and guava fruit juices. After stocking up on the comestibles, patrons are invited to stay for a meal in the cafe, which will highlight delicacies like classic empanadas, açai bowls, cachaça-infused caipirinha cocktails, and Pão de Queijo (Brazilian cheese bread).

EPICUREAN EVENTS

TO 8/11: Baltimore Restaurant Week
The city’s annual dining-out promotion is officially in full swing with an array of participating places to choose from. Treat yourself to two-course lunch and brunch menus ranging from $12-20, or a three-course dinner for $20-35. Newbies including Blackwall Hitch, Noona’s, The Tilted Row, and Orto are all participating for the first time this year if you’re hoping to try something new. But it’s also a great opportunity to revisit old standbys like Tio Pepe’s or Annabel Lee Tavern. (You can find our globally inspired suggestions here.)

8/3: Vegan SoulFest

This plant-based party returns to Clifton Park for its sixth year with a jam-packed lineup of speakers, cooking demonstrations, live DJ entertainment, shopping, and, of course, plenty of vegan eats to go around. Local vendors to look out for include L’Eau de Vie Organic Brasserie, The Greener Kitchen, Refocused, and The Land of Kush—whose co-owner Naijha Wright-Brown organizes the event each year.

SHUT

TigerStyle: Earlier this week, diners devoured the last of the steamed buns and stir-frys at Chad Gauss’ wok-inspired outpost in Hampden. The chef and Food Market owner recently confirmed to us that the restaurant has closed for good. Gauss says the closing is not for lack of business. The space was simply sold to another buyer who expressed interest in taking over the former commissary kitchen. “It was a fun place and exactly what we wanted it to be,” he tells us. “We have a few bigger projects coming our way, and it just made sense to let this one go since we had someone that was interested in the location.” There’s no word yet on who, exactly, will be taking over the carryout—which Gauss opened only six months ago and named after the lyrics of a popular Wu Tang Clan song.

Baltimore neighborhoods are constantly evolving and it’s safe to say that Remington has officially experienced a renaissance.

“I was born and raised in this neighborhood, so I’ve seen it go through quite a few changes,” says The Dizz general manager Elaine Stevens, who has worked at the restaurant for 27 years. “But I wouldn’t live anywhere else. I love the people here. It’s just a great place.”

To commemorate Remington’s history and bright future ahead, locals came together last spring to host the first-annual Remfest—a street festival that coincided with the centennial of some of the area’s most celebrated properties.

“We think we have something pretty special here,” says Dan Scott, a partner at Charmington’s on Howard street. “We really wanted to show that off to people, and the festival totally exceeded our expectations.”

This Saturday, May 11, food vendors, musicians, makers, and neighbors will pack the streets once again for the second-annual gathering along Remington Avenue from 12-9 p.m. Aside from an impressive vendor lineup, family-friendly programming, and live music by Baltimore favorites (think Brooks Long, Bobbi Rush, Soul Cannon, Super City, and Outcalls), there will be plenty of local eats and drinks to choose from.

“To me, it’s fantastic that we are doing something to bring more foot traffic and give Remington the recognition that it needed a long time ago,” says Sweet 27 owner Suraj Bhatt, who is one of the returning food vendors this year.

Stevens, too, is looking forward to returning to the event with The Dizz, especially on the heels of such a pivotal year for the neighborhood fixture. The owners put their corner hangout on the market last fall, but ultimately decided against selling after seeing the outpouring of support from the community.

“This place has been here forever,” she says. “I think [the owners] were ready to just get out of the business, but then they saw how much it means to everybody and that made them say, ‘You know what, we’re not giving up. We’re going to hang in there.’”

Stevens says that the street fair is a great way to strengthen the community bond that she sees firsthand every day at the beloved burger bar.

“That’s one good thing about The Dizz being here, we get to meet everybody who moves into the neighborhood,” she says. “It’s kind of like a little meet-and-greet all the time. And it’s the same at Remfest—it’s just a chance for everybody to come together.”

The Remington eateries, along with a few visiting vendors, will serve everything from burgers and steamed buns to cookies and crab cakes this Saturday. Here’s a preview of what’s on the menu:

Shrimp salad and Old Bay sausages from The Dizz: Visit Stevens and her team to chow down on portable festival fare including curly fries, bleu cheese sliders, fried pickles with ranch, chicken tenders, and grilled Polish hot dogs. The Dizz will also be welcoming Charm City cookout weather with summer staples like shrimp salad and plump Old Bay sausages.

Ginger Immunitea and cookies from Charmington’s: In anticipation of the warm temperatures, Scott and his staff at Charmington’s are preparing batches of their iced Ginger Immunitea—a refreshing sip is steeped with raw ginger, lemon, and honey. The shop will also be pouring iced coffees and selling its fresh-baked cookies in flavors ranging from vegan banana-walnut to classic chocolate chip.

