The ladies who lunch at Petit Louis in Roland Park know enough to keep their undies to themselves. Same goes for the Harbor East crowd forking over hundreds for dinner at Charleston and the oenophiles tasting wines at nearby Cinghiale.
Patrons of Pazo, however, need to be told.
Cindy Wolf and Tony Foreman have lots of restaurants in Baltimore, but only one with a dress code. It's just been posted inside the doorway at Pazo in Fells Point.
It lists run-of-the-mill no-nos: No ball caps, athletic shoes, flip-flops.
And an unusual one: "No visible underpants."
Viewable unmentionables have become a problem recently at Pazo. Foreman put it in NFL terms: "Overly dramatic display of thong. You walk by it and you want to throw a yellow flag.
"Maybe it's something I don't understand in our culture," he added. "It just seems like there's an entire generation that's compelled to have their drawers on display. I'm in my 40s now, and I'm too crotchety to understand that, but I'm not thinking your underwear and my dinner are compatible."
The problem is mainly in the Pazo lounge, which turns into something of a club late at night. As Pazo puts it on its Web site: "The music gently crescendos throughout the evening as PAZO gracefully transforms into the perfect late-night scene."
A less graceful aspect of the metamorphosis: underwear becomes outerwear. Not on everyone, mind you. Skivvies show-offs remain a minority. But it only takes a few men with saggy pants, or a couple women pairing low-rise bottoms with high-rise thongs, to put a dent in a joint's fabulousness.
"There are a lot of people who put an awful lot of effort in their appearance," Foreman said. "They expect a certain quality of cocktails, they expect staff to be amazing, they expect the room to be amazing, they expect the music to be groovy. And it's reasonable to expect while they're sipping their fabulous martinis that they're not going to be looking at your fabulous drawers."
Put the emphasis on the hip, not on hip replacement
If Pazo wants to tame its crowd, why not let the Charlestown retirement community shuttle bus park out front?
Erickson, the retirement empire that owns Charlestown, recently filmed a TV commercial at Pazo's bar. It's all part of a push to shed the old old-folks' home image.
"After moving to Erickson, you will have more time to spend with friends, doing the things that you love, like shopping, dinner, and a movie with your closest girlfriends - 'Girl's night out,' if you will," Erickson spokesman Mel Tansill said.
