This creamy comfort food finds a home on restaurant menus.
You can't open a menu these days without spying a listing for mac and cheese. Who would have thought this plebian comfort food would captivate some of the best chefs in town?
Today's farmers are no longer anonymous--in fact, they like connecting with their customers, and they'll even share their recipes.
A decade ago, the question, "Is it a good time to be a farmer?" would probably have been met with a laugh—unless you were the kind of farmer who owned 100 subdividable acres in a profitable area. The idealized notion of farm stands proffering lush tomatoes and spiky cukes, eggs gathered from hens squawking in a barnyard, and milk in glass bottles from cows milked that very morning is the stuff of storybooks.
More and more children are suffering with food allergies and doctors don't know why.
Imagine there's a time bomb attached to your child, one that could go off at any time and cause him or her life-threatening harm. That kind of knowledge would change the way your family lives and be a cause of constant stress. That's what life is like for Warren and Sari Alperstein since they discovered their oldest son, Ryan, has food allergies. Ryan, now 7, is allergic to milk and was allergic to eggs, but it is his severe allergy to peanuts and tree nuts that is deadly.
Stacked, wrapped, pressed, or grilled, we found a revolution of stuffed bread around town.
Mmmm…sandwiches. We personally would like to thank the Earl of Sandwich for his part in establishing this lunchtime trend, now extended to all hours of the day. According to legend, the hungry 18th-century nobleman refused to leave a gaming table and asked his valet to bring him meat between two slices of bread. It may have been just a humble salt beef, but the name "sandwich" and a fast meal were born. Centuries later, the advent of sliced bread sent Americans into their own sandwich frenzy. The possibilities were endless.
He's been a perfectionist, personally monitoring every aspect of his family-run restaurant for 20 years. So is Linwood Dame beginning to ease up? Don't count on it.
Wearing his trademark horn-rimmed glasses, chef's whites, and well-worn Dansko clogs, Linwood Dame stands in the corner of his open kitchen, puts a pinch of English sea salt over a watermelon-and-feta salad and simultaneously studies the row of lunch tickets to make sure the food is finding its way to the tables in a timely fashion.
"Was this tuna returned because the first piece was overcooked?" Dame grills a server as he garnishes a plate. "How long has this table been waiting?" he asks another server. "What do we have on pick up?" he shouts to a sous chef.
Sweet Léla’s Market Café
Sweet Léla’s leads a double life. It hides under the guise of a market café by day and then cleverly struts itself as a multi-course, tablecloth restaurant at night, at least on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. And the manager, Vincenzo Diferrante, is so irresistibly charming that you’re won over long before the vegetable antipasti arrives on a pretty orange plate with thick slabs of fresh mozzarella, tender eggplant, black olives, and summer-licious tomatoes.
Dangerously Delicious Pies cooks up savory selections.
Rodney “The Pie Man” Henry has been busy. He recently renovated his Federal Hill store, Dangerously Delicious Pies, and then proceeded to gussy up a location in Hampden (3547 Chestnut Ave., 410-662-7437, dangerouspies.com), adding Savory House to the original name. The spruced-up restaurant—where Finnerteas used to be before its roof blew off during a storm a few summers ago—has a chic vibe with scarlet walls, lacquered tables, glistening wood floors, and wrought-iron chandeliers.
The word "McDonald's" evokes images of hard plastic booths, fluorescent lights, and outdated colors. Not exactly the kind of place you'd imagine armchairs and signed artwork. But that is just what franchise owners Barbara and Bob Houck have in mind for one of their four McDonald's. After 41 years, the 502 Reisterstown Road location has come face to face with a wrecking ball, and the Houcks are reimagining what a McDonald's can be.
Head to the fields, pick grapes, and watch wine being made.
The hills are alive with—well, lots of vines. Maryland now boasts 33 wineries that produce more than 240 different wines, according to the Maryland Wineries Association. And last year, more than 225,000 gallons of local vino were flowing through the state. It's enough to make you want to uncork another bottle.
Well-Schooled in Wine
Back-to-school sales are just about wrapped up as our collective pride and joys trundle off to another year of academic pursuits. A summer full of relations, vacations, stay-cations, and Play Stations has come to a close, and, now, there's an empty house. Whew! It's time to enjoy a little back-to-school shopping of our own, and what better way to usher in the beginning of a new school year than with the offerings of L'Ecole No. 41, Walla Walla, Washington's, attractive, high quality winery?
Saute
Sauté, a tavern-style restaurant near Patterson Park, serves oysters and calamari that are fried, pork loin that is slow-roasted, and pizzas and steak that are grilled. Very few items are actually sautéed, but that doesn't matter. Most are quite good.
Cultural diversity reaches new levels at York Garden.
When you drive by York Garden Restaurant and Bar (9726 York Road, Cockeysville, 410-666-5303), you can't help but do a double take. A big sign out front announces that there is Indian and Mexican cuisine being served at what was formerly Asiana Indian Cuisine. Whoa, this is taking fusion to a whole new level.
Once inside and settled in the hushed dining room with pink overtones, we asked our server why the restaurant had chosen to serve two seemingly divergent types of cuisines. She explained the owners were hoping to draw in more customers that way. Fair enough.
A Towson barista takes coffee to new level at the library.
Some of the best espresso in town can be found in an unlikely place: the Towson Library. The unassuming Spro Coffee stand doubles as a laboratory for its owner, culinary mad scientist Jay Caragay. The coffeemeister had been looking for a venue when the library space opened up in 2006. He's been brewing there ever since.
Mia Carolina
You know how some restaurants bring your bread with ice-cold butter that is impossible to spread? Jay Cohen, the owner and executive chef of three-year-old Mia Carolina in Glyndon, gets really annoyed by that. So at his restaurant, he makes sure the butter is warm enough to spread easily.
Chill Out With Summer Wines
It's a special kind of climatic hangover we endure this time of year in Maryland. And like "hangover," the official letter for August probably should be "H"—hazy, hot, and humid. But a refreshing beverage can be just the thing to take the edge off the suffocating heat.
