Food Market

The Avenue's newest addition, The Food Market, successfully combines a clean industrial aesthetic with an approachable and affordable menu, and their cocktail menu is no different. A list of all-time favorites and tweaks to classic cocktails populate the list, including everyone's favorite from New Orleans: the Hurricane. Or as The Food Market calls it, the Hampden Hurricane. The recipe for any Hurricane is a straightforward mixture of dark and light rum, loads of passion fruit syrup and lime, which normally results in an almost sickeningly sweet fruit bomb in your mouth.

Developer James W. Rousewas a pioneer at recycling other people's buildings for new uses, including Faneuil Hall in Boston and parts of the South Street Seaport historic district in Manhattan. Now one of the most prominent buildings he constructed from scratch - the former Rouse Co. headquarters in Columbia - is about to get a similar treatment from a successor to Rouse's firm. The Howard Hughes Corp. of Dallas, which succeeded Rouse and General Growth Properties as the master developer of Columbia, has a $20 million plan to convert the former Rouse headquarters on Little Patuxent Parkway from a single-occupant office building to a mixed-use, multitenant development with a 41,000 square-foot Whole Foods Market as the anchor.

The Food Market is the restaurant that everyone wanted. The new Hampden hot spot from Chad Gauss, formerly of the City Cafe, has been open only for five weeks, but it established itself as a favorite in no time flat. As executive chef at City Cafe, Gauss performed the neat trick of satisfying a conservative customer base while raising their expectations. It was a brilliant balancing act, but with a place of his own - his partner is Elan Kotz, a front-of-house veteran of Aldo's in Little Italy - Gauss gets to be Gauss.

The Food Market is the restaurant that everyone wanted. The new Hampden hot spot from Chad Gauss, formerly of the City Cafe, has been open only for five weeks, but it established itself as a favorite in no time flat. As executive chef at City Cafe, Gauss performed the neat trick of satisfying a conservative customer base while raising their expectations. It was a brilliant balancing act, but with a place of his own - his partner is Elan Kotz, a front-of-house veteran of Aldo's in Little Italy - Gauss gets to be Gauss.

Samuel Richard Walker, who owned and operated a West Baltimore market, died Thursday of complications from dementia at his Pikesville home. He was 85. Born in Valdosta, Ga, and raised in Jacksonville, Fla., Mr. Walker attended Edwards College in Jacksonville, where he studied architecture. He moved to Baltimore in the early 1940s and was a chef at the Chestnut Ridge Country Club, St. Agnes Hospital and the Greenspring Club. In 1959, he married Delores Jones. They later opened Walker's Food Market at Mosher and Monroe streets.

An employee at Bair's Food Market in the 400 block of E. Baltimore St. reported to state police that someone forced the front door of the store and stole about 45 cartons of cigarettes.The burglary was discovered at 3:31 a.m. yesterday. The value of the cigarettes was estimated at $112.Numerous shops, including at least two gasoline stations in the Hampstead-Manchester area along Hanover Pike, were broken into and cigarettes were stolen in early December, according to police, who are investigating to see if the incidents are related.

Henry Phillip Belanger, a retired food market manager, died Friday of coronary artery disease at St. Joseph Medical Center. The Northeast Baltimore resident was 70. Mr. Belanger was born and raised in Cambridge, Mass., where he graduated from Rindge School of Technical Arts. He served two years in the Army during the Korean War, then began a 30-year career in management at Star Market in Cambridge. He and his wife of 25 years, the former Nella Querel, who died in 1980, enjoyed traveling to Europe with their two daughters.

Metro Food Market, the Baltimore area's second-largest supermarket chain, is closing two of its stores as part of a strategy to strengthen the company's standing in an increasingly competitive market. Metro, which has 20 stores in the area, will shut down its Columbia grocery, in the Oakland Mills Village Center, and a store on York Road in Cockeysville on April 14. Neither store was profitable, Metro President Bill White said yesterday. "If you have unprofitable stores, you take them out of the mix, and that allows you to work with the stores that are profitable," White said.

Tidy white farmhouses here look like they could have fields of Iowa corn growing behind them. Breezy porches face the green Forest Park Municipal Golf Course, where the crickets just sounded their last notes of 2001. Here and there, the paint is peeling and the roof needs repair. The modern face of Howard Park is trying to dust off its wrinkles, from its neglected commercial district with a faded movie theater-turned-church to a shuttered supermarket that's forced an aging population to shop elsewhere for necessities.

A special police team today flushed out a heavily armed group of robbers from a Pimlico food market after an all-night standoff during which no shots were fired and no one was injured.Instead, officers from the Quick Response Team used psychology, keeping the suspects awake while heavily armed Quick Response Team members conducted a methodical search of the sprawling building.The tense barricade ended today at 8:20 a.m. after three men were arrested and three weapons were seized. A fourth suspect, believed carrying a shotgun, escaped when the robbers were first detected last night.

