Five things to eat, drink, see, hear, and do with your Charm City weekend.

 EAT

Aug. 13: WYPR + Salt

Salt Tavern, 2127 E. Pratt St. 4-6:15 p.m. $5-10.

As we reach the middle of August, it sadly means that our city’s beloved outdoor concert series will slowly start coming to a close. This Sunday, before you make your way to Patterson Park for its last live music of the season, swing by Salt Tavern in nearby Butchers Hill to pregame the show with our local NPR affiliate (and concert co-host) WYPR. At this 11-year-old Best Restaurant, fill your belly with a smattering of small bites by renowned chef Jason Ambrose—hopefully including the stalwart’s trademark Wagyu foie gras slider and tempting truffle fries—then scramble down Pratt Street to hear local 1960s soul collective, The Bellevederes.

 DRINK

Aug. 13: Charm City 5K Trail Run

Boordy Vineyards, 12820 Long Green Pike, Hydes. 6-11 p.m. $45.

What better form of encouragement for an evening run than endless amounts of wine? This Sunday, lace up for a 5K race through the picturesque Boordy Vineyards in Baltimore County, all the while reminding yourself of the finish-line reward: fine wine and cheese. Bring your friends and family to sample the winery’s roses, reds, and whites, with live music and a continued run of unseasonably cool weather—we hope.

 SEE

Aug. 11-13: BronyCon

Baltimore Convention Center, 1 W. Pratt St. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. $70-2,000. 

For one weekend a year, the streets of Baltimore transform into a colorful, cartoon paradise as fans of My Little Pony convene for the annual BronyCon festival. With a cult following of “bronies,” this cosplay convention features three days of autographs, costume contests, gaming, and one giant BronyPalooza concert. Whether you’re ogling as an onlooker or joining in the equine fun, head to the Inner Harbor to bear witness to this once-a-year affair.

 HEAR

Aug. 13: Us And Us Only

The Crown, N. Charles St. 8 p.m. $7. 

Last month, we were wowed by the new album of Baltimore indie-rocker Us And Us Only. The quintet’s second full-length release, Full Flower, is a feat of lush guitars, punching drums, and earnest vocals, created in part by the soon-to-be-closing Mobtown Studios. Each song fills the room with a nostalgic summer sound, like on “Kno” and “sun4u,” and solidifies their status as a Baltimore Band To Watch. Catch them live this weekend at The Crown, with Baltimore’s own psych-pop group Raindeer and folk singer Nina Gala, plus Brooklyn-based shoegaze trio with possibly the best band name ever: Really Big Pinecone.

 DO

Aug. 12: Baltimore AFRAM Festival

Druid Hill Park, 3001 East Dr. 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Free.

For the past 40 years, the AFRAM festival, formerly known as the African American Heritage Festival, has kicked off in the high heat of Baltimore summer with thousands of festivalgoers at Camden Yards. This year, however, a few big changes are taking place, with a shorter timeslot, new venue, and more local than national focus. Though the revisions have incited some backlash, this celebration of African-American culture is still sure to be a jam-packed day full of art, music, community outreach, and family fun in its first-ever location—the verdant landscape of Druid Hill Park. 

Nestled between the majestic mountains of West Virginia’s Kanawha Valley and Kanawha River and just down the street from Booker T. Washington’s boyhood home, an unassuming white PVC pipe protrudes from the ground. Amidst the tall blades of grass in this verdant valley, it’s nearly invisible. The only suggestion that it might be something of note is a derrick, once used in drilling deep substratum brine, and now standing decoratively over the pipe.

This opening in the earth—a well from which brine is pulled—serves as a symbol of past and present, reaching 350 feet down toward the 500-million-year-old Iapetus Ocean. It represents the last of the local salt makers in Malden, an area once so prolific in its production that it was known as “the salt-making capital of the East,” with more than 50 salt makers in the mid-1800s and three million bushels of salt produced in a year at its height. (At the World’s Fair in 1851 in London, Kanawha salt was deemed the “best salt in the world.”)

