Morris Martick - master of French cuisine, living legend and the most stubborn and eccentric restaurateur in Baltimore - claims he has closed his famously unusual and critically acclaimed maison on West Mulberry Street after 38 years. He laid off his last waitress and kitchen helper last week. He's made his last pot of sweet potato soup. You can't order Martick's bouillabaisse anymore. He's done.
C'est la fin.
"For real?" I ask.
"What's the point?" Martick says with a shrug. "I'm 68 and a half years old."
"No, you're not," I say. "You're 86 and a half years old."
"Right. I'm an institution in Baltimore."
"I agree," I say. "There's no question you're an institution. But are you really closing the restaurant?"
"I don't like the grind. It takes 13 to 14 hours a day to run this place - I make all my own stocks, do all my own shopping - and I make maybe $5 an hour."
"But that's always been the case, hasn't it?"
"The restaurant is closed."
"But this is your bliss," I say. "Don't you still ..."
"No," he cuts me off. "I don't."
".. have it any more?"
Please understand the importance of this news, assuming that Morris Martick means what he says and that he's simply not in a summer slump aggravated by the subprime mess. Let's assume he's not gaming this columnist into a premature obit that will send all those lapsed Martick's fans scrambling in a panic to Mulberry Street. Morris te Culinary Magician might be pulling a Brett Favre here, but I have too much respect for the man to call him insincere.
For now, for the record, he says he's done.
"And that's a big story," he adds.
Martick's Restaurant Francais opened in 1970, a former speak-easy and bohemian joint with only a few small windows - tiles of stained glass created by the owner - and a small kitchen on the second floor. You press a doorbell to gain entrance. If you're lucky, Morris Martick greets you, shows you to a table, presents a handwritten menu, takes your order and rushes upstairs - the floor on which he was born 86 and a half years ago - to cook it.
"It's not for everyone," Martick has been heard to tell tourists who ring the bell, step in from the street and find themselves the only customers.