Bombay chicken and chana masala from Sweet 27: Best known for its multicultural cuisine and gluten-free sweets, this Remington mainstay will offer a sampling of dishes off of its regular menu. Look out for bombay, penang, and Jamaican jerk chicken served with a choice of one side. Vegan options include veggie fritters, garlic kale, chana masala, basmati rice, and garlic mashed potatoes.

Smoked salmon tacos from Neopol Smokery: Follow your nose to this popular smoked meat stall from Belvedere Square. Owner Dorian Brown will be preparing smoked salmon tacos with pico de gallo and chipotle cream, applewood-smoked pulled pork sandwiches, smoked mussels on the half shell, and portobello wraps with feta and field greens.

Crab cake sandwiches and ice-cold oysters from The Local Oyster: Head to the red-and-white pop-up tent to slurp oysters and indulge in colossal crab cake sandwiches served alongside Utz chips. Another highlight will be the team’s signature shrimp grilled with butter and Old Bay.

Steamed buns from Ekiben: Get your hands on a pillowy steamed bun from this Fells Point favorite known for its innovative Asian-fusion dishes. Look out for signature buns and bowls like the “Neighborhood Bird” (Taiwanese curry fried chicken topped with coleslaw and fresh herbs) and the vegan “Tofu Brah” topped with spicy peanut sauce.

After 12 seasons, alternative theater company Single Carrot Theatre will perform their final show at their Remington home this June. But while the theater on North Howard Street will be closing, the ensemble isn’t going anywhere. Well, rather, they’re going everywhere.

In an effort to continue their socially relevant shows without being tied to one location, Single Carrot Theatre will start performing in various spaces—early ideas include private homes and abandoned school buildings—around the city. The idea of incorporating unique aspects of each venue into the experience is not a foreign concept to the experimental company, which once performed Promenade on various city streets while the audience rode a bus from location to location.

“We’re just honing in on the elements of the work we’ve been doing that excite us the most and that we think have been the most exciting for audiences,” says artistic director Genevieve de Mahy. “We’re thinking about social relevance and activating neighborhoods in different parts of the city that may be less seen.”

Single Carrot Theatre now has a brand-new mission and format, but before they move into this new era, there’s one more story to tell in Remington. On April 26, the company will premiere Pink Milk, a reimagining of codebreaker Alan Turing’s life story from Chicago-based playwright Ariel Zetina, who is working with Single Carrot to revisit the play’s text and score for the first time since writing it in 2014.

“It’s a piece about Alan Turing and the parts of his life outside of his work, who he might have been internally, and the interpersonal relationships in his life,” says director Ben Kleymeyer. “The play is a look back at Turing as this queer figure from history through the eyes of a modern trans woman who is now reclaiming the history that has been erased.”

That Pink Milk will be the last piece performed on the Single Carrot stage is no coincidence. The play not only epitomizes the types of experimental, inclusive theater that the company has become known for, but its psychedelic, Technicolor setting offers a final chance to use their performance space to its fullest potential.

“This felt like a really good fit in terms of the tricks we’ll be pulling out of our sleeves for lights and sets and things like that,” says de Mahy. “It felt right for this to be the last show we do in a traditional theater space for a while.”

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.”

From the beginning, R. House in Remington was meant to be a launchpad for aspiring chefs and restaurateurs to grow their budding food businesses beyond the communal food hall. A solid example is Alex Janian, the owner of BRD and Amano Taco who is expanding his fan-favorite chicken sandwich stall to South Baltimore this summer.

Though he was solely focused on getting the two concepts up and running inside R. House when it opened in 2016, as time went on, Janian started to think about how BRD could translate into other neighborhoods.

“We saw customers really latching on to it and coming back all the time,” he says. “And that’s when I really started thinking this could be something cool for Baltimore to experience in other parts of the city.”

Featuring BRD’s drool-worthy chicken sandwiches, wings, and fries, the Federal Hill shop will be located on the ground floor of Wheelhouse—a five-story apartment building currently under construction on the corner of South Charles and Cross streets. The late August debut will come at an ideal time for the neighborhood’s dining scene, which will also welcome the newly renovated Cross Street Market just across the street this spring.

Given the restaurant’s location in the heart of the Federal Hill bar district, Janian plans to stay open after last call on weekends.

“We want to be there when people want it,” he says. “We don’t want to close when people are hungry. We want to be there when the crowds are there, and we want to be enjoying the night right along with them.”

Diners can expect to see the same globally influenced sandwiches and wings (everything from spicy Japanese katsu to Jamaican jerk chicken), as well as the Old Bay-seasoned “Bmore Bird” and French fries with vinegar inspired by Janian’s local upbringing. But the new menu will also grow to include crispy chicken tenders and thick milkshakes to wash down all of the eats.

Taking up 1,700 square feet of Wheelhouse’s ground-level retail space, the eatery will offer 40 seats and feature the same counter-service model that BRD does at R. House. In fact, Janian says that many aspects of the new space will take inspiration from the food hall flagship, developed in part by his brother, Chris, founder of Vitruvius Co.

