Having dinner at Sascha's 527 is more like going to a cocktail party than eating in a restaurant, which may make it the trendiest new restaurant in Baltimore.
One of the hottest trends around is the popularity of the U.S. equivalent of Spanish tapas, small plates that are a little more than an appetizer and definitely less than a main course. Cocktail party food, in other words.
Sascha's does this as well as any restaurant in the city, with everything from shrimp toast to potato pancakes and caviar. Thirteen of these "Tastes Plates" are on the menu, along with sandwiches, salads, small pizzas and eight entrees. Nothing is priced more than $15.
This is basically the same imaginative and usually successful food that Baltimoreans have been able to get for years at owner Sascha Wolhandler's carryout and catering business around the corner on Hamilton Street -- a mix of gourmet and ethnic dishes with some naughty desserts thrown in for good measure.
The night we ate at the new Sascha's, a large group of people had pushed their tables together and seemed to be having a cocktail party, with bottles of wine on a separate table. Some stayed seated during the meal, some wandered up and down the long table talking to friends.
Beyond the food, a major reason the new restaurant has become an instant hit is the place itself, ideally suited for its mostly young or at least mostly hip audience. The dining room is a wild space, painted lemon yellow, gold and maroon, with stately columns and a crystal chandelier left over from its previous incarnation as a beauty salon.
The high-ceilinged room has so much available wall space it can function as a gallery for cutting-edge art -- and does. A staircase in the middle leads down to the kitchen and separates the tables, so there seems to be a bit more space than usual in a casual eatery.
In back of the dining room is a counter (lunch is cafeteria style) and a bar, where, unfortunately, people smoke, even though it's not really a separate room.
Service at Sascha's can be somewhat amateurish, although good-natured. When I asked the waiter for bread, for instance, he was really stumped -- even though we were willing to pay extra. He explained that he wasn't sure there was anything else besides the highly seasoned, crisp breadsticks that were already on the table. That seemed unlikely to me, given the sandwiches on the menu. He agreed to check, but he never did.