The well sits on the property of J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works, a family-run business that hand harvests the salt trapped between layers of sandstone in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. It also became an emblem of the company’s renewal and revival, when four years ago, the seventh generation of Dickinson family members decided to bring back the business, giving J.Q. Dickinson the distinction of being the oldest operating salt works in the state. “It’s an amazing feeling when I come to this farm every day to work,” says company co-founder Nancy Bruns, who established the business with her younger brother, Lewis Payne. “It’s like coming home. It’s being enveloped by your heritage, and it’s powerful to know that we’re doing something that’s successful based on what our ancestors did.”

On a hot, humid, overcast day—far from the ideal environment for the solar evaporation salt-making process—Bruns and Payne are hard at work on their family’s 200-year-old farm, about 10 miles from where they grew up in Charleston. Bruns is a classically trained chef who formerly owned a restaurant in Highlands, North Carolina; Payne and his wife, Paige, who also works for the business, spend summers working the land in Malden, though the Paynes live part-time in Baltimore so that their son, Davis, can attend The Odyssey School in Stevenson, while their daughter, Cameron, boards at St. Timothy’s School—Bruns’ alma mater, which is also in Stevenson.

There are other Baltimore ties, too. Though J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works is some 364 miles away, Malden counts as local when it comes to sourcing salt. From the J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works, on the site of a former garden center, 450 pounds of salt are stacked in recycled cardboard boxes bound for Baltimore. Lying in wait, behind a burlap curtain, the boxes, 25 pounds each, hold bags of salt that Woodberry Kitchen’s James Beard Award-winning chef, Spike Gjerde, will use as a key ingredient for his Snake Oil hot sauce. (In the week that follows, Bruns will make the six-hour drive to the Woodberry area to deliver the salt herself to save on shipping costs.) It is the salt that Gjerde uses exclusively at Woodberry Kitchen, Artifact Coffee, and Grand Cru. (He also uses it at Parts & Labor, though not exclusively.) In total, he buys 1,420 pounds of cooking and finishing salts a year from the company. “Over time, we’ve been able to shrink the ingredients that were from nonlocal sources at Woodberry,” says Gjerde. “But I never really dreamed we’d be able to do that with salt. Before J.Q. Dickinson, I was importing sea salt from Italy.”

While the salt is sold at some of the most celebrated kitchens in the country—Husk in Charleston, South Carolina, and The French Laundry in the Napa Valley—Baltimore is a major market for J.Q. Dickinson salt. Its finishing salts sit on the shelves at Trohv in Hampden, E.N. Olivier on Falls Road, Juniper Culinary Apothecary in the Mount Vernon Marketplace, and The Chesapeake Wine Company in Canton. The salt is also sold at MOM’s Organic Market in Hampden, as well as The Pigheaded Butcher in Timonium, and John Brown General & Butchery in Cockeysville. It’s the salt you taste when you buy a bar from Eldersburg-based Salazon Chocolate Co.

In America, there are a handful of salt makers, from Maine and Long Island to Oregon. But Dickinson salt is the only salt in the Northern Hemisphere drawn from an aquifer, which is permeable rock that has water running through it. “People ask me all the time, ‘Isn’t salt just salt? What makes yours different?’” says Bruns. “Our salt differs from other salts in the way that you think of anything else that comes from the earth. If you grow Pinot Noir grapes in California, New Zealand, or France, they’re going to taste different because of the soil and their terroir. I think of salt in the same way. Our salt is coming from underground and running through lots of rocks, and so it’s gaining all those minerals. And the minerality of our salt is different than the minerality of any other salt.”

Malden was once known as “the salt-making capital of the East” with more than 50 salt makers.

Move over Morton—sea salt is hotter than ever. (In recent years, even Wendy’s changed its fry recipe for the first time in decades, adding sea salt to the spuds.) As consumers and retailers have discovered the ways in which sea salt can elevate flavor—contributing coarseness, crunchiness, and boldness—the market has soared. The gourmet salt market is expected to reach $1,340.9 million globally by 2019, according to Markets and Markets global market research and consulting company.