“We’re going after a similar vibe,” he says. “The developers at R. House did such a great job creating a communal space where people can come and stay for hours. We want that convivial atmosphere where people can rub elbows with friends, or even meet people they don’t know.”

Designed by Kuo Pao Lian of PI.KL Studio—the same local firm that dreamed up the interior for R. House—the new spot will offer all communal tables, warm woods, and pops of red and black throughout.

“It’s going to be a space that’s both modern and very comfortable,” Janian adds. “It really centers around the communal table and the counter so that the focus is still on the food and the people sitting next to you.”

Janian, who says opening restaurants has been a dream of his since he was young, is looking forward to spreading the BRD footprint throughout his hometown.

“I’ve lived in Federal Hill before and I know the energy that’s there,” he says. “That’s the exact energy we want for BRD—people who love their food, love having a great time, and really just have a love for Baltimore.”

The once lifeless lot on the corner of Sisson and West 27th streets in Remington has come a long way since 2015, when the Greater Remington Improvement Association (GRIA) took over the property through the city’s Adopt-A-Lot program.

Since then, the vacant space full of untamed weeds and browning grass has transformed into a lively hub for community engagement. The park is now equipped with garden beds, picnic tables, an outdoor stage, play structures for kids, and—its most recent addition—a colorful mural commissioned by GRIA and funded by the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts’ community art prize.

“It’s a really active site for our neighbors,” says Molly McCullagh, former GRIA president who has been overseeing the park project since the beginning. “And we want to continue to program it with them in mind. Creating the mural really helped to enliven the space even further.”

McCullagh had recently worked with local street artist Gaia to produce a series of portraits on blank walls around the neighborhood, but the Sisson Street canvases—a chain link fence and two repurposed shipping containers—made way for something more abstract.

“The fence and the shipping container are pretty unusual materials to mural,” she says. “So it made sense to add a lot of linear elements rather than portraits. There are so many organic shapes at the park, including plants and gardens, so we thought the balance of these linear, more geometric shapes would really create a nice juxtaposition.”

As it does with many of its initiatives, GRIA surveyed Remington residents to get their feedback on color and design. The result is an eye-catching piece by local artists Greg Gannon and Carol P. Jarvis, who also recently worked together on the striking exterior of the new Beyond Video store in Remington.

“There’s been a lot of community input,” Gannon says. “When you’re presented with a long wall like this, it really makes you think about what fits in the space and how you can use the mural site as part of its design.”

Featuring bright shades of green, blue, and yellow, the piece showcases a three-dimensional design that spreads throughout the 100-foot fence and continues the aesthetic on two shipping containers stationed throughout the park. The work also includes blossoming flowers and a line drawing of an alligator as a nod to the reptilian mural on West 28th Street by longtime local artist John Ellsberry.

“Everybody in the community loves that landmark, so we thought it would be nice thing to reference,” Gannon says. “I love the challenge of carrying this out in a clever way. Chain link fences are not one of Baltimore’s most charming features, but that’s the part that I’m most excited about—making this fence look so different that you wouldn’t even notice it surrounds the back of a gas station.”

Gannon’s sentiments also reflect the overall trajectory of the site since it was taken over by GRIA four years ago. McCullagh says that locals who remember the state of the park back then are constantly awed by the transformation.

“It provides inspiration for our whole community to see what you can do with something that didn’t seem like much of an asset to begin with,” she says. “With a lot of volunteer effort, fundraising, and creative thinking, we’ve been able to turn it into a great community space. That’s really empowering for neighbors to understand that they can have that control.”

Those of us born before a certain year remember the idle pleasure of browsing your local video store, hoping the newest release wasn’t sold out, discovering hidden gems on the shelves, and buying sour candy at the register.

The passionate film lovers who make up Baltimore Video Collective certainly share those sentiments, too, considering they joined forces after beloved store Video Americain closed in 2014. After an impressive Kickstarter campaign, support from people like John Waters and Beach House, and collecting 10,000 titles from various sources, BVC is ready to open its new nonprofit video rental store Beyond Video.

Located on Howard Street in Remington, Beyond Video is using the modern streaming service model and applying it to its collection of vintage and rare VHS tapes, Blu-rays, and DVDs—ranging from rom-coms to campy horror to cult classics. The store’s founders include Joe Tropea, Liz Donadio, Scott Braid, Dave Barresi, Greg Golinski, Albert Birney, Kevin Coelho, and Eric Hatch.

As they prepare to open their doors on Friday, we spoke with Hatch (formerly director of programming at the Maryland Film Festival) about his love of movies, the origins of the project, and what makes this all oh-so-Baltimore.

Where did your love of film first begin?
Ironically, I grew up without a TV in the house, but my dad was, and still is, a big fan of old Hollywood movies—Marx Brothers, Humphrey Bogart, that kind of stuff. I grew up in Columbia and he would take us up to the Senator, the Charles, and places in D.C. to see these old Hollywood movies. That sort of gave me the bug. In my late teens, he relented and we got a TV/VCR, but strictly so we could watch old movies.

