Woodberry Kitchen

Breaking from my usual Baltimore quick trip tradition of crabs and beer on Butcher’s Hill or a night out at Peter’s Inn, this time around I planned ahead for dinner at Woodberry Kitchen. It was my little sister’s birthday after all, and I also remembered old tales from her husband about how much he liked Spike & Charlie’s, Woodberry co-owner Spike Gjerde’s long gone spot near Baltimore’s Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. Besides, I’d been hankering for a visit ever since reading about Woodberry Kitchen at both Old World Old School and The VLMTR.


Open for about a year and a half now, Spike and his wife Amy Gjerde’s newest spot serves contemporary American cuisine with a strong locavore focus. The sprawling space, which includes seating on two-levels, an inviting bar and a fully open kitchen, combines country rusticity with an air of urban chic. It’s a feel very much in keeping with the restaurant’s location on an old mill site that’s now been converted into an upscale condo development. A similar feel carries over to the equally sprawling menu, where popcorn, poutine and pierogies intermingle with Chesapeake classics and dressed up bistro-oriented “supper” plates. Though the menu lacks focus, its wide range offers something for just about any taste.

Oyster Stew – Choptank oysters, cream, leeks, pretzel bowl

Along with the brilliantly flavorful Roseda Farm tavern steak ordered by Sister R, Woodberry’s oyster stew was a highlight of our meal. The pretzel bowl presentation eliminated any need for a side of bread for sopping up the remains of the dish while also putting a fun twist (pun half-intended) on a Maryland standard. Of course, it would have been nothing more than cute if not for the richly creamed soup and generous fistful of plump, juicy Choptanks.

Woolsey Farms Leg of Lamb – purple cabbage, mixed roots, warm pea shoot salad, fresh mint

This was a seasonal special, right down to the creamed purple cabbage that made for a seriously startling, Easter egg-hued plate presentation. Once past the color shock, though, it was plenty tasty, the lamb beautifully bronzed and fork tender, the fresh snap of pea shoots and mint providing brightness and balance to what otherwise would have been a bit too bass heavy.


I neglected to note the official menu description for my dessert. The scrumptious apple-caramel bundt cake was true to Woodberry’s overall feel in its comforting core dressed up with a touch of pastry artistry.

The wine list, split simply into sections for sparkling, white and red, then arranged by price, is also right in step with the menu and mission at Woodberry. Offerings are focused in Europe with just enough globalization to provide appeal to a broad range of diners. A serious nod is given to local wines from both Maryland and Virginia, while the list also includes a featured organic producer – Nuits-Saint-Georges’ Domaine Thibault Liger-Belair at the time of our visit. Good values include the Beaujolais “Cuvée Traditionnelle” from Pierre-Marie Chermette, Charles Joguet’s Chinon “Cuvée Terroir,” and Jo Landron’s 2007 Muscadet from Domaine de la Louvetrie. I had set my sights on Provençal producer Henri Milan’s “Le Grand Blanc,” which I’d scouted out on WK’s website, only to find it no longer available. A bummer… but given our carnivorous choices, we made do with a bottle of red, Montirius’ Vacqueyras “Garrigues.”

Everything we tried was well executed, showing more than enough promise that – as a destination diner in this case – I’d like to see what Chef Spike and his kitchen crew could achieve by cutting back on the number of menu offerings, perhaps allowing things to be taken to a higher level. On the flip side, if I lived close enough to make Woodberry Kitchen a regular stop I might just be happy to have pierogies and poutine for the occasional mix-up, or to splurge on a bottle of Larmandier-Bernier Blanc de Blancs to pair with the housemade potato chips while hanging out at the bar.

Woodberry Kitchen
2010 Clipper Park Road, No. 126
Baltimore, MD 21211
410-464-8000

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Midweek in Mobtown

Does the lack of response to yesterday's pop quiz means that identifying the photo turned out to be harder than I expected or is it just a reflection of the fact that traffic here at MFWT tends to plummet like a rock on holidays? The above question is more or less a moot point, as I'm about to reveal the answer to yesterday's puzzle; stop reading (at least for now) if you'd still like to go back and take a stab at it.


Yesterday's mystery photo is of the police station located on Thames Street in Baltimore's Fells Point neighborhood. The station acted as the central setting for my favorite cop drama series of all time, Homicide: Life on the Street, which originally aired on NBC from 1993-1999.


Just across the street from the station, The Daily Grind was once among the progenitors of coffee/cafe culture in Baltimore and was also a regular stop for the cast of HLOTS. It's far less crunchy, far more corporate today than in its early days. But at least it's still not Starbucks.


In spite of all the development that's gone into the Inner Harbor commercial district and Camden Yards over the last couple of decades, the view from most points across Baltimore's harbor still reveals the city's industrial heartbeat.

Though I'd planned my midweek trip to Mobtown just to spend a little time with family, my timing turned out to coincide with my brother-in-law Mark's group art opening at Roman's Place, a tiny little locals' bar at the intersection of the Patterson Park, Canton and Highlandtown neighborhoods in East Baltimore.



