Port Covington

[bet your life that your sweet wife is gonna catch more fish than you...]

Way back when in the not-as-chilly month of October, Dana and I went on a bike ride from (Hampden/Butcher's Hill to) downtown to Port Covington, the little V-shaped peninsula-ish strip south of Federal Hill, where the Hanover Street Bridge connects mainland Baltimore to the wilds of Brooklyn, Cherry Hill and Curtis Bay over the Middle Branch of the Patapsco. There's a Wal-Mart there, and the Baltimore Sun's printing facility, but mostly it's pretty barren.

We went mostly because the Middle Branch is allegedly the next (or maybe last?) big strip of waterfront property to be developed in the city, with all sorts of potential for that gospel idea that Bmore pols are looking for these days, referred-to alternately as Mixed Use, Live Where Work, Live Shop Work Play Eat, or First Floor Retail. Personally, I've not written a lot about Port Covington at my day job, but that just might be because it's so far down the city's wish list that not a lot is going to happen there in the next decade.

What we found was, there are some folks that prefer it that way.


[weeds]

The above is what the mouth of the Middle Branch looks like over the mess of weeds and chain-link at that very bottom tip of Port Covington. It's absolutely overgrown and filthy, with trash everywhere, but clear evidence that partying/bonfiring had been going on. It also looked like it ought to take about two seconds to bulldoze all the overgrowth and nonsense standing in the way of someone paving over paradise for a condo tower or whatever. But when we went further down to the water, we found a little square cement patio ("We could play foursquare here!" Dana said, predictably) with evidence of picknicking, and beyond that, a strip of riprap where we found this fellow:


[i'ma gon' fishin' too...]

This guy said his name was James, and he was fishing with grass shrimp bait for rockfish and bass. He told us he'd caught 45-inchers on this site before, which struck me as a slightly frightening prospect because of how close to, and bound-in by industrial pollution sites Port Covington is. He added that over the years the fish have dwindled, but he still fishes every Saturday. How postmodern, I thought -- the 21st century hobo, fishing outside the Wal-Mart.

What struck me mainly about Port Covington was not that it was such a terrible use of potentially beautiful waterfront property but that it was such a recent terrible use of waterfront property. Putting a remote, car-access-only big box retailer next to a big newspaper printing facility, all in a completely unwelcoming office park makes no sense to me in this day and age, and I think both buildings were built in the last 30 years. First of all, where's the market for the Wal Mart coming from? Across the bridge? Federal Hill? Second, aren't we in the age of What A Water View Can Do? In Baltimore especially, I'd expect this sort of parcel of land, if it was indeed bare and not occupied by troublesome factories or brownfields to be snatched up and developed as a people place shortly after the Inner Harbor was.

Anyway, that's what's happening slightly to the north in the southern part of Riverside, another stop on our bike ride. Except there's no water view (only a CSX rail yard). Cool place though.

The following buildings were side by side, and I shot them because the one on the right (which is where it appeared on the street) is the type of building that I really go for -- inornate, elegant, simple red-brick factory type deals that are built to last and full of character (KB would say -- "It's just a building, Robbie"), while the one staring it in the face across the street is a god-awful example of spaceship-from-hell modern low-budg architecture. The one on the right is luxury condos (obviously) while the one of the left was, I believe, a medical center. I don't get why developers, at least in this town, see no value in contextualizing architecture, especially in a place where you're trying to attract skilled or innovative workers and people with money, to live and work there. Doesn't anyone have any taste?


[a study in contrastualization]

To the west of these monsters, we've got the building that I recently learned is David Simon's favorite in building in Baltimore, for really predictable, pinko commie reasons about how it represents blue-collar workers undivorced from their product and its means of production (could he be any more obvious a Marxist?), the Pabst Castle. This is a dope building, I think, not because it evokes the dignity of Scotland or whatever Simon said, but because it looks so German to me, like a Gingerbread House in the Black Forest. And what could possibly go better with the whole ethos of PBR? It's a hipster beer, and hipsters long to return to their childhood fantasies of castles and forts and sweet-n-spicy cookies...



[the castle]


[the sign]

And finally, here's a picture of my bike, which I've dubbed Icey Smoove, because I really like my bike. It's a Belgian-made Flandria from the 80s that MacGruder Bernstein gave me this summer, and it's DOPE:


[icey smoove]

Coming up next, the little-known South Baltimore barbecue place where Dana and I ate!

Also, check out my latest review from El Papel de la Ciudad.

Andy Friedman @ El Rancho Grande

[country]

Sunday night, after the Steelers-Ravens TRIUMPH, I popped by my neighborhood coffeehouse, El Rancho Grande, to catch the better part of Andy Friedman and the Other Failures' set, played before about a dozen people from the corner of the corner of the hole in the wall. It was worth it.

This band is basically what I aspire to sound like in music -- very much rooted in a classic country tradition, complete with swingy beats and some very impressive telecaster lead playing overtop of a bare-bones rhythm section, but with a decidedly modern feel, lyrically. Hell, Friedman doesn't even have that great of a voice, but it's mediocre in the same way Ryan Adams's or Mac McCaughey's is--sort of abrasive and bleak, but suited to songs about failed road trips and stupid love affairs. Everything he played, as far as I could tell, was within the most basic of folk-song or 12-bar-blues formats, but the vibe was darker and more lo-fi than your average independent public radio equivalent. It reminded me of this Pittsburgh band I love called The Working Poor much more than, say, Langhorne Slim.

