Restaurants And Bars

A proposal to require restaurants and bars to post letter grades rating their performance in city health inspections has some business owners worried they may lose customers if inspectors give their establishments a less than perfect score. But giving people access to information that allows them to judge how food and beverage venues stack up against each other in terms of cleanliness has worked in other cities, and there's no reason consumers here shouldn't be able to make the same sort of comparisons.

The Baltimore Sun's 4th annual Mobbies It's nomination time for The Baltimore Sun's 4th annual Mobbies competition for Maryland's Outstanding Blogs. Nominations are now being accepted for your favorite blogs and social media accounts through Oct. 25. Voting begins Oct. 29. Yes, there's a category for Best Food Blog. Read the full rules . And go nominate . Baltimore Sun blogs compete in a separate category. Baltimore's best restaurants and bars While you're at it, go vote for your favorite Baltimore restaurant and bar . As part of our guide to the Baltimore area's top restaurants and bars, we want to hear from you. Tell us your favorite restaurant/bar in or around Baltimore, and you could win a $50 gift card to the winning restaurant/bar.

Bohagers' staff planned to entertain a crowd watching the Super Bowl yesterday with a 10-foot television screen and an all-you-can-eat buffet. Instead, the restaurant and nightclub on South Eden Street in Fells Point never opened. "We were all set for tonight," Bohagers' general manager Michael Miguel said yesterday, after deciding to remain closed. "Unfortunately, I think the weather got the better of us. It's snowing pretty good." The snowstorm hit on a particularly bad day for Maryland businesses, especially restaurants, bars and takeout joints, that expected a windfall from the year's biggest football game.

A proposal to require restaurants and bars to post letter grades rating their performance in city health inspections has some business owners worried they may lose customers if inspectors give their establishments a less than perfect score. But giving people access to information that allows them to judge how food and beverage venues stack up against each other in terms of cleanliness has worked in other cities, and there's no reason consumers here shouldn't be able to make the same sort of comparisons.

A man walks into a barThe owners of the Fireside Inn are hoping that many more than one person will be doing that when their first comedy show makes its debut Saturday night.Dave Parry, who took over the Glen Burnie restaurant in May, came up with the idea a few months ago after a trip to New York with a few employees.But he is not the first in the county to have caught on to the lucrative possibilities of comedy.A half-dozen restaurants and bars from Odenton to Pasadena have signed up acts in the past year to make customers laugh -- and most are discovering that comedians pack them in."

Smokers can still light up in some Howard County restaurants and bars, but not for long. The protracted local struggle over the issue formally ends June 1, when the county's no-smoking law takes full effect. The final legislation, which allowed smoking to continue in bars and restaurants with physically separate sections until June, passed on a 3-2 party-line County Council vote June 5 of last year. County officials plan to publicize the ban affecting bars and restaurants at an afternoon news conference at Mi Casa, a restaurant in the 3300 block of St. Johns Lane in Ellicott City, whose owners eliminated smoking more than a year ago. Howard County becomes the first location in the Baltimore area to ban smoking in restaurants and bars, following Talbot, Prince George's and Montgomery counties in Maryland.

THE ISSUE: Howard County Executive James N. Robey is preparing legislation that would ban smoking in the county's restaurants and bars. Robey could submit a bill to the County Council as early as next month. He is weighing the benefit to public health against claims that local businesses would be hurt. Do you favor a smoking ban in the county's restaurants and bars? YOUR VIEW: Send e-mail responses by tomorrow to howard.speakout@baltsun.com. A selection of responses will be published Sunday.

The Baltimore Sun's 4th annual Mobbies It's nomination time for The Baltimore Sun's 4th annual Mobbies competition for Maryland's Outstanding Blogs. Nominations are now being accepted for your favorite blogs and social media accounts through Oct. 25. Voting begins Oct. 29. Yes, there's a category for Best Food Blog. Read the full rules . And go nominate . Baltimore Sun blogs compete in a separate category. Baltimore's best restaurants and bars While you're at it, go vote for your favorite Baltimore restaurant and bar . As part of our guide to the Baltimore area's top restaurants and bars, we want to hear from you. Tell us your favorite restaurant/bar in or around Baltimore, and you could win a $50 gift card to the winning restaurant/bar.

Yesterday's article reporting the suspension of the liquor license for Bogie's restaurant on Riva Road requires clarification.On Feb.24 at 3:30 a.m., general manager Steven Sanders was found at Bogie'swith a full beer bottle in his hand while several employees were finishing work, police testified at Tuesday's liquor board hearings.State law mandates that restaurants and bars must shut down by 2 a.m.

BALTIMORE restaurateurs are once again lighting candles instead of cursing the darkness, thanks to a dose of common sense from Mayor Martin O'Malley, who learned from an article in The Sun on Wednesday that the city's Fire Department had banned from local restaurants and bars all candles, oil lamps and other tragedies just waiting to happen. Fire Division Chief Theodore G. Saunders said the ban was in response to the deadly fire caused by the illegal use of fireworks in a Rhode Island night club and the stampede set off by the use of pepper spray in a crowded Chicago night spot.