How did that passion translate into the opening of a nonprofit video rental store in Remington?
Well, it’s really a collective of us. A group coalesced one by one as Video Americain started closing. Initially it was to see if we could literally keep the store open, but that wasn’t viable. So we kept meeting over the years, looking primarily for a sympathetic landlord who would let us open another space. This nonprofit video store started forming in our mind. Things took a turn for the better almost two years at this point when we were able to start renting this space on Howard Street.

I know you got a lot of support from the local community. What was it like to see that outpouring?
It was very heartening to see the response on Kickstarter. Our goal was $30,000 and we ended up exceeding it. Looking back, I think that just the right amount of time had passed after Video Americain had closed. It wasn’t just nostalgia, it was a palpable loss. The hardcore cinephiles who were looking for foreign, documentary, and experimental things, they weren’t finding what they wanted online. They realized they had a broader spectrum at the video store. And maybe they realized that they missed talking to the people that work there. Sometimes algorithms on Netflix are great, but they don’t compare to the real world.

Do you think the younger generation understands the appeal of a brick-and-mortar video store?
Honestly, it isn’t taking a lot of work to show a new generation this world. We’ve done a low-key, invite-only opening the last few weeks to make sure we remember how to run a video store. There’s a wide sector of people coming in. The overwhelming majority are either people old enough to remember video stores and younger people who’ve never been. I think that’s actually how culture works. I grew up in the 1980s, so I had a fascination with the ’60s and ’70s. Kids that grew up in the ’90s or 2000s, they’re fascinated with the generation right before them. It’s a window into something they couldn’t have experienced before.

Talk about the unique model of Beyond Video.
The payment system is similar to a streaming service. You set up a recurring donation and you pick one of two plans: $12 a month that gives you three items at a time or $20 where multiple people can have have six items at a time. Once you’ve set up that recurring donation, there are no rental fees or no late fees whatsoever unless you’ve smashed one of our DVDs [laughs]. You hear about projects like this from around the country, but mostly it’s venerable institutions the have shifted to nonprofit status. All of them were pre-existing stores and they use the old business model of pay-as-you-go. The fact we’re building it from scratch and have 10,000 titles is unique.

How did you build out your collection?
The initial period we were accepting donations and we had a social media presence. We would take any commercially issued tape, DVD, or Blu-ray. And then, as things got a bit more serious, we did the work of laying out the collection, scanning everything in and seeing what we had and didn’t have. It was sort of this mental game of identifying where the holes in the collection were. That was actually super fun. We created a shared Google Doc and people started sending items we were missing from that list. Even though there’s something old-school about a video store, we’re using all the best aspects of the internet like social media and crowdsourcing to make this happen. I got a great response from A24, Criterion, and other distributors, who gave us freebies or big discounts. They loved the video store era, too.

Any titles you’re especially excited about?
I myself donated from my collection a copy of my favorite movie Posession, a 1981 very over-the-top arthouse horror movie that is only available in a super expensive velvet box. We’ve also had a lot of people donate a ton of out-of-print titles. But we want to be a full-service store. We have two floors in our store, upstairs there’s one room organized by director and then there’s another that’s comedy, drama, horror, and romance and those are very well-stocked with a lot of recognizable films.

What’s in store for this weekend?
Friday is going to be our first day open to the public. We’re open just on weekends through December and going to scale up in January and February. We’re hoping eventually to be open four or five days a week. On Friday, no balloons or popcorn I don’t think, we’re just opening the doors to the general public for the first time. I’m sure this type of thing could happen in other cities, but this has had a very DIY spirit that reflects the Baltimore sensibility.

Think you have a great retail idea for a hip, up-and-coming ‘hood, but you’re a little short of cash? How does free rent sound? Or what if we throw in a fully finished space?

Okay, the rent’s only free for a while, but that’s the come-on that civic leaders in Remington are using to attract proposals from entrepreneurs to keep the neighborhood on track to a revitalization that’s been gaining speed in the past few years.

In a partnership with Johns Hopkins University and Seawall, a real-estate development firm founded by Thibault and Donald Manekin that specializes in readaptive use of Baltimore’s old structures, The Greater Remington Improvement Association (GRIA) is accepting applications for the Remington Storefront Challenge (RSC), a search for local entrepreneurs to launch temporary retail concepts in two storefronts in what’s becoming one of Baltimore’s hottest affordable neighborhoods.

The best big idea, as decided by the association, will get free rent for 12 to 24 months in one of two refurbished storefronts it has to work with, funding to help deck out the new spaces, plus technical assistance to get up and running.

But your plan for Baltimore’s first Scotch-tape store probably won’t fly. That’s because the project—which enjoys additional support from sponsors Central Baltimore Partnership, Howard Bank, and Younts Design—isn’t just looking for any retail business.