That's Mark's entry, "Fool in the Mirror," in the foreground above.





Some of the other entries in the group show, including a typically freaky photo from Sam Holden (who's been mentioned here before).



My nephew Axel, grooving on the artful energy at Roman's.


It may have been a cold and blustery day but Spring was still clearly in force around the pagoda in Patterson Park.


Yep, there was even a little wine junket built into the trip. I hit Chesapeake Wine Company on the way out of town. The shop, which also includes a wine and snack bar, is located on the site of the old American Can Company facility on Boston Street in Canton. They carry a fairly diverse selection with a solid percentage of interesting stuff from good importers such as Rosenthal, Potomac Selections and Domaine Select. They also passed at least one customer service test with flying colors, not even batting an eye when I returned the corked bottle of R. Lopez de Heredia's 2002 Rioja "Viña Cubillo" I'd picked up on my last visit.

There was food too, but for that we'll have to wait....

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My Favorite Baltimore Haunt

Happy Halloween! In celebration of today’s ghoul fest – and my 100th blog post – I thought I’d write up one of my favorite old neighborhood haunts.

I grew up in the Baltimore/Washington corridor and still have strong sentimental and family attachments to Baltimore (aka, Charm City, Mobtown). Baseball has never seemed the same since going to see the Birds play in Memorial Stadium, with Boog Powell on first, Brooks on third and Paul Blair out in center field. Those were good days to go to a game, carry along the glove (just in case!) and eat some peanuts or a frank while dad took advantage of the Schaeffer or Natty Boh (depending on the season) being hawked by the roving vendors. I also kick started my education in food by going as a young lad to many of the ethnic heritage festivals peppered around Baltimore’s Inner Harbor area.

Well, the Orioles have never rediscovered the glory of the 1970s and I haven’t made it to the Polish festival in many a moon. However, I do still make the trip to Baltimore on a semi-regular basis to visit family and take in the feel of a different city. Baltimore is an easy two-hour drive south from Philly and, while it shares a touch of the “small town in a big city” vibe that can be found in Philadelphia, Mobtown otherwise has a completely different look and feel. And as Memorial Stadium, not to mention my interest in baseball, is no more, I’ve had to find a new haunt.

Peter’s Inn is just the place. Founded in its current iteration by Bud and Karin Tiffany in the early 1990s, Peter’s Inn is a former biker bar reborn as Baltimore’s strongest bastion of gastro-pub cuisine. At its heart, Peter’s is still a neighborhood tavern. If you can find a seat at the bar, there’s no problem with making it your shot and a beer haunt for the evening. Over the years though, the space has morphed slowly into more and more of a destination restaurant, in spite of never having shed its barroom feel. Diners now migrate in from the ‘burbs, especially on Friday and Saturday nights, to enjoy the Fells Point scene along with plates of good value and seriously tasty food.

While tables are now set with white linens and the couches and arm chairs once found in the back room have been replaced with more practical seating, you’ll still find plenty of the original ambience of the old Peter’s as well as evidence of the big personalities of the Tiffany’s. There’s a pile of atomic fire balls on offer on the ledge under the chalkboard menu. A CD collection and space for a DJ to set-up on the occasional Friday night can be found behind the bar. Fetishist photos by local artist Sam Holden adorn the bathroom walls. And in those bathrooms, at least in the men’s room, you’ll still find holdovers from the biker bar era: an old condom dispenser, industrial hand scrub, and a jar of Listerine along with a stack of Dixie cups for that pre-departure breathalyzer sanitization.

It’s not just the comfortably gritty atmosphere and local feel but also the great food that makes Peter’s such a worthwhile stop. From a tiny kitchen, Bud, Karin and their small staff turn out a small menu – usually just six or seven choices – of hearty yet creative dishes. Any single plate is enough to make a meal of, particularly when paired with the house’s signature salad and huge hunk of potent garlic bread. A hungry solo diner or small group could just as easily sample or share a couple of dishes to get a greater feel for the range of the menu. Steak, along with the aforementioned sides of salad and garlic bread, has a permanent spot, anchored at the end of the menu. The rest of the selections change regularly, according to season and availability of interesting ingredients from the kitchen’s favorite purveyors. On my most recent visit, I enjoyed a plate of pristinely fresh, Hawaiian tuna served two ways: blackened, rare medallions of loin set atop rich, creamy wasabi aioli on tortilla wedges; and a generously heaped martini glass full of highly seasoned tuna tartare.

I don’t know too many other bars that sell as much if not more wine as they do beer and cocktails. There’s a short yet eclectic and fairly well chosen list of vino on hand, nearly all of it available by the glass or bottle. A few of the more surprising gems on the current list include Eric Texier Côtes du Rhône, Cheverny from François Cazin, and the Nussberg “Alte Reben” from Vienna’s Weingut Wieninger. Of course, there’s also some good whisky on hand, a decent selection of bottled beers along with a small set of craft beers on tap, and of course the ubiquitous – at least in Baltimore – cans of, you guessed it, Natty Boh.

Peter’s Inn
504 S. Ann Street
Baltimore, MD 21231
410-675-7313

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