Bistro

Bicycle: the budget edition. At least that's the assignment I gave myself and my guests as we headed to the Federal Hill bistro, which has long been a favorite place for Baltimoreans for a nice dinner out, but not exactly a cheap date. In early January the owners - chef Nicholas Batey, his wife and his parents - closed the restaurant for a few days to make some cosmetic changes. They reopened with a new menu and wine list designed to attract more everyday business. I wanted to see if the Bicycle was now the kind of place you could drop by after work and have a reasonably priced dinner.

The cute historic Main Street in Ellicott City has long been a place of dress-up-to-dine restaurants or smoky bars, with hardly any decent choices in between for a nice, casual meal with friends or family. Johnny Breidenbach, a former Washington caterer, has done the entire downtown a service by opening his Johnny's Bistro on Main at the site of the former pizza and ice cream shop, the Whistle Stop Cafe. Poor:]

A French bistro will open early next spring in Roland Park in the space occupied by Morgan Millard restaurant for nearly a century, said sources on both sides of a deal signed Thursday.Tony Foreman and Cindy Wolf, husband-and-wife owners of Charleston, the Southern cuisine restaurant in Inner Harbor East, reached agreement with Jim Ward, landlord of the shopping center on Roland Avenue, to lease the space for 10 years.The previous owners, Diane and James Blair, decided to retire from the restaurant business in September.

Has anyone noticed that Premium Cinema has dropped its Monday through Thursday ticket prices to $8? That's less than you'll pay at some megaplexes in the area; and no other theater in the area approaches this one for sheer comfort, luxury and lack of small children or talkative teen-agers. (No one under 21 is admitted.)Not only that, the popcorn is free.For the price of admission you get a first-run movie, buttery-soft leather seats big enough to curl up and take a nap in, clever tray tables that slide forward to hold your glass of champagne and buttered popcorn, and access to spectacular black- and green-marbled bathrooms filled with fresh flowers.

* Item: Heavens' Bistro 98 Percent Fat Free Pizzas* What you get: 3 servings per 15.5-ounce pizza* Cost: $5.40* Preparation time: 1 minute in microwave, then 10 to 12 minutes in oven for soft crust, 13 to 18 minutes for crisp crust* Review: Fat-free pizza might seem like an oxymoron, but Heavens' Bistro appears to be on to something. This is pizza you can enjoy without worrying too much about calories. We tried the Barbeque Chicken flavor with white meat chicken, red onion and cilantro as well as the Grilled Vegetable with red, yellow and green bell peppers, red onion and mushrooms.

It's feast or famine at Viccino Bistro. Not for customers, but for the restaurant itself. When something's happening at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall or the Lyric Opera House, you can't buy a table; otherwise evenings are slow. That's too bad because with free valet parking, it's a place that deserves to be a destination in itself.If you haven't eaten there in a while, you may be surprised to learn that Viccino has reinvented itself. The kitchen no longer turns out strictly Italian food with a contemporary edge; Southwestern and Asian influences are just as prevalent as Italian on the menu.

I WAS GETTING ready to board an early American Airlines flight out of Miami, and they announced that it was going to be "bistro service." "Please pick up your `bistro' meal from the cart as you board the plane," they told us.I honestly wasn't sure what "bistro" meant, but it sounded French, which I thought was a good sign. French food is pretty tasty, except for the snails, which I do not believe the French actually eat. I believe the French sit around their restaurants pretend ing to eat out of empty snail shells and making French sounds of enjoyment such as "Yumme!"

Kawasaki is expanding into Fell's PointIf all goes as scheduled, the new Kawasaki Cafe should open this week at 907 S. Ann St. in Fells Point. It's an offshoot of the Kawasaki Japanese Seafood Restaurant on North Charles Street. It will, of course, have sushi; but the specialties will be lots of noodle dishes and grilled foods. "It's a younger crowd in Fells Point," says owner Tzu Yang, "So it's a more fun approach." And, by the nature of the food, more reasonable prices.Loco Hombre bites the dust in PikesvilleLoco Hombre Pikesville, the Tex-Mex restaurant that opened a little over a year ago in the Commerce Center, has closed.

Around the corner from the much-hyped renovated American Can Co. in Canton, there's a hideaway bistro called Doc's Eastside. The place belongs to Steve Cochran, for years the Rock and Roll Doctor on WQSR radio. Cochran started out in the food business, then did a 20-year stint in radio, and returned to food in the '90s as a partner in Bohager's. Now, he's back in the neighborhood he grew up in, spinning a mix of Cajun, Italian and American comfort fare.There's nothing trendy about the decor at Doc's, and that feels just right.

Twenty-two years ago, Karson's (5100 Holabird Ave., 410-631-5400) was one of Baltimore's best-known restaurants. Customers lined up around the block for executive chef George Karson's Maryland seafood and steaks. But the restaurant, owned by his parents and an aunt and uncle, "had too many Karsons," he says, to explain why he left in 1976 to open a motorcycle shop in Joppatowne.After his father's death in 1984 and his mother's subsequent illness, the restaurant's reputation faded. "It was a ship without a captain," Karson says.