The RSC seeks businesses that are viable to Remington—specifically what the neighborhood says it needs and wants, according to board member and land-use committee member Joshua Greenfeld. Applicants with young businesses and new ideas will be asked to demonstrate their experience, passion, and ability to execute their business plan, including how their concept will increase foot traffic to the area, and complement existing businesses.

And, yes, the GRIA has had a few initial bites: “We have started to receive some really exciting applications,” says Greenfeld, “including some health and wellness providers with interesting community-based ideas.”

There’s no indication yet, though, that the pilot program will be expanded if it proves successful. “I hope there will be others, but I can’t say one way or the other,” says Greenfeld. “We’re trying to be very careful not to overpromise anything.”

The two RSC locations being offered up are fairly prime, location-wise: One is a 1,240-square-foot space at 300 W. 29th Street, on the corner of Remington Avenue, currently occupied by a Pizza Boli’s that’s about to relocate. The other is a 900-square-foot space with floor-to-ceiling windows at 2700 Remington Avenue, Suite 1100, in Remington Row, a mixed-use building with 108 apartment units, as well as retail and wellness businesses.

“We are looking to increase the diversity of business owners and retail options in the neighborhood,” said K.C. Kelleher, a member of GRIA who’s been active in the program. “We want to find the two concepts that best support the values and needs of our community.”

“My name means the shape I am…” —Humpty Dumpty

Martine Richards was in bad shape, afraid she was going to wind up with egg on her face.

Her party for friends and acquaintances—an afternoon of silliness and vittles, “the dumbest thing I do all year,” she said—had always been a manageable affair, held at her home or a friend’s house and once in Druid Hill Park.

But this year, as the 31-year-old geared up for the Seventh Annual Baltimore Deviled Egg Pageant, and for reasons unknown, the event took on a life of its own, becoming bigger and more intimidating by the day.

Richards woke up a few weeks ago to find that she had a monster on her hands. And it is set to invade the Single Carrot Theatre at 1 p.m. this Sunday, September 16.

It seems that more than 1,200 people expressed interest in attending Martine’s little egg party via Facebook, well over ten times than had ever attended before. The response presented two problems: The Single Carrot lobby near Richards’ home in Remington has a capacity of about 100. And even if she could accommodate such a ravenous crowd, could there possibly be enough eggs prepared in time for everyone to down a few?

In the Gospels, the loaves and fishes are not accompanied by a side of deviled eggs.

By the math of most informal events, where a fraction of those who say they cannot wait to attend actually show up, Richard reckons that everything will be fine—especially if the weather is nice so the theater parking lot can accommodate the overflow.

Hopefuls will battle it out in the following categories: “Best Meaty Egg,” “Best Meatless Egg,” “Best Not an Egg,” (let your minds wander), and “Audience Choice.”

After a quintet of judges has selected a winner in each of those groups, the most delectable diablo will be crowned “Best in Show,” with a tiara and wild applause along with a whole bunch of honorable mentions just for fun.

This leaves a parsley-garnished question on the tip of every great-aunt’s tongue: What about the best traditional deviled egg?

“There used to be a traditional category, but it caused too many arguments,” said Richards. “Everybody thought their grandmother’s recipe was the classic. I got too much push back and did away with it.”

Deviled egg aficionado Kendall Jenkins, another Remington resident who runs with Richards’ grub posse, believes the quandary over what is a “true deviled egg” falls into two historic classes: savory versus sweet. Even with a divide as simple as that, however, provincial predilections abide.

“You will find people are incredibly loyal to a brand of mayonnaise that they use,” said Jenkins, a 30-year-old originally from North Carolina. “I would only dare to use homemade mayo or Duke’s in my eggs.”

Duke’s is decidedly a Southern product, though it appears in groceries as far away as Idaho and Maine. Baltimoreans favor Hellman’s mayonnaise (“bring out the best!”) while a younger generation of Crabtown cooks prefer a shake of Old Bay on top instead of the paprika that likely dusted the deviled eggs at their First Communion or Bar Mitzvah.

No matter the filling or the garnish, said Jenkins, “appearance is important for the perfect deviled egg. You want the eggs to look neat and clean, and it is crucial to not overcook the yolks so you have a nice bright yellow color to your filling.”

In many families, where at least one matron or matriarch-in-waiting holds the title of “deviled egg lady,” the debate over what makes for the real thing is as intense as the arguments among Italian-Americans over whose grandmother made the best tomato sauce.

The deviled egg recipe in the family of 2018 pageant judge Courtney Hobson goes back to the first decades of the 20th century, back to the southern Virginia kitchen of her maternal great-grandmother, Brownie Cornelia Morgan Gaines in the Shenandoah Valley town of Staunton.

“My mother learned from her mom and she learned from Brownie. I have eaten deviled eggs for as long as I can remember,” said Hobson, who at 28, long before the mantle is typically passed to the next generation, has become “the deviled egg lady” in her family.

