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James and Austin Carpenter, the husband-wife owners of Swirl Wine in Timonium, send out a weekly e-mail about their free Friday wine tastings. This week, they also talked about a recent visit to Joe Squared, which I thought was great. They agreed to let me share their experience:
"The other night, after we closed the shop, we went to our favorite place for pizza, a place downtown called Joe Squared. They have a coal-fired oven that makes heavenly, thin-crust, delicate pizza, with fresh toppings in a cool, hipster, artsy ambiance. We saddled up at the bar, ordered a Hawaiian pizza and got something to wet our whistle.
There was a lot of activity up front, where they usually have bands play, as a DJ was setting up his elaborate equipment and people were starting to gather. It seemed that we stumbled across an underground break-dance party that was just about to begin. Crazy-retro!
Austin and I had a perfect angle to view all the action from our seats at the dimly lit bar. A circle of eclectic people formed by the DJ, and when I say eclectic, I really mean it. There was a guy with his face painted like a skull (Austin wanted to stick around to see his dance, cause you know, a guy with his face painted has got to be good). We devoured our pizza as the dancers would take their turn, one by one, in the center of the circle to maneuver and thrust their bodies to the high tempo beats.
After watching this old style of dance, that we thought was extinct, but evidently is making a comeback, we thought we'd apply the same thought process to our tasting this week. You know the saying, what once was old, is now new, so let's revisit some oldies but goodies."
So today (Jan. 22), James and Austin will be featuring Merlot at their wine tasting. As James said in the e-mail, "Let's bring it back, baby. Fall in love with Merlot all over again."
I’ve been to the couple’s wine tastings, and they are so much fun. Stop by the store for the free sips and snacks between 4-7 p.m. Fridays. You’ll enjoy it.
But more on Joe Squared. In one of those Smalltimore moments, owner Joe Edwardsen called me this week. He said his new restaurant, Cuadrado, across from his pizza restaurant is still on track.
Joe hopes for a March opening. I was glad to get the update. I had blogged about Cuadrado last February. It will be a take on a Mexican barbeque place. The name is Spanish for "squared," of course.
