The brain works slowly in winter. There are dozens of beautiful art-glass pieces displayed behind the bar at the Glass Grill east of Highlandtown. There are two dazzling, enormous Dale Chihuly-inspired glass sculptures hanging from the Glass Grill's ceiling. If you ask your server about these sculptures, he'll tell you that the pieces were forged by Tim McFadden, and that you're welcome to stroll over with your beer to the adjacent glassworks, a converted garage, and watch him at work.
You'll notice, in a separate building, the McFadden Art Glass studios, which holds classes, demonstrations and events such as "date nights" on the first and third Friday of the month. Only then, back at your table in the dining room does it hit you: oh, the Glass Grill.
This is something new: an art-glass campus, complete with a restaurant that students and visitors can retreat to after a hard day in the hot shop. I love that the Glass Grill fits no preconceived image of what such a restaurant would be like. This is not some fancy little museum restaurant serving celery soup and watercress sandwiches; it's a good, old-fashioned, Baltimore-style strip-mall sports bar/restaurant. I never visited when it was the old Eastwood Inn, so I'm not sure how much its new owner, the McFadden family, has changed it. It still comes across more as a bar than a restaurant, but when we visited we enjoyed a relatively quiet and relaxed dinner.