Certainly, there are families in which the hallowed (and hollowed) honor of filling a cut-in-half-and-scooped-out hard-boiled egg with a whipped yolk concoction belongs to a man. But that seems to be as untraditional as a deviled egg made with chicken liver mousse and pureed pear, an entry in a previous Richards contest.

The Hobson family recipe follows tradition, one that Courtney sampled as a young “official taster” before the goodies were set out with the potato salad, sliced ham, and dinner rolls at family gatherings.

“It has to have a good balance of vinegar and mustard,” said Hobson, who uses wet mustard where Brownie was partial to dry. As a kid, she said, “I knew [the filling] was just right when it wasn’t too vinegary—the mustard helped to calm it down but the relish still gave it some kick.”

While Courtney will be making Hobson family deviled eggs for “the judges circle,” as will her fellow jurists, everyone outside of that circle be forewarned.

“I typically don’t trust most people’s deviled eggs,” she said.

Parts & Labor, Spike and Amy Gjerde’s meat-focused restaurant/butchery in Remington will sell its last locally sourced lamb chop this week.

The five-year-old restaurant will officially close after dinner service on August 5.

While the space opened to critical acclaim, the unique practice of purchasing whole animals from local farmers presented challenges in profitability. The staff learned of the news late last week.

While plans are still unfolding, there will be events and celebrations up to the last dinner service this Sunday.

“We might continue to keep the bar open a few days a week through the closing of the restaurant,” says managing partner Corey Polyoka.

As he weighs why the concept didn’t work, sitting in a booth at one of the restaurant’s final lunch shifts on a Saturday afternoon, Gjerde is in a deeply reflective mood.

The restaurant’s closing, “was a long time coming” Gjerde says. “Of course restaurants come and go and open and close and that’s part of life, but at its heart, Parts & Labor was a deep dive into the economics of local meat.”

While Woodberry Kitchen—which relies almost entirely on locally sourced ingredients—raised awareness of local sourcing and helped educate consumers, Parts & Labor presented new challenges and took the concept to another level.

It was the first restaurant in the state to practice whole animal seam butchery, attempting to use every part of the animal product in production.

“We took what we understood about local beef and lamb and goat and poultry and scaled it so that we could continue upon the work that we were doing at Woodberry,” explains Gjerde. “I knew that if we were going to do anything else in the city and serve meat, we needed to do it on our terms with thoughtful local producers.”

While Gjerde knew that there would be hurdles, the goal turned out to be a little too lofty, with many factors working against a local outfit. Food costs were higher and the public was exposed to cuts or types of meat—like coulotte steak (cut from the sirloin cap) or organ meats—that they might not otherwise know.

“Our collective understanding and expectation of what meat costs and how it gets to us has been formed by industrial meat production in this country,” says Gjerde. “That means that we have everything from dollar burgers at fast-food joints to beef and pork in supermarkets, and everything in between. When you take out the efficiencies of mass industrial processing operations and bring that back to the local level, you are at a tremendous disadvantage based on what people expect.”

Polyoka says that not pursuing USDA approval was also a factor that contributed to their demise. “We developed butcher’s cuts that were out of pure need to get as much value out of the whole carcass as possible,” he says. “[Because we lacked USDA approval], we could only sell meat in our own retail shop or to restaurants that we are connected with—we couldn’t push it into different channels.”

Gjerde cites statistics he has written in his phone, saying he is proud of the fact that value was returned to growers. “We put almost $4,000,000 back into the economy, and $2.5 million was beef, pork, lamb, goat, chicken, and duck—almost all of it from Maryland.”

As the restaurant changed menus and concepts in an effort to be more profitable, six or so months ago, Gjerde, Polyoka, and butcher George Marsh had to face the inevitable reality that it was likely time to close.

“We probably held on a lot longer than most people would have,” says Gjerde, who still owns six other spots, including A Rake’s Progress in D.C., as well as a successful canning operation. “We realized we were having trouble paying the growers—and that’s not why we are here. We were in major arrears, but at this point it’s a break-even scenario.”

While the news saddened staff, Gjerde and Polyoka wanted to be thoughtful about the closing.

“For me, in a few of the restaurants I worked in as a young cook or pastry chef, I found out that they were closing because when I got there, the doors were padlocked shut—and that was all the notice that I ever got that the restaurant was closing,” says Gjerde, who won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Mid Atlantic in 2015.

“I didn’t want that for this place or for these people or for our guests. Some of the families who come to this shop are my favorite people. They know that they could have paid less elsewhere but they wouldn’t get the quality of the meat that we’re doing anywhere else—connecting with these people has made it worth it.”

But Gjerde remains resolute. “We are not done with this,” he says. “But when we do it again—it’s not if but when—it will be with all of the knowledge and a much deeper understanding of how this actually works. We wouldn’t make the mistake of not having USDA again. And my biggest mistake is that I confused processing space with restaurant space—and those are two very different things.”

With the closing of the space, Gjerde is still sounding the alarm that, as consumers, we should consider the sourcing of everything we eat, especially meat.

