NEWS
By ELIZABETH LARGE | September 30, 2009
These days it's cause to celebrate when a restaurant more ambitious than a pub or pizza place opens in Baltimore. Scary times usually produce eateries that offer sure bets in the way of food - sure bets that don't cost much. When I first heard about the Reserve (1542 Light St., TheReserveBaltimore.com), a new Federal Hill bar, I figured when it got around to serving food, the kitchen would produce the usual nachos, wings and burgers. Instead, the offerings include tuna tataki, shrimp and tropical fruit ceviche, cornmeal-crusted red grouper in a smoked salmon caper beurre blanc, Buffalo strip steak with parsnip puree and pan-roasted boneless quail.
NEWS
By Elizabeth Large | July 19, 2009
Is there a chef in the world who doesn't want to open his or her own restaurant? I doubt it. I can understand why someone would want total creative control, but the challenges of being an owner, particularly in a recession, on top of having to produce the food must be daunting. But chefs continue to do it. One of the latest is Antoine Petteway, who had a loyal following when he worked at the Metropolitan, a couple of blocks from the location of his new place, the Hill. He's managed to stay on good terms with his former employers, which says something about the kind of person he is. Petteway, I gather, is a major draw for the Hill.
NEWS
By Elizabeth Large | April 5, 2009
First impressions can be misleading. Especially if your preconceived notions are misleading. My preconceived notions of the new Frank & Nic's near Oriole Park at Camden Yards had to do with the talk I had with one of the owners, Frank Zafonte. Somehow Frank & Nic's sounded like a swanky lounge when he described it, with booths and granite-topped bars and a burgundy-and-gold color scheme. Zafonte mentioned the black-and-white photos of Baltimore, but he didn't mention the huge flat-screen TV that hangs over the main dining room.
NEWS
By Elizabeth Large | September 28, 2008
Hamilton Tavern is the noisiest restaurant I've ever eaten in. OK, maybe not noisier than RA Sushi with its loud rock and roll, but for a restaurant where no music is playing, it was the noisiest. Blame the handsome decor: the hardwood floors, the pressed-tin ceilings, the bare benches and tables, the interesting farm implements that are an integral part of the split-level dining room. (You open the front door with a wooden scythe handle.) No TVs, thank goodness, to add to the chaos. It's a great room with a built-in patina, only it's loud.
NEWS
By ELIZABETH LARGE | September 24, 2008
This Top 10 Tuesday, dive bars with good pub grub, is a joint effort of readers of Dining@Large, Sun reviewers and me. Note that these aren't dive bars in the negative sense, but they are all a little funkier than neighborhood taverns. The list is in alphabetical order. 1 Bertha's in Fells Point: In spite of the afternoon tea, the live music and the famous mussels, it still has some of the good dive-bar elements. 2 Daniel's on Route 1 in Elkridge: Bikers' dive extraordinaire; all the food is good.
NEWS
By ELIZABETH LARGE | July 4, 2007
If you think the new Yellow Dog Tavern (700 S. Potomac St., 410-342-0280) sounds like another in a long list of places in Canton that specializes in bar food, you'd be wrong. Co-owner and head chef Anita Scheiding describes the fare as "home-cooked, casual fine dining." The new owners converted the space where Mike's Happy Hour bar used to be into a two-story restaurant with a "casual upscale environment." In other words, don't dress up; but don't expect Buffalo wings either. Dinner entrees range from a vegetarian platter for $9.99 to roasted sea bass with mushrooms and a tequila-lime sauce for $24.99.
NEWS
By ELIZABETH LARGE | May 28, 2006
Some places do exactly what they set out to do, and for that you have to give them credit. Others even do a bit more than you expect, which is the case of Power Plant Live's newest bar, Mex. Notice I said bar, not restaurant. Anyone going there who expects a full-fledged Mexican restaurant will be disappointed. I decided to review Mex anyway, because Power Plant Live is such a high profile part of the downtown scene, but I didn't expect any more than the "chow" that its Web site, mexbaltimore.
NEWS
By ELIZABETH LARGE | February 19, 2006
He wants mozzarella sticks, a burger and fries with his draft. She prefers a meal with more sophistication and fewer calories. She wouldn't mind a wine-by-the-glass suggestion, either. That's the restaurant Clayton's Tavern, which opened recently in Federal Hill, wants to be; and for the most part, it succeeds. The drawing card is the fact that bar food is on the menu with new American dishes such as salmon au poivre with a splash of Grand Marnier, glazed hearts of palm and horseradish mashed potatoes.
NEWS
By ELIZABETH LARGE | October 9, 2005
Neo Viccino is the old Viccino Bistro's solution to the problem most of the restaurants in the Mount Vernon cultural district face: How do you fill the tables when the theaters and concert halls are dark? In spite of its funky location and bistro label, Viccino's was basically a fine-dining, traditionally Italian restaurant when it opened a decade ago. The chef was Christopher Cherry, who had worked at Tabrizi's and the Polo Grill. The food changed somewhat over the years, but it was still a bistro in name only.
NEWS
By Elizabeth Large | December 5, 2004
In my experience, restaurants don't get better with age once the shakedown period is over. If they are a success, management is careful not to change things much. If they aren't, all sorts of desperate measures are taken to try to attract customers. At best, they find a lowest common denominator. At worse, they die a slow death. OK, that's a gross generalization, and along comes BlueStone to prove me wrong. When it opened three years ago, it immediately became a Timonium hotspot. The food wasn't bad, but BlueStone was first and foremost a very successful bar. There was not one quiet corner in the huge (10,000-square-foot)