Sutton Place Gourmet

I walked into the Sutton Place Gourmet in Pikesville and my spirits soared with anticipation. Beautiful produce and a wonderful selection of cheeses beckoned. It looked like the perfect place to grab a gourmet dinner to go. Alas, looks can be deceiving. Sutton Place, part of a Maryland-D.C.-Virginia chain specializing in high-end foods and catering, sits in the Woodholme Shopping Center only a couple of blocks north of the Beltway on Reisterstown Road. You can order a sandwich from the deli or make your own salad.

Dime, Anchor Bancorp to mergeDime Bancorp Inc. and Anchor Bancorp Inc. said yesterday that they have agreed to a stock-swap merger that would create the largest savings bank on the East Coast.Dime, headquartered in New York, will give shareholders in Hewlett, N.Y.-based Anchor 1.77 shares of Dime stock for each Anchor share. The companies valued the deal at $1.2 billion based on Dime's stock price as of July 1.The combined company will be the fourth-largest savings institution in the country.

Want to get your Thanksgiving dinner off to an elegant and nutritious start?Begin with a colorful salad of baby greens. I realize this exceeds the bounds of the strictly traditional, but think of the advantages.Everyone comes to the table starving, increasing the probability they'll try something new. The fiber is a good filler, so, hopefully, folks won't eat quite so much of the higher-fat foods. And these leafy greens and reds are high in vitamin C, beta carotenes and calcium, likely to be in short supply in the rest of the meal.

The folks at Sutton Place Gourmet, a chain of three stores in and around Washington, looked at Pikesville and decided there was room here for more cherambolas and chocolate truffles.So they took over the space in the Festival at Woodholme that used to hold the Gourmet Shop, refurbished and expanded it and just opened up shop last week.Sutton Place Gourmet has taken the concept of a gourmet store to the heights. It's been called by NASFT Showcase, a specialty foods trade magazine, "one of the most respected specialty food stores in the country."

Eureka, Sutton Place Gourmet, 1809 Reisterstown Road, in the Festival at Woodholme. (410) 484-6044. Open for lunch and dinner. AE, MC, V. No smoking. Wheelchair accessible: yes. Prices: appetizers, $4.50-$5.95; entrees, $7.95-$13.95."Some people are upset that we've changed our menu," the woman who answered the phone told me when I called to make reservations at Eureka, the newest venture of Sutton Place Gourmet.I can see that. The cafe at the area's classiest supermarket used to be the place to have a gourmet sandwich or a salad -- a quick lunch or light supper (assuming you could get a table)

The amazing rise of maize mushroomGourmets and chefs call it a maize mushroom or Mexican truffle. Farmers, who until recently considered the stuff a nuisance, call it corn smut.Whatever you care to call it, this fungus that grows on corn is hot news in the food world -- from the Plaza Hotel in New York to the Harbor Court in Baltimore.It looks like the least likely candidate for a gourmet meal -- a charcoal, mushy mass that still has some of the corn silk attached. But chefs like Michael Rork of the Harbor Court Hotel say after it's cleaned it becomes a wonderful addition to sauces, such as in his maize mushrooms and ancho pepper fruit sauce that he serves with a seafood tamale.

Having a caterer, restaurant or upscale food store plan and prepare the perfect menu is the ultimate luxury. Sutton Place Gourmet in Pikesville, for example, will choose everything for your dinner from the perfect garnish for the appetizer platter to the perfect after-dinner drink.But remember, you don't have to buy everything at a gourmet carryout; you can choose instead to order the time-consuming dishes and fill in with easier recipes.Gourmet carryout places are also a great source for fancy ingredients.

Sutton Place Gourmet, a Rockville-based specialty food chain, has merged with Hay Day Market, a chain of gourmet stores in Fairfield County, Conn., and Westchester County, N.Y., company officials have announced.The merger of 800-employee Sutton Place and 425-employee Hay Day will create a firm with projected 1995 revenues of nearly $100 million, according to a Sutton Place press release announcing the merger.Mark Berey, president and chief executive officer of Sutton Place, will head the merged company.

Sutton Place is the gourmet cafe to end all gourmet cafes. It's also the gourmet deli to end all gourmet delis, the gourmet carry-out to end all gourmet carry-outs and, as a matter of fact, the gourmet supermarket to . . . well, you get the idea.My mother, that arbiter of good taste in both senses of the words, always insisted that if you didn't make your own mayonnaise, you bought Hellman's. The other brands had (gasp) sugar in them. So you can imagine how struck I was by the fact that under "Condiments Available" on the menu Sutton Place lists Hellman's mayonnaise by brand name.

After an outbreak of food poisoning linked to fresh basil or basil products such as pesto, customers of Sutton Place Gourmet stores who recently purchased such items are being urged to return them or throw them away.Four Montgomery County residents and two visitors from out of state became ill after eating products bought at stores in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs of Washington, the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said yesterday.They became infected with the cyclospora parasite, which causes diarrhea, loss of appetite, stomach cramps and fever.