“The reasons we thought it was important to do Parts & Labor are still out there—if anything they are more urgent,” he says. “Commodity meat production in this culture and all the environmental and social impacts and even the health issues that come from having this unending supply of cheap meat is a problem. Parts & Labor was what I thought was a rational response to what was wrong about the way we eat meat in this country.”

And while the restaurant enters its final week, the duo is far from giving up on the concept.

“I had high hopes for what Parts & Labor could do immediately for the local food systems,” says Gjerde. “But we’re not done.”

The latest in a series of murals by Baltimore-based street artist and MICA grad Gaia is now on view in Remington behind W.C. Harlan.

Sponsored by Greater Remington Improvement Association (GRIA) and Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA), the piece depicts a pair of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island around the turn of the last century posed in the style of a Madonna and child.

In reference to the subject matter, Gaia wrote on Instagram that, “My great grandfather came to this country and started a garbage business. One hundred years and four generations later, it is important to remember that migration is a human right.”

Rendered in shades of blue and based on a period photograph by Lewis Hines, the one-story image is placed over a background of flowers arranged by local florist Steelcut Flower Co.

Gaia requested permission to use an arrangement featured on Steelcut’s Instagram, and owner Mary Ellen LaFreniere was happy to contribute her work to the project.

“We all have a different lens of perception, and I’m honored that Gaia took my image, transposed it with another through his own lens, and created something new that can assist people in emoting, thinking, feeling . . . whatever they take away from the mural,” LaFreniere says.

While the chosen arrangement was created for a bride, not as part of the mural project, LaFreniere says the blossoms featured lend themselves to the message.

“The white bloom on the bottom left is a tuberose, the one on the top left is a Mexican sunflower, both flowers that have origins in Mexico, both uniquely beautiful,” she says. “Also, many of the flowers shown in this bouquet were grown by Hillen Homestead, a Baltimore City farmer who grows on abandoned lots, and her farms are just a few minutes away from the site of the mural. I think you all can probably infer your own metaphors about Mexican flower varieties and flowers grown on abandoned lots and how that overlaps with Hines’ image.”

The Hines-inspired mural is the third and final wall to be painted by Gaia as part of his Transformative Art Prize collaboration with GRIA and BOPA. His other works from the project can be seen at Wyman Park Drive and Remington Avenue and at 26th Street and Hampden Avenue.

Spring is finally making its debut in Baltimore—with flowery buds blooming on trees and neighbors venturing out to sit on their stoops. With that also comes fresh area produce and the use of herbaceous and fruity local ingredients on cocktail menus around town.

“A lot of what we do with cocktails here is fun and quirky anyway,” says Jake Lefenfeld, co-owner of Minnow in Riverside. “But spring is that great time to get locally sourced carrots and beautiful fruits like huckleberries.”

Minnow’s new spring cocktail menu, which launches on Monday, include drinks on the entire color spectrum including Through the Looking Glass, a gin martini with lychee pearls infused with a bright, naturally blue butterfly pea extract.

“We were lucky enough to work in the McCormick science lab to test what products we could infuse that would still hold up their forms,” Lefenfeld says. “You’ve got to fail at eight different things before you get it to work. My goal was to use something natural to achieve a beautiful color.”

Natural ingredients are also highlighted on the new, John Waters-inspired menu at R. Bar, which uses titles from the filmmakers’ irreverent portfolio as inspiration.

“We’re finally getting the fresh things that are locally produced,” says R. Bar manager Amie Ward. “You’re looking at more greenery and herbs; berries start to get on the radar. Any opportunity I have to sneak in carrot juice or snap peas into cocktails, I’ll take it.”

One way Ward’s staff is sneaking in those vegetables in is through the Suspicious Scotty Barnhill (based off a character in Serial Mom), which uses Barr Hill Gin, Mastiha Greek Liqueur, carrot juice from R. House’s Stall 11, and Shrub District Celery.

“At first, you wouldn’t think all those ingredients would pair well together except if you were a health nut,” Ward says. “But it’s delicious! People say it’s a great Bloody Mary substitute.”

An ode to Female Trouble, the Trouble Maker cocktail also uses stall ingredients—in this case, matcha tea, from Ground & Griddled—to compliment the funky notes of Paranubes Oaxacan Rum, herbaceous honey-thyme flavor of Vecchio Amaro del Capo, and lemon.

When thinking about summer festivals in Baltimore, most probably visualize toilet bowls racing down The Avenue at Hampdenfest, or children sucking lemon peppermint sticks at FlowerMart in Mt. Vernon. These community events have become time-honored traditions in neighborhoods all across the city. And now, Remington is following suit by launching its own annual summer soiree.

“The more we thought about it, we were really the last neighborhood in Central Baltimore that didn’t have its own festival,” says Greater Remington Improvement Association (GRIA) board member Peter Morrill, who has lived in the community for the past six years. “Hampden has two of them, Charles Village does their thing, and now Pride has moved to Old Goucher. Everyone’s got one except us.”