Whenever you drink a National Premium or Natty Boh, think of Jerome "Jerry" DiPaolo, the colorful National Brewing Co. salesman and executive who helped make it one of the most recognizable and respected beers for more than 40 years in Baltimore and Maryland. It's sad that DiPaolo, who recently died at 95, never got a chance to enjoy the new National Premium. Once his former employer's flagship product, it is now back in bars, but not on tap, and on liquor store shelves. The beer, which last crossed the bar and coursed down the throats of its many fans more than 15 years ago, was recently revived by Tim Miller, an Eastern Shore businessman.

In honor of Patrick 'Scunny' McCusker, restaurants and bars in an around O'Donnell Square in Canton will be donating 30 percent of all daily sales on Wednesday to Believe in Tomorrow Children's Foundation. McCusker was perhaps best known as the owner of Nacho Mama's, the Tex Mex restaurant he opened in 1994 on O'Donnell Street in Canton, which was then unfamiliar territory. But he has also been lauded, in the days, following his death, as a tireless philanthropist. He was particularly devoted to Believe in Tomorrow National Children's Foundation, a Baltimore-based nonprofit that provides hospital and housing services to critically ill children and their families.

There's no denying — craft beers are more popular than they've been in decades. To keep up with demand, restaurants and bars have upped their draft selections, hosted beer tastings and started pairing food with beers. In the Baltimore region, few restaurants fill this niche as well as Frisco Taphouse and Brewery . This Columbia restaurant and bar serves a fantastic selection of beers, and backs it up with solid dishes. Crowds have responded — on a recent Wednesday night, Frisco was packed.

Porter's , the Federal Hill corner restaurant and bar once known as Ransome's , is back in business. Now known as Porters , the place has apparently lost an apostrophe but regained a lot of customers from the old days, the neighborhood folks who missed having a reliable place closer to their homes than Light Street. The new Porters is off to a good start, according to co-owner Kevin Cooper, who says that the folks living on the east side of Federal Hill were "extremely excited about the reopening of Porters in any form at all."

Simon Kahle Price, who owned a Canton restaurant and a Butchers Hill bar, died Jan. 20 at Johns Hopkins Hospital of post-operative complications after an aortic aneurysm. He was 41. Mr. Prince, the son of a pastor and a Baltimore District Court judge, was born in Baltimore and raised in Annapolis. Known as "Si," Mr. Price was a 1985 graduate of Broadneck High School, where he had been a member of the wrestling, football and lacrosse teams. He attended what is now McDaniel College and Catonsville Community College before earning a bachelor's degree in sociology from Towson University in 1992.

Beatrice Rugolo, longtime co-owner of Jerry's Belvedere Tavern, the popular Govans bar and restaurant, died Wednesday of lung and brain cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care. The Lutherville resident was 65. She was born Beatrice Varelli and spent her early years in Enna, Sicily, before coming to Baltimore and settling into a home on Erdman Avenue in 1956. She graduated from St. Elizabeth's Parochial School in Highlandtown. During the 1960s, she worked as a women's apparel and lingerie buyer for the old Stewart's department store.

In Big Sky country, they like their air fresh, especially the indoor variety. That's why it's against the law to light up a cigarette in a Montana restaurant. California, Maine, Delaware and seven other states require restaurants and bars to be smoke-free, too. Ireland and Italy won't let people smoke in enclosed public places. By next year, England won't, either - thanks to this week's vote in parliament. The trend is clear: It's not a matter of if but when smoking will be banned from all Maryland restaurants and bars.

Years from now, people will look back on the Howard County Council's decision Monday to ban smoking in all restaurants and bars and wonder: What was all the fuss about? Certainly that's how most people now regard Maryland's statewide ban on smoking in the workplace. Can you imagine the person in the next cube lighting up a stogie and blowing smoke rings across the office? It might have happened not so many years ago. Times have changed - bars and restaurants have been exempted from the smoking ban for too long.

A young Canadian who has spent a lot of time in Europe and who now lives in Baltimore asks: "How come your restaurants and bars don't recycle?" This Winnipeger had just been to a pizza shop for lunch and had emptied a bottle of soda down his pipe. He looked around for a blue recycling receptacle and found none. This happens everywhere he goes. He's a little shocked by it, having grown accustomed to seeing recycling barrels side-by-side with trash cans all over Canada and Europe, even in the smallest towns.

Under Howard County law, smoking in all county restaurants and bars, and within 15 feet of entry doors, becomes illegal at midnight tomorrow. Main Street in Historic Ellicott City is exempted from the 15-foot rule because of the narrow sidewalks. County government officials have said they will enforce the law by responding to complaints, not by inspecting bars and restaurants. Penalties start with a $100 civil citation for each infraction. Owners and managers who allow smoking after the law takes effect are subject to a $250 civil fine per infraction.