Admiral Fell

Sometimes a restaurant location is fine, it just doesn't have quite the right tenant. I'm thinking of the spot at 2304 Boston St. where Bruschetta and Gino Troia's were, to name two. Now it's Georgie's of Canton, and I would be less hopeful if the new owner weren't George Platis. The name may sound familiar - he's a former owner of Coburn's Tavern and then helped get Dockside in Canton off to a good start. "But it wasn't mine," Platis says. With Georgie's he has his own full-service restaurant again.

TripAdvisor has named Admiral Fell Inn , a lovely historic hotel in Fells Point, one of the Top 10 Haunted Hotels in America . Admiral Fell Inn was the only Maryland hotel to make the list of "rooms with a Boo!" TripAdvisor came up with the list by seeing which hotels had the greatest number of traveler comments referencing "ghosts" or "haunted" on TripAdvisor.com. That makes sense. Admiral Fell Inn is a Historic Hotel of America and dates to the 1700s. Plus, it's in Fells Point, which certainly has more than a few ghosts - enough for a cottage industry of sorts.

Things are happening at the Admiral Fell Inn. The Fells Point hotel has a new executive chef, Fred Lewis, who has worked at the Engineering Society for the past seven years. He'll be continuing the New American cuisine served in Hamilton's, the inn's fine-dining restaurant. He'll also be in charge of its casual eatery, the Point.When 1636, the inn's new mid-scale restaurant and late-night venue, opens in December in the basement, Lewis will be responsible for it. Also in his future is the inn's new bakery-deli-cafe, now under construction with an entrance on Thames Street.

M aybe the current popularity of tapas and small plates has nothing to do with the recession, but it feels that way. It was a trend that I thought was past its peak, but now there's been a resurgence. I'm fascinated by the fact that the savvy restaurateurs involved with the Kali's Restaurant Group now have a second small plates restaurant just a block or two away from its popular Mezze tapas bar in Fells Point. Tapas Adela (814 S. Broadway, 410-534-6262) opened recently where the Petticoat Tearoom was, next to the Admiral Fell Inn. Here you'll find traditional Spanish tapas, not the mix of cuisines other small plates restaurants in the area offer.

Enveloped in this soothing subterranean dining room, it is easy to forget that Fells Point is teeming. Easy to forget that outside is the 'New Baltimore,' where night life is king and young adults crowd the streets looking for the throne.But the dining room at the Admiral Fell Inn is part of the new Baltimore too -- if a part that is less noticed because it is less noisy.Without the youth-led resurgence of Fells Point, the Admiral Fell would still be a decaying YMCA.My husband, a friend and I descended to the inn's restaurant early enough on a Saturday that things had not picked up outside.

Is this man:A) Crazy?B) Lucky?C) Incredibly persistent?D) All of the above?Meet Jim Widman, the general partner in the Admiral Fell Inn in Fells Point. There's just been a serious real estate recession that put about half the better hotels in greater Baltimore on the foreclosure docket. He knows this. No banks are financing hotels because the market is still glutted. He knows this, too. And he knows that in this nation of ours, there are exactly four new full-service hotels being built anywhere.

A man's body was found in a room at a popular Fells Point hotel last night, said a police spokesman.Sgt. Scott Rowe said a Southeastern District officer patrolling the area was stopped about 6: 50 p.m. by a man who told him a body was in a room of the Admiral Fell Inn in the 800 block of S. Broadway.The officer went to the room and reported finding the body.A short time later, homicide detectives arrived and began to conduct an investigation, Rowe said.Hotel staff members refused to comment.

Hamilton's in the Admiral Fell Inn is a restaurant that's never quite found itself. The name changed from Savannah to Hamilton's two years ago after chef Cindy Wolf and her husband, Tony Foreman, left, taking their Southern cuisine with them to their new restaurant, Charleston. Since then the kitchen has been run by a succession of good chefs. But Hamilton's food has never captured the public's imagination the way Savannah's did.Jeffrey Crise is the new man at the helm. Many Baltimoreans know him as the owner of the Ambassador Dining Room in the early '90s, before it became an Indian restaurant.

From the rooftop, soon to be a huge, glass-enclosed gathering place offering panoramic city views, to three historic townhouses next door, to a new building erected in part of a courtyard, the Admiral Fell Inn is expanding upward, outward and inward.The historic Fells Point inn's $6.5 million, three-year project will increase the number of guest rooms from 39 to 80 in eight interconnected buildings, while more than quadrupling meeting space and adding two new gourmet restaurants.Renovation and expansion, expected to be completed by spring, is to transform the Admiral Fell into Baltimore's first "boutique" business-oriented hotel.

There are two ingredients that should never be mentioned in the same sentence, let alone appear on the same plate. Those would be chocolate and beets. Give the new True in the Admiral Fell Inn credit. The kitchen produces a chocolate volcano dessert with a molten chocolate center surrounded with julienned beets and almost pulls it off. The restaurant's name is precious, the prices are steep and some of the food is way over the top, but True manages to be endearing in spite of itself. Restraint is not part of the equation.