Unlike salts such as Himalayan salts and Morton Salt that are mined from mountains and employ additives to keep them from caking, J.Q. Dickinson’s salt is said to be superior. “It’s pure and has young, open crystals that add a lot of crunch and flavor and make the food more interesting,” says Liz Nuttle, owner of E.N. Olivier. “The finishing salt is very special,” concurs Gjerde. “It’s distinct from any salt I’ve ever tasted. It doesn’t have the same intense attack on the taste buds. It has a softness that I attribute to the higher presence of other minerals and is one of the reasons you can add it to the end of cooking. The size and shape of the crystal makes it an incredible complement to the food we make. I always have it in my bag when I travel.”

Salt, or sodium chloride (NaCl on the chemical compound chart), is a naturally occurring material and an essential element in our diets. According to the CDC, each day the average American consumes about 3,400 milligrams of salt, which might be mined from the earth or harvested from the sea. “It’s the only condiment produced on every continent and the only thing humans crave, because we need it to survive,” says Nuttle.

Salt has played an important role in world history and been a prized possession, dating as far back as 6050 B.C. Roman soldiers were given an allowance of salt know as salarium, from which the word “salary” is derived. It’s also been used in religious offerings in Egyptian culture and, at one time, was one of the world’s most sought-after commodities for trade. Even the Phoenicians were known to trade salt. “Salt dates back to the earliest civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent,” explains Carter Bruns, Nancy’s historian husband who happened upon the history of the family’s livelihood while pursuing a master’s degree in history at Western Carolina University. “As soon as man started settling in cities and stayed in place to preserve food, there was salt.”

J.Q. Dickinson’s story starts in the early part of the 19th century when William Dickinson, along with his brother-in-law, Joel Shrewsbury, traveled from Bedford County, Virginia, to the rugged Kanawha Valley to find brine. Using hollowed-out sycamore trees as piping, Dickinson and his crew made their first salt well. Though Bruns and Payne use solar evaporation methods now, Dickinson and the generations that followed boiled the brine, which led the family to run and own other industries in coal, gas, and timber, holdings they still have today. By 1817, at a time before refrigeration, business was booming as barrels of salt were loaded on barges bound for Cincinnati, then the seat of the meat-packing industry, where the salt was used for curing and preservation, then, years later, for road construction and paving.

“We grew up in Charleston, but we didn’t know anything about the salt-making that went on here,” says Payne, the great, great, great, great grandson of William Dickinson.

Ironically, Bruns’ discovery came when Carter stumbled upon a wealth of information about the Kanawha Valley while writing his master’s thesis. “We would make fun of him on trips, because he always had these historical books,” Nancy recalls. “And one time, he brought Mark Kurlansky’s book Salt on a trip. He said, ‘You all make fun of me for reading these books, but your family is in this one.’ I was like, ‘Really?’ We grew up here, but we didn’t know the history.” Recalls Carter, “After learning the family’s history, she said, ‘Honey, do you think there’s still brine?’ And I told her that I had no doubt,” recalls Carter.

At the time, Bruns couldn’t shake the idea that she and her brother should attempt to bring the business back to life. “I was seeing more and more salt companies pop up, and it just kind of struck me,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘We have the land, the resources are there, and the timing is right where consumers and chefs are trying to source at home.’ There are just a handful of salt companies in this country—I saw a niche market.” With some gentle prodding, Payne agreed. Says Payne, “It took the second or third discussion to wrap my brain around it.”

Bruns couldn’t shake the idea that she and her brother should bring the business back to life.

In May of 2013, the siblings hired a water-well driller to bore a hole for brine. “We didn’t know what it was going to look like or taste like,” says Payne, “or if it was going to be contaminated or even if there was brine.” But with the help of well-preserved maps, which showed the locations and elevations of the wells on-site at the former salt offices still on the property, they had a hunch that they might find salt. “At 300 feet, which is what the maps told us, we hit saltwater,” says Payne. “We felt the deeper we go, the richer the brine is going to be.” At 350 feet, they hit pay dirt. “We were thrilled. We looked at each other and said, ‘What do we do now?’ We thought we might never get to that point.”

