The Brass Elephant has closed, according to its Facebook page. The building has been for sale for a couple of months, but I kept hoping this elegant restaurant could hang on. It didn’t.

That’s the fourth restaurant on our 2009 Best Restaurants list to shut its doors. The others are Jordan’s Steakhouse, Ixia, and The Bicycle. And maybe we’ll also have to add The Dogwood, which closed for the month of August.

Although chef/co-owner Galen Sampson said recently that the restaurant will reopen, others aren’t so sure. A commenter on our blog—who said he was a former employee—had this to say, "Most of the front of the house staff is already working elsewhere, and the entire kitchen staff has moved on."

None of this is good, of course. During an e-mail exchange a few weeks ago with Marcus Olson, the chef at The Brass Elephant (and our pick as this year’s best new chef in town), he sounded discouraged. He wrote:

"Trying to do the best in an economy is out of a chef’s control. . . . I’ve never been in a city where the suburbs are more busy with customers than the actual city is! . . . We are a local restaurant and all the chain restaurants seem to be frequented more than independent downtown dining."

But there are bright spots with the opening of Blue Hill Tavern (see my review in our October issue), Taverna Corvino, Pizzazz, and Talara.

There also will be a new restaurant opening soon in the spot once occupied by Tsunami on Bank Street near Little Italy. Called Diablita ("Little Devil"), it will feature Mexican fare. That’s all I know for now. The owners are finalizing the menu and promise to get back to me soon with more information.

I have become slightly obsessed with these lunchtime meals. They’re fairly inexpensive and offer lots of food. And the best part is that I usually get two meals out of one.

RA Sushi has been my go-to place for the traditional Japanese boxes. I love the abundance of fresh sautéed veggies, slaw salad, steaming miso soup plus other good stuff.

But recently, I succumbed to the bento boxes at Roy’s in Harbor East and Umi Sake in Cockeysville. You can read more about my lunch at Roy’s in our October issue. But for now, just know that the spicy ahi tuna poke (a traditional Hawaiian dish) in the bento box is worth a return trip.

If you haven’t heard of Umi Sake, it’s a new Japanese fusion-sushi restaurant, located in the spot where York Garden used to be in Cockeysville. Lisa Lee is running the show there now. Locals may remember her from Johnny’s Sushi (now Yamato Sushi) in Timonium.

Lisa left Johnny’s when her daughter was born. Now, she’s back at work. By the looks of the crowd at Umi Sake, followers have found her.

I stopped by at lunchtime to check out the restaurant. The space is pretty. Lisa has changed the color scheme, ditching the pink for soothing beige. Asian artwork hangs on the walls. It’s very Zen.

So I was happy to also be transported with a bento box, featuring a magnificent slab of teriyaki salmon (there are other choices, too). Fried rice, vegetable spring rolls, salad, and miso soup completed the package. I went back another time for sushi and sake. I’ll tell you about that in our November issue.

In the meantime, where do you go for bento boxes?

Tonight, Chef Jesse Sandlin of Abacrombie Fine Foods will be preparing finger foods like local peaches wrapped with Serrano ham and heirloom tomatoes with Buffalo mozzarella for guests who are paying $60 to nosh and to watch the premiere episode of Bravo’s Top Chef: Las Vegas at Silo Point’s swanky penthouse. The catch is that Jesse is one of the cheftestants on the show, which is in its sixth season.

"I’ve never been on TV before," she says. "It’s a little surreal."

Jesse is good friends with Jill Snyder, a cheftestant on last year’s show who is now working at Woodberry Kitchen. She said Jill wasn’t the reason she decided to try out for a spot on Top Chef. She really wanted to promote her hometown

"I have a lot of love for Baltimore," said Jesse, 30, who went to Glen Burnie Senior High. "There’s great stuff going on."

She joins two other native Marylanders, brothers Bryan and Michael Voltaggio, who grew up in Frederick. Bryan is the chef/owner of the award-winning VOLT in the Western Maryland town. Michael is a chef de cuisine at a Michelin-star restaurant in Pasadena, CA.

Jesse has nothing but praise for both guys. She’s been to Bryan’s restaurant, where she asked him to cook whatever he liked for her. "It’s really amazing," she said. "He’s a really talented guy and super nice."

I talked to Jesse yesterday on the phone about her Top Chef experience. We were joined by a Bravo representative, who runs interference in case I start pumping Jesse for info about this year’s competition. Jesse isn’t allowed to talk about the particulars, but she sounded upbeat and happy about the deal.

She said she expected cattiness but didn’t find it. "The people I met were awesome," she said." But she added that maybe it would seem more cutthroat once the footage was edited.

She spent six weeks in Las Vegas for the show, which hasn’t shot the finale yet. She wasn’t a big fan of the heat. "I hated it," she said, laughing. "I’m not a summertime person."

The 17 competitors also didn’t get a chance to see much of the so-called Sin City. "Your pretty secluded from the world," she said.

Jesse is a self-taught chef. There are actually several chefs who are not culinary-school trained in this season’s group, but there are also competitors who have received prestigious James Beard awards.