It's been a busy couple of weeks for Winston Blick and Cristin Dadant. During May, the couple oversaw the opening of the Green Onion food market on Harford Road and Clementine at the Creative Alliance , an Eastern Avenue outpost of their popular Hamilton comfort food spot. On top of the openings, Blick and Dadant's catering business is booming, and the original Clementine continues to serve a steady stream of diners. They've got a lot going on. But if our experience at Clementine at the Creative Alliance is any indication, Blick, Dadant and company are handling things with aplomb.

The Avenue's newest addition, The Food Market, successfully combines a clean industrial aesthetic with an approachable and affordable menu, and their cocktail menu is no different. A list of all-time favorites and tweaks to classic cocktails populate the list, including everyone's favorite from New Orleans: the Hurricane. Or as The Food Market calls it, the Hampden Hurricane. The recipe for any Hurricane is a straightforward mixture of dark and light rum, loads of passion fruit syrup and lime, which normally results in an almost sickeningly sweet fruit bomb in your mouth.

Whew! Another HonFest is now in our rearview mirrors, and the only thing left to remember it by are the persistent feather boa sheddings that seem to get everywhere and are impossible to completely clean up. (That and the embarrassing photos, darn cell phone cameras!) Seriously, at one point during the festival, it looked like someone had taken a lawn mower to a flock of pink flamingos — which this columnist does NOT recommend doing. But during all the hubbub, it was easy to overlook an exciting new dining opportunity that opened the Friday before HonFest — The Food Market, 1017 W. 36th St. It is in the old location of the Hampden Food Market, and the new owners have done a fantastic job renovating the space.

The Food Market opens Friday on the Avenue in Hampden. The new restaurant is the project of Chad Gauss, former executive chef at City Cafe, and Elan Kotz, a veteran of Aldo's in Little Italy. The 3,000 square-foot restaurant has seating for 90 in the dining room, a 12-seat bar and an open kitchen whose focus, Gauss has said, will be "basically blue-collar food in a white-collar execution. " The Food Market will be open for dinner seven days a week, serving a full menu until 1 a.m. An a la carte Brunch will be served on Saturday and Sunday -- and Friday.

Marta Ines Quintana's Havana Road Cafe was one of the sweetest success stories of 2010. The Towson restaurant caught on quickly. "Every once in a while, you come across a restaurant that has distinctive, well-prepared food at sensible prices," The Baltimore Sun's reviewer said. "Havana Road in Towson is such a spot; it is a find. " And since its quiet opening, the cafe has extended its hours and its day of operation. Quintana's story is about to get sweeter. She has just debuted a new line of Havana Road products in area Whole Foods Markets.

Helen Lauer, the matriarch of a family who founded two Anne Arundel County supermarkets and believed that traditionally made baked goods could win customers, died of lymphoma Wednesday at her Severna Park home. She was 80. Born Helen Beaudette in Baltimore, she grew up on Mallow Hill Road. She attended St. Mark's Parochial School in Catonsville and was a 1946 graduate of Seton High School. After marrying grocery store manager Edward Lauer 59 years ago, and raising five daughters, she and her husband moved to Anne Arundel County, where they fulfilled a dream of opening their own supermarket.

An article in Friday's Business section on Royal Ahold NV's pending acquisition of Giant Food Inc. outlined plans to sell 10 supermarkets owned by Giant and an Ahold subsidiary to comply with the Federal Trade Commission's conditions for the purchase. It left unclear what would happen to two of the markets. The Martin's Food Market in Westminster that Richfood Holdings Inc. has agreed to purchase will be operated as aMetro Food Market, and the Bel Air Martin's, which Fleming Co. Inc. has agreed to purchase, will operate as a Festival Foods.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has sued the former operator of a Baltimore food market, claiming he "unjustly enriched" himself in a food-stamp fraud scheme that netted him more than $400,000.Travis Parnell Wallace ran the Travis and Sons Food Market until August 1994.The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, seeks to recover all or part of the money as well as an injunction to prohibit Mr. Wallace from participating in the program.

International Food Market 7004 Reisterstown Road, 410-358-4757. Open 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday You don't have to speak Russian to buy food at the International Food Market, a combination deli and grocery in the Colonial Village shopping center on Reisterstown Road, but it doesn't hurt. Most of the signs and the conversation in the store are in Russian. When I visited, I simply smiled and pointed. There is a huge meat counter, with more kinds of salami than there were states in the former Soviet Union.

Salary: $25,000 Age: 37 Years on job: Two How he got started: Having grown up in the restaurant business, Wilt says his job working in the meat department at Whole Foods is a natural progression. His family owned a few eateries in Pigtown and Brooklyn, where he started at the age of 8 washing dishes. He eventually began helping elsewhere, including cooking. When the restaurants closed in the 1980s, he went through the management-training program at McDonald's. He then moved on to various city restaurants working as a short-order cook.