To celebrate the area’s rich history and bright future, the GRIA is partnering with many of Remington’s small businesses to host Remfest on Saturday, May 12 from 12-9 p.m. The community’s first-ever large-scale festival will feature local music, food, beer, and street vendors set up from 27th to 29th streets along Remington Avenue.

Morrill says that 2018 is a great year to host the inaugural event—not only because of the various developments in the neighborhood over the past two years (including food hall R. House and the Remington Row apartment building), but also because this year marks the centennial of some of the area’s most celebrated properties. A portion of 27th Street, as well as the 2800 block of Howard Street, were built by a developer named E.J. Gallagher starting in the summer of 1917. The buildings later sold in the spring and following summer of 1918.

“Initially, I just wanted to do a centennial block party for our neighbors,” Morrill says. “But then I started thinking about all of the new things popping up and all of the huge changes. It’s interesting—we have all of these 100-year-old buildings and one-and-a-half-year-old buildings all right next to each other.”

Though details are still in the works, many local businesses have been pitching in during the planning stages of the festival. For example, Liz Vayda, who opened her indoor plants shop B. Willow on 27th Street last year, has been organizing all of the vendor applications. And the team from the Ottobar, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary on North Howard Street, has booked the music lineup. Featured performers will include art rock quintet Surf Harp, soul singer Joy Postell, new wave rockers PLRLS, indie-pop group Raindeer, and more. 

Festival-goers can also expect food from neighborhood eateries like Charmington’s, R. House, and The Dizz. Beer will be provided by Union Craft Brewing.

“We’ve been trying to get as many of our neighbors who make things and do cool things to get involved with it,” Morrill says. “Our biggest focus is keeping it local. It will be fun to get everybody to come out whether they’ve been here for a long time, or they just moved in.”

As the population continues to grow in Remington, the GRIA is persisting with its various initiatives including facade-improvement programs, working to rezone the area’s corner stores for commercial use, and promoting a master plan that supports inclusionary housing. Though the association has hosted smaller block parties in the past, Morrill says that, given all of the improvements, it “feels like the right time” to upgrade to a larger event.

“We’re really lucky to have some of the most motivated people in the city here getting things done,” he says. “It’s going to be a great event to talk about all of the work we’ve been doing and get excited about what’s to come.”

Aaron Reinhart knows a thing or two about cleaning up a space. After decades in the service industry—working at the Sheraton in Towson, Bill Bateman’s for a stint, and being the general manager at Ryan’s Daughter—he purchased Swallow at the Hollow in February 2011. He had already operated the place for 18 months and knew he wanted to keep the regulars happy, but also hoped to attract new customers, so he placed a greater emphasis on the food, completed cosmetic renovations, and added some warmth back into the old college bar.

Now, he’s hoping to take that same approach to Long John’s Pub on the corner of 29th Street and Miles Avenue in Remington, which he is renaming 29th Street Tavern. While there has been plenty of clean up and restoration, Reinhart’s plan is to respect the history of the building and the character of the neighborhood as he opens the door to his new bar next week.

“When I checked this place out, I thought, ‘Wow, it’s almost identical to the Hollow,'” he said. “They were both two combined buildings, both had that same crappy-looking carpet you’d stick to if you tried to take a step, same neon. Both should fill that role of the perfect neighborhood watering hole.”

As was the case with his Belvedere Square bar, Long John’s needed work, including ripping up six layers of rug, linoleum, and concrete to make the floors even. There were renovations done to the bathroom, small kitchen, and walls, which are now a mix of the original knotty pine and exposed brick. The bar tops (which were discovered to be authentic shuffleboards) needed to be stripped of plastic and sanded down.

“I didn’t want to change too much about it—I just wanted to change the cleanliness,” Reinhart said. “I know some people are worried about Long John’s changing. But I want to maintain the history.”

The space at 398 W. 29th Street used to be called Hoover’s Stag Bar and then changed to Long John’s Pub 40 years ago. But, somewhere along the way, the space traded as 29th Street Tavern, which Reinhart and his manager found out while doing payroll paperwork. 

“I was toying around with names, but accidentally stumbled across that one,” he said. “Nothing against fancy cocktail bars, but I just want a simple concept with decent food and drinks. There’s nothing wrong with a plain old bar.”

To start, Reinhart says that there will be Natty Boh and Monument City 51 Rye on tap (his two biggest best sellers at Swallow at the Hollow). The menu will be similar, too, with burgers, wings, and cheesesteaks, and new additions like a Powerhouse wrap. He’ll keep the sale of packaged goods because that’s what local residents want.

“For me, it’s more about being grateful to be in the neighborhood and asking people what they want,” he said “We’ll give it a whirl and see how it goes.”

Though his initial plan was to open on his birthday, January 7, Reinhart says a more realistic goal will be early next week with likely little fanfare.

“People keep peeking in, saying how excited they are, and asking about a grand opening party,” he said. “All I really want to do is get the sign up and open the doors.”