But Jesse, who spent 14 years perfecting her cooking chops in restaurants from here to Australia, takes a realistic approach. "It’s just little ol' me," she says. "I tried to be me, who I was, there."

Perhaps Jesse’s colorful tattoos speak more to her spirit and drive. "I get comments all the time," she said. "People will stop me in the grocery store." She doesn’t mind. Each of the tats has something to do with her life. "There’s a story behind every one of them," she said.

She’s also quick to point out, "I’m anything but timid."

Go, Jesse. Let the competition begin.

Chef Galen Sampson assures me that The Dogwood in Hampden is not closing permanently. He’s heard the rumors, too. Even his liquor distributor thought he had shut his doors for good. His answer, "No, absolutely not."

Galen, who has had bronchitis for the last few weeks and been out of touch, said that the restaurant he owns with his wife, Bridget, is going through a reorganization. It stopped lunch service and closed for August.

When Dogwood reopens in September, Galen said it will just serve dinner Tuesday-Saturday. It may be a financial decision, but he thinks the restaurant is better suited to evenings anyway. "We’re a basement restaurant," he said. "We’re more attractive at night."

His lunch staff, who were part of a culinary training program, is now at the nonprofit Plates Cafe and Catering in the Woman’s Industrial Exchange on North Charles Street. Galen is on the board and also develops recipes for the restaurant; Bridget is its acting executive director.

Plates currently serves lunch Mondays-Fridays but plans to add breakfast hours in the fall, Galen said.

In the meantime, he said many of his other kitchen help and servers took vacation time and "plan to come back to us" at Dogwood.

I also talked to Christian DeLutis today. He’s Dogwood’s former chef de cuisine and now executive chef at Alizee. He’s also a good friend of Galen’s. He said the restaurant was always busy when he was working there. "I see them landing on their feet," he said.

Galen sounded positive about reopening. "It’s tough right now," the chef said. "I expect September to be a good month."

We hope so, too.

I once baked chocolate-chip cookies in my car on a hot summer day. Really! It was an experiment, albeit a slightly failed one.

I remembered this yesterday when I was driving on Caroline Street and saw kids playing in gushing water from an open fire hydrant. There was a police car with lights flashing and blocking the lane so the kids could dash around. In yesterday’s heat, I would like to have joined them.

Of course, the sizzling sidewalks brought to mind the old adage, "It’s so hot, you could fry an egg" on them. Years ago, when I was at The Sun, that same thought got the folks in the features department to thinking about other things you could cook outside minus a grill or an oven.

The next thing I knew, I was whipping up cookie dough, spooning tablespoons on a baking sheet, placing the tin on my car engine (not running), and closing the hood, in the sweltering noonday August heat.

Amazingly, the cookies baked, but in a crazy way. They were like thin shells with no insides. I don’t recommend it. There are better ways to get sweets.

Has anyone ever tried to fry an egg on the sidewalk?

Gino Troia’s Grano Pasta Bar is staying in Hampden but is moving around the corner to 3547 Chestnut Ave., where Dangerously Delicious Pies Savory House used to be. The transition should take place by mid-September.

"We turned away so many people," Gino said of the current tiny space at 36th Street and Hickory Avenue. "We’ll have the same name, same menu, and same prices."

He added that there will be some specialties on the menu like osso buco and fish dishes for patrons who want more protein in their diets.

But the old location won’t stay empty for long. A new Cuban restaurant, Havana Road, with a chef from Cuba (Marta Quintana, who now lives in Lutherville) will move in, offering authentic fare, like ropa viejo sandwiches, and Cuban coffee, Gino said.

I also got an e-mail from Marta’s business partner, Susan Yannetti, letting me know that, in addition to the take-out restaurant, she and the chef are also launching an artisanal foods company that will retail products through Whole Foods in the mid-Atlantic region.

Hampden dining just gets more and more interesting.

The Kali’s Restaurant Group is expanding. In early fall, Tapas Adela will join siblings Kali’s Court, Mezze, and Meli in Fells Point. The new restaurant will be in the space formerly occupied by Petticoat Tearoom at 814 S. Broadway, next-door to the Admiral Fell Inn.

Kenneth Petty, Meli’s general manager, said the restaurant will offer "classic Spanish tapas" with a modern interpretation. Corporate chef Rashad Edwards (one of the nicest guys around) will have his hand in the menu development, though another chef, to be decided, will be on site when the restaurant opens.

There will be courtyard tables in the rear, Kenneth says, in addition to interior seating at the new place. There’s a liquor license in place, and there will be valet parking. What more could you want?

Kenneth said he doesn’t expect the new tapas restaurant—called Adela because the Kali’s group loved the traditional Spanish name—to compete with Mezze, which focuses on Greek small plates.

The busy restaurateurs also snagged the closed Admiral’s Cup earlier this year. Kenneth didn’t disclose any plans for the once longtime institution on Thames Street across from the water-taxi stop. He said the restaurant group is expecting about a year of renovations at the former waterfront bar.

Details to come.