J.Q. Dickinson sold about 11,000 pounds of salt last year and expects that sales will stay strong in the coming year. In addition to tapping into interest in local sourcing, J.Q. Dickinson’s all-natural process taps into the sustainable sourcing trend, too. While most salt is mined with machines and then highly refined to remove impurities, J.Q. Dickinson relies solely on Mother Nature. “Only a few salt makers in the country were doing this through evaporation with salt water and noncooking methods. When we started a few years ago, Maine Sea Salt was the only one,” explains Payne.

The process unfolds over four to six weeks in one of two tanks that “clarify” and allow the iron in the salt to oxidize, then settle. It’s then moved into evaporation beds in one of four sun-houses. From there, the salt is evaporated to concentrate the salinity, before being pumped into the final crystallization beds, where the crystals are raked to separate them from the nigari (a mineral-rich liquid and naturally occurring byproduct of the salt, that can be used to make tofu). New beds are poured March through October.

The salt is a sight to behold. Against the black polyethylene-lined beds, the small, shimmering pure-white pyramid- and diamond-shape crystals float on the water like stars dotting the sky. “It’s important for a food product to be as clean and sustainable as possible,” says Bruns. “I think of the salt as an agricultural product that’s coming from the ground. We are letting Mother Nature do her work, and then we harvest it.”

Inside the offices, a few feet from the sun-houses, Payne and Paige sift through trays of salt that lay on cotton flour cloth for drying. They use hand-carved birch paddles to deal with impurities such as bugs and other organic matter that might land in the beds. It’s laborious, but it puts them in touch with their past. “Some days you think, ‘It had to be a fairy tale,’” says Payne. “But this brings it back to life. This isn’t just another product on the shelves. It’s something we take seriously, because using that name represents our entire family.”

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Worth Its Salt

Most salts are at least 98 to 99 percent sodium chloride, but it’s what goes into that last 2 percent that distinguishes types of salt. Here’s a rundown on how to distinguish your salts.

Kosher Salt: Craggy crystals that come from either the sea or the earth. It’s fast-dissolving and can be used for all cooking.

Fleur De Sel: This sea salt is a special-occasion salt that comes from evaporating ocean water. The fleur de sel is the delicate crystals that form on the surface. Great on crudo or raw veggies.

Flaked Sea Salt: This is one of the fastest-dissolving salt of all grains, the most famous of which comes from Maldon, England. A great finishing salt to use on all foods.

Crystalline Sea Salt: Adds a powerful punch of flavor to anything from a salad to a steak. Depending on what minerals they contain, the crystals come fine or coarse and vary in color.

Jason Ambrose’s new venture is so tiny that I almost don’t want to talk about it. When the renowned chef and co-owner of Salt opened up his micro-sized bar on an obscure corner in Locust Point at the end of last year, skeptics wondered whether anybody would be able to find it. But by the time I visited on a frigid Friday evening in mid-February, the place was so packed that I nearly fell on my knees in gratitude when one of the five two-tops (the place holds 30 people and doesn’t take reservations) miraculously opened up.

Nearby Under Armour employees had obviously discovered the place, as had neighborhood folks and, most likely, Ambrose fans from all over the city. And after visiting twice now, I am truly ambivalent about spreading the word. The place is so sure-fire fabulous I may never get in again.

Clearly, 1157 Bar + Kitchen is the proverbial labor of love. When Ambrose, who still co-owns Salt, ceded the restaurant’s kitchen duties to Matt Smith in 2014, he took some time to himself, but soon returned to the scene with the notion of going smaller and cheaper, getting back to basics with a simple neighborhood bar. Indeed, you’ll find him in 1157’s spotless, but miniscule, exhibition kitchen, looking out at the long, narrow bar-dining space and working contentedly over every item that comes off the line.

At Salt, Ambrose turned out cuisine that was consistently inventive and sophisticated, yet somehow retained its ability to powerfully evoke your best childhood food memories—whether you grew up in Cuba or Cleveland. While the offerings at 1157 may be a bit humbler, consisting mostly of small plates and sandwiches, they are no less enticing. The one drawback to Salt is that I always want to order everything on the menu. Here, you practically can! The menu is compact enough that I managed to sample nearly half of its items over two visits.

