MOTHER'S Federal Hill Grille is a large, noisy bar at night, overflowing into the adjacent parking lot with youthful revelers.
The upstairs is a pleasure dome for sports fans. Downstairs, the din of TVs and high-volume rock `n' roll, the clatter and clang of an open kitchen, and the long, open bar pressed with roisterers, all add up to a joyful, continuous party and singles scene. Or, seen from another perspective, hell.
So it was a pleasure to find that Mother's is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and that for most of the meal hours it can be a relatively peaceful place any day of the week. Of course, your idea of "peaceful" must still encompass Grateful Dead and Bob Seger tunes blaring from the open kitchen while the cooks sing along. This annoyed us at first, but we actually got to like it.
The breakfast menu at Mother's is big and runs the gamut from biscuits and gravy to eggs Benedict and French toast, with many choices in between.
We tried a western omelet and a breakfast burrito. The burrito was made of eggs, bacon, black beans and cheese, wrapped in a flour tortilla. The eggs had been mixed together and lightly fried, making a kind of inside wrap for the tortilla. The bacon was crisp, and the beans were properly cooked. So perhaps it was the tortilla that accounted for a dryness that made the dish less than perfect. It was served with fresh salsa and sour cream, but should, we thought, have stood on its own unsauced merits.
The omelet was very well made and might only have been improved by a less generous hand with the onions. Home fries were more like tiny french fries, but quite edible nonetheless. Coffee was hot, fresh and plentiful.
The lunch and dinner menu is large and surprisingly interesting. Mother's has a good selection of salads, half a dozen veggie plates, many, many starters,a.k.a. grazing food for the party folks, steamed shellfish, pasta dishes, big sandwiches and nine or 10 dinner entrees with vegetable and potato sides. There's also an array of chalkboard specials for dinner. On the night we visited, they included potato-encrusted salmon, soy-glazed tuna and fried tomato rockfish.
Our quiet early-evening meal included a bowl of spicy clam chowder, prepared in a delicious, rich New England style with a warming kick that sneaks up on you. After contemplating a Baltimore salad (shrimp, bacon, boiled eggs, cheeses, salami, bypass surgery) we chose a Venus salad: good, fresh mixed greens with olives, capers, tomatoes, grilled eggplant, another over-generous portion of onions and more than enough feta cheese. The dressing was blessedly simple and good.
We split a large bowl of mussels as well as a dinner of the soy-glazed tuna special. The mussels were fat and moist, in a deep, mellow broth. The tuna was fresh, a respectable size and cooked to order. It was served in swirls of pleasantly salty soy sauce. The overall taste was like fresh sushi, with the essence of the tuna ringing true among several other bright flavors.
For dessert, we had some of Mother's or, in this case, Pop Pop's homemade ice cream. It normally comes in over-the-top combinations, but we requested a single small scoop for testing purposes. It was very good chocolate, but then, we are very keen on chocolate and ice cream as food groups.
So if you are looking for a goodmeal or an evening swimming in beer, with shouted sports scores and introductions to strangers, and maybe a nap in the parking lot later on in the morning, Mother's is your Federal Hill destination.
Mother's Federal Hill Grille
1113 S. Charles St.
410-244-8686
Hours: Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner
Credit cards: All major cards
Prices: Appetizers: $2.85 to $12.95; entrees $5.95 to $16.95
Food: ***
Service: **1/2
Atmosphere: **
Ratings system: Outstanding ****; Good ***; Fair/uneven ***; Poor *