When people ask me to recommend a French restaurant in the area, I never think of Crepe du Jour. I didn't realize until I ate there recently how much the Mount Washington creperie, which started as a cart in the Village Square at Cross Keys, had turned into a serious restaurant. OK, not serious, but a French restaurant with good food, not just a place dishing out crepes. Like the other eating places located on this block of Sulgrave Avenue, Crepe du Jour is loaded with lively charm. On a damp, dreary evening, the dining room's vivid colors, tangerine and pumpkin predominantly, immediately cheered us up. The tables are close together, bistro style, with bright tomato-red paisley tablecloths under glass.

This week on Read Street, we've been discussing a topic dear to my heart (and stomach): Baltimore's best places to eat and read. I developed the habit in my years as a reporter, traveling around the mid-Atlantic and beyond. When you have to eat by yourself, there's nothing better than a good book to shake that sense of alone-ness. You need the right restaurant, one that's not too noisy, not too dark, not too rushed. The food must be right, too. I often read at Charles Village's Chipotle, which gets great light from huge windows, but it took months to perfect a system of holding my chicken burrito, keeping my book flat on the table and turning the pages.

Bicycle: the budget edition. At least that's the assignment I gave myself and my guests as we headed to the Federal Hill bistro, which has long been a favorite place for Baltimoreans for a nice dinner out, but not exactly a cheap date. In early January the owners - chef Nicholas Batey, his wife and his parents - closed the restaurant for a few days to make some cosmetic changes. They reopened with a new menu and wine list designed to attract more everyday business. I wanted to see if the Bicycle was now the kind of place you could drop by after work and have a reasonably priced dinner.

When photographer Ellis Marsalis III, son of legendary jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis Jr., heard that the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park and Museum was looking for someone to open a cafe on its first floor, he got together with a friend of a friend and submitted a proposal. That friend of a friend happened to be Dimitris Spiliadis, the son of the owners of the Black Olive and the Fells Point restaurant's sommelier. The two men hit it off, and their proposal for a restaurant that was more than a restaurant was selected.

The city liquor board fined the owner of TD Lounge - formerly Timothy Dean Bistro - $3,100 yesterday after one of the board's inspectors was manhandled by restaurant security during an investigation last year. Owner Timothy Dean acknowledged during the hearing that his security guards should not have physically kept the inspector from entering his business, in the 1700 block of Eastern Ave., during an early-morning private party Nov. 15. But a member of Dean's staff testified that the inspector did not immediately identify himself and appeared to be trying to avoid paying a $20 cover fee. The inspector testified that he was escorted out of the front of the restaurant by three security guards, and he was not allowed to begin his investigation until Dean intervened.

If the recent closing of Pisces in the Hyatt Regency signaled the end of one kind of expensive hotel dining in Baltimore, then the opening of the Diamond Tavern in the new Hilton Baltimore illustrates the 21st-century model. In spite of its name, and in spite of its location across from Camden Yards, the Diamond Tavern resembles a sports bar about as much as Twilight resembles the original Dracula. True, there are - oh, I don't know - 20 or 30 flatscreen TVs in all sizes, including tiny ones, both grouped together and scattered around the multi-level dining room.

It's been perhaps one of the longest waits for a new restaurant in recent memory, but now Miss Irene's (1738 Thames St., 410-558-0033, missirenesbaltimore.com) has finally opened in Fells Point. Before it closed four years ago, Miss Irene's was a scruffy dive bar, and its rebirth as a Mediterranean bistro has been pointed to as an example of the neighborhood's gentrification. Only until now Miss Irene's never reopened. The reasons it took so long were the usual, says Benjamin Greene, an owner and the breakfast chef, including problems getting permits, construction delays and, of course, money.

Food **1/2 (2 1/2 stars) Service *** 1/2 (3 1/2 stars) Atmosphere **1/2 (2 1/2 stars) People often ask me why the city has so many small, locally owned restaurants, whereas in the suburbs, where supposedly so much money is, the choices are chains, chains and more chains. I have no answer for them, but I was struck by the fact that when a small, locally owned restaurant opened in the new Quarry Lake at Greenspring, it made itself as much like a chain as possible. Even the name, Ciao Pizza Bistro Italiano, sounds like a parody of a chain restaurant name.

Sean Dunsworth has been in the wholesale seafood business for the past decade, and his partner, Robert Rehmert, has worked in the kitchens of places as diverse as Tiber River Tavern in Ellicott City, Radisson Plaza Lord Baltimore downtown and Rocky Gap Lodge and Golf Resort in Cumberland. Together, they should be able to produce some very fresh fish at their new venture, Catonsville Gourmet (829 Frederick Road, 410-788-0005) in Catonsville. It's primarily an 80-seat restaurant that serves classic American seafood with an Asian accent; but it's also a gourmet market, with cases in the back of the second dining room containing seafood, meats, prepared foods and desserts to take out. The location where the Muir Hardware store once was has been extensively renovated and has what Dunsworth calls an "eclectic, antique look" and a bistro feel, with paper covering white tablecloths.

At long last, eating in a bowling alley doesn't mean noshing on scary hot dogs or dense, doughy pizza. Mustang Alley's, which opened in August, has brought a popular West Coast trend to Baltimore, combining a bowling alley with a fun bistro and lively bar. Located on the second floor of the former Holland Tack Factory, now home to a handful of recently opened urban-trendy businesses -- a fitness studio, a beauty salon and two Asian-themed restaurants --...