In an atmosphere where the waiters urge you to share, it seems heretical to order a single entree.

Of course, things will change with the seasons. But my wintry repasts were the soul of robust home-style cooking, with the little twists and international flavors that mark Ambrose’s style. An off-the-bone braised oxtail stew floated over creamy brown-butter polenta; its intensely beefy shreds, baby carrots, and cipollini onions recalling the soup mom used to make. A crispy chorizo sausage sandwich topped with a fried duck egg combined Spanish and Latin influences with layers of Manchego cheese, sofrito, and avocado. And a braised short-rib melt turned out to be the most unctuously perfect winter sandwich in town. Topped with aged cheddar, horseradish mayo, and red onion, the beef was, well, meltingly good, recalling the best gastro-pub cuisine.

There’s plenty of seafood, too: a silky tuna crudo, its pale palette enlivened with colorful Meyer lemon, balsamic, and a streak of carrot purée; a delicate saffron-laced shellfish bisque loaded with scallops, shrimp, and mussels. The octopus was so nice I tried it twice. Crispy on the outside and perfectly tender on the inside, it boasted a vibrant sweet-tart orange-chile mojo and sat aside a lively chickpea salad. Likewise, the addictive Korean fried-chicken wings with pickled veggies were bar food transformed, gorgeously lacquered with a fiery orange combination of chili paste and sweet soy. It’s the sort of plate that appeals to both traditional and adventurous palates, catering to the bar’s varied clientele.

Aside from the sandwiches, all of the above appear under the “Small Plates” heading on the menu. In such a crowded, convivial atmosphere, where the friendly bartenders/waiters happily recite their favorites and gently urge you to share, it almost seems heretical to order a single entree. Of the two on offer at this writing—wild boar ragout pasta with hedgehog mushrooms and rapini, and seared sea scallops—we ended up sharing the latter as if it were a small plate, divvying up the fat, tender scallops and eagerly diving into the accompanying root vegetables and garlicky greens.

The roster of drinks, drafts, and wines is equally compact. The four cocktails on offer will also likely undergo seasonal changes; they’re composed of small-batch liquors and interesting combinations of flavors, and they’re intoxicatingly well crafted by those amiable bartenders. The dozen wines by the glass come from out-of-the-way vintners and are reasonably priced, and you can get an offbeat draft like Breckenridge Brewery Agave wheat ale, as well as a Yuengling. And should you want to combine your libation with dessert, you could do no better than to order the adult milkshake. Mexican chocolate brings sweetness, the Mezcal brings smoke, and the cayenne and cinnamon bring spice. It’s delightful. And so is 1157. So delightful, in fact, that I beg you not to go. At least, not when I’m heading there.

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1157 BAR + KITCHEN 1157 Haubert Street, 443-449-5525.
HOURS Tues.-Thurs. 4 p.m.-12 a.m., Fri.-Sat. 4 p.m.-1 a.m., Sun. 1 p.m.-10 p.m. CUISINE Internationally influenced home-style cooking.
PRICES Small plates and sandwiches: $7-16; entrees: $25-26; desserts: $6-10.
ATMOSPHERE Micro-sized neighborhood bar with great food.

When Salt opened in 2006, Baltimore was agog over the inventive
cuisine that was presented in the friendly tavern setting on the cusp of
Patterson Park. Co-owner/chef Jason Ambrose may have single-handedly
put duck-fat fries and foie-gras-and-Kobe-beef burgers into our
collective consciousness—and stomachs. Local publications raved about
the food; it garnered four stars from The Sun and several “Best of” nods from others, including Baltimore magazine. About the only complaint was the lack of parking in the neighborhood.

As the years passed, the restaurant under Ambrose and his business
partner and mother, Jane, continued to flourish. The parking issue had
also been somewhat addressed with new angled spaces.