Once Baltimore had a Chinatown. It was small, but it was a Chinatown. Now Richard Wong, a Philadelphia restaurateur and native of China, hopes to resurrect it. The first step is his new restaurant, Zhongshan (323 Park Ave., 410-223-1881), scheduled to open for regular business Friday. Some restaurants open quietly and have their grand opening months later. Not Zhongshan. The night before the opening, the owner will hold a 10-course banquet (by invitation only, unfortunately). The 300 block of Park Ave. will be closed off, and the celebration will include firecrackers (yes, the owner has gotten the necessary permits)

Sushi bars often open in the Baltimore area. Japanese restaurants that aren't steakhouses, not so much. Hence the interest in the new Aloha Tokyo (1120 Fort Ave., 410-685-0545) in Locust Point. It was scheduled to open this week where the French Quarter was. The owner is Sean Kim. (His neighbors, he says, Americanized his first name, Seon, and he likes it.) Kim is Korean-Japanese from Japan, and somehow Hawaii has gotten into the mix as well. He describes the cuisine as Asian, with yakitori (skewered chicken)

Sometimes a restaurant location is fine, it just doesn't have quite the right tenant. I'm thinking of the spot at 2304 Boston St. where Bruschetta and Gino Troia's were, to name two. Now it's Georgie's of Canton, and I would be less hopeful if the new owner weren't George Platis. The name may sound familiar - he's a former owner of Coburn's Tavern and then helped get Dockside in Canton off to a good start. "But it wasn't mine," Platis says. With Georgie's he has his own full-service restaurant again.

There are two ingredients that should never be mentioned in the same sentence, let alone appear on the same plate. Those would be chocolate and beets. Give the new True in the Admiral Fell Inn credit. The kitchen produces a chocolate volcano dessert with a molten chocolate center surrounded with julienned beets and almost pulls it off. The restaurant's name is precious, the prices are steep and some of the food is way over the top, but True manages to be endearing in spite of itself. Restraint is not part of the equation.

Hamilton's in the Admiral Fell Inn is a restaurant that's never quite found itself. The name changed from Savannah to Hamilton's two years ago after chef Cindy Wolf and her husband, Tony Foreman, left, taking their Southern cuisine with them to their new restaurant, Charleston. Since then the kitchen has been run by a succession of good chefs. But Hamilton's food has never captured the public's imagination the way Savannah's did.Jeffrey Crise is the new man at the helm. Many Baltimoreans know him as the owner of the Ambassador Dining Room in the early '90s, before it became an Indian restaurant.

Baltimore police released photographs yesterday of a slain New Jersey conventioneer and the truck he had been driving in hopes of finding more clues to the man's beating death last week in a historic Fells Point inn.Investigators said they do not have a motive or suspect in the June 30 killing of Christopher William Jones, who worked for a pharmaceutical company and was attending seminars at the Baltimore Convention Center.On Friday, police found the 37-year-old victim's dark blue 1999 Yukon GMC truck, which had been missing from the Admiral Fell Inn parking lot.Police would not disclose where the truck was. "It is very important to their investigation that they don't release that right now," said Agent Angelique Cook-Hayes, a city police spokeswoman.

The Sea Witch is the Admiral Fell Inn's forgotten restaurant. On the one hand, you have Savannah, the high-profile New South dining room in the inn's basement. That takes care of the expense-account and special-occasion customers. On the other, you have the Point. That is the inn's very visible bar, right on Broadway, which serves burgers, sandwiches, salads and omelets. That takes care of the casual eaters.So who's left to fill the Sea Witch, the Admiral Fell Inn's seafood restaurant?Well, first you have to find it. Go in and ask at the front desk, and they'll send you back outside and around the corner a couple of doors, as if the restaurant has no relation to the hotel.

NO ROOM at the inn?For years, that was the lament at the Admiral Fell Inn, which sometimes was forced to turn away prospective patrons because it had only 39 guest rooms.It's not such a problem anymore, now that the owners have completed a $6.5 million expansion that raised the number of guest rooms to 80.Under construction since 1993, the addition also contains spaces that make the historic inn at 888 S. Broadway much more of a mixed-use complex, including a rooftop ballroom and conference center.

A man's body was found in a room at a popular Fells Point hotel last night, said a police spokesman.Sgt. Scott Rowe said a Southeastern District officer patrolling the area was stopped about 6: 50 p.m. by a man who told him a body was in a room of the Admiral Fell Inn in the 800 block of S. Broadway.The officer went to the room and reported finding the body.A short time later, homicide detectives arrived and began to conduct an investigation, Rowe said.Hotel staff members refused to comment.

Things are happening at the Admiral Fell Inn. The Fells Point hotel has a new executive chef, Fred Lewis, who has worked at the Engineering Society for the past seven years. He'll be continuing the New American cuisine served in Hamilton's, the inn's fine-dining restaurant. He'll also be in charge of its casual eatery, the Point.When 1636, the inn's new mid-scale restaurant and late-night venue, opens in December in the basement, Lewis will be responsible for it. Also in his future is the inn's new bakery-deli-cafe, now under construction with an entrance on Thames Street.