But there was a glitch. The chef was getting restless. “I wanted a
little bit of a break,” Ambrose says. “I’d like to do something else.”

He wasn’t just going to bail on Salt, though. After all, he and his
mom still own the place. For his replacement, he looked no further than
his own kitchen, turning to sous chef Brian Lavin, who had been with him
for three years. “He seemed to embrace it,” Ambrose says. “He has a
strong work ethic.”

On recent visits, Lavin, 26, appears to be keeping the cooking vibe
alive and well at Salt. And while the new executive chef is adding his
own interpretations to the New American menu, many of the offerings are
familiar from the restaurant’s early days: those duck-fat fries, for
instance, and the sliders, now made with Wagyu beef.

Another mainstay is the coriander-and-pepper-crusted tuna. After
sampling the sushi-grade fish with the spicy coating and ginger-soy
glaze, we can understand why it remains a staple. The Asian flavors
resound with a mound of delicate seaweed salad and tender pot stickers
bundling shredded tuna.

The ambiance of Salt continues, too, with its still-trendy wood
floors, exposed brick walls, and free-flowing jazz emanating from a
sound system. The congenial space is divided into a small dining room on
one side and a bar with tables on the other. The dome green lights
hanging from the ceiling cast a signature glow.

Service is casual but efficient. On one visit, we were enamored with
an oven-roasted duck surrounded by date purée, roasted figs, chickpeas,
and tzatziki sauce. The bird’s rosy meat was so moist and succulent, we
asked our waiter about its origins. He quickly went to the kitchen to
inquire, returning to explain that it was a Rohan duck raised at a small
farm in New York state.

That’s the kind of select sourcing the restaurant is doing, whether
it’s a Duroc pork chop, Skuna Bay salmon, or East Coast halibut. Lavin
also mixes up his starters and entrees with various accompaniments on a
constantly fluid menu. On another evening, the duck breast was served
with grilled porcini and farro salad, strawberry purée, and sherry
gastrique.

When we ordered the chicken-liver pâté to start, our server praised
the chef’s preparation of pâtés and terrines. Indeed, the velvety
mousse-like spread was earthy and delicious, especially spread on
grilled bread (we could have used more) with blueberry jam and spiced
pistachio butter. Another appetizer, the crispy pork-belly confit, was
as beautiful as it was mouthwatering with charred white-corn polenta and
a melon-and-cherry-tomato salad enhancing the pleasantly fatty meat.

A few weeks earlier, we had started our meal with a
wild-sockeye-salmon crudo (tartare) with a cucumber-and-radish salad
dressed in fresh herb oil and a chilled melon-and-cucumber soup with
shaved Serrano ham, black-pepper yogurt, and watercress oil.

Our main meals were successful then, too—from a free-range grilled
half poussin with gnocchi, morel mushrooms, roasted garlic, and arugula
to pan-roasted halibut with eggplant caponata.

The dishes constantly sing with ingenuity as do the desserts. The
goat-cheese doughnuts, dotted with vanilla sea salt and drizzled with
lavender honey, have been on the menu for years. We’re glad they haven’t
been lost in the chef shuffle. We also appreciated the cheese plate
highlighting the intriguing flavors of a Spanish Manchego, Oregon smoky
blue, and Italian Quadrello di Bufala.

These days, you’re likely to find Jason Ambrose in the front of the
house, schmoozing with diners instead of orchestrating meals. But he’s
already planning his next venture. He recently signed a contract on a
building in Locust Point. It won’t be another Salt, though. “It will be
nothing more than a bar that does food,” he says.

Maybe he’ll call it Pepper. Just saying. We haven’t heard the last of Salt’s founding chef.

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›› Salt: A New American Tavern,2127
E. Pratt St., No. 1, 410-276-5480. Hours: Dinner: 5-10 p.m.
Tues.-Thurs., 5-11 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 4:30-9:30 p.m. Sun. Cuisine: Seasonal
New American. Price: Appetizers: $7-15; entrees: $18-28; desserts:
$7-10. Atmosphere: Neighborhood bistro setting in a corner row house
with a small, brick dining room and a cheerful bar with tables.