I can't say I got the names of any of Andy's songs, but he was handing out free copies of a two-song EP called Idaho, which was a really cool idea, and both songs on it, the title track and "Road-Tripping Daddy" are cool examples of the above description. Don't have too much more to say about it, because I haven't had the chance yet to really sit down and study this stuff. Plus I only have two songs plus Myspace.

Also notable is that Andy Friedman is a regular illustrator for such big-name pubs as the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine, (look at his work here) and he was selling some awesome music-related prints at the show. I bought this one of Levon Helm, but I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with it yet (hang it? give it as a gift?):

A Tale of Two Reubens

[Jay's]


[Tremont's]

For my money, the best cultural reference to the Reuben sandwich, which is, besides the Primanti’s Pastrami & Cheese, the greatest sandwich of all time (and definitely the greatest widely-known standard sandwich form out there) comes from the movie Quiz Show.

Richard Goodwin, the kind-faced FCC investigator played by Rob Morrow, and quite obviously a Jew, is eating a Reuben in Charles Van Doren’s country club dining room. Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes), who is being fed the correct answers to the questions on a carefully-orchestrated TV quiz show, is the subject of Goodwin’s investigation into fraud in TV.

The tension between them is palpable, down to their very physically opposing appearances, but Goodwin breaks it by quipping, between mouthfuls, of the restaurant -- “they have the sandwich but there doesn't seem to be any Reubens.” It’s maybe the best veiled joke about anti-Semitism I’ve heard in a film, but I bring it up just for the purpose of pointing out—Hey, that’s always the way it goes, isn’t it? It’s how I imagine Italian guys feel when they try to get pizza in a place like Baltimore. The product is there, but where the hell is the schlemiel what’s supposed to have invented it, huh?

A few weeks ago I was covering the design competition for the University of Baltimore’s new law school building (at the UB student center, of course), listening to all these world-class architects like Moshe Safdie and Dominque Perrault, and it was all really interesting, but MAN was I hung over. A not-so-frequently-seen old friend had been in town the night before, we’d gone to trivia night at Max’s, yadda yadda yadda, I drank a lot. On a weeknight. So sue me.

My prescription, which worked amazingly well, was to go to Jay’s Carryout on Charles Street, and eat a big plate of grease, and when I saw the Reuben on the menu, I said why not? This was a surprisingly passable sandwich (it’s the top one in the photos), with not too oily corned beef and tart, probably store-brought Russian dressing. The best part about it was the kraut, though, which definitely was not canned, although I can’t imagine a grease hole like Jay’s making its own cabbage products. Boar’s Head, maybe? The main problem with it, however, and what kept it from being good, was the lack of what Henry Hong would call “uniform meat distribution.” This specimen did not have it. I was choking on monster-size bites of corned with very little of anything else in them, and dammit, I didn’t like it.

Then, a few days ago, I decided to test a theory put forth by my colleague “Brendarita” Kearney, that the Reuben at the Tremont Grand hotel’s deli, which is right next to our office, is the best sandwich in the city. Now I have to admit, this was a good sandwich. It was crisply toasted, not limp and damp like a lot of Reubens, and it had some fine quality meat in it. My qualm was with the kraut. Way too briny, not enough pure vegetable flavor. And it cost me like $7.95, and for that kind of money, why am I not eating an Attman’s Nosh on Rye?

Who knows? Not me.

Cresap's War Video - 3 songs

Thanks to all who came out last night to hear Cresap's War open up for Macgregor Burns and the VCR and Arizona. The show was great, even though nobody had anywhere to sit. Above is a video of our first of 7 songs we played, shot by the lovely Bolivia, who we thank for her efforts. You can't see much, but the sound quality is decent. Two more songs follow. They are, together:

1. "Nothing's Gonna Be Alright" (Whelan), followed by:

2. "Heaven's Radio" (Carter Family)


3./4."Sleepwalkers" (Aumiller) / and a segment of "Remnants of Ellie" (Whelan)


Enjoy, and thanks again!

Come Hear My Band Tonight @ El Rancho Grande, Hampden!

Tonight is the debut show of Cresap's War, a new musical project by Rachel and me and our friends Alan and Jon.

We're performing our dear friends MacGregor Burns and the VCR, and a band called Arizona, who we're told are good people.

Details:

Cresap's War / MacGregor Burns and the VCR / Arizona
Tuesday, Nov. 11th, 9 pm
El Rancho Grande
3608 Falls Rd. - Hampden
Baltimore.

Why Haven't You Voted Yet?

What you doing reading this? When you know that you can vote however you like! Get going!

Watch MNF, Early and Often

I DON'T CARE WHERE YOU'RE FROM EVERYONE'S A STEELERS FAN TONIGHT!!

(7th paragraph: read careful-like)

Central Michel Richard

[pretty girl, ugly decor]

Once again, KB lured me to DC, on a Sunday no less, with a 4 o'clock Steelers game (I don't wanna talk about it, James Harrison) with promises of delicious burgers. Now, I've got nothing but respect for the DC burger tradition. I like 5 Guys a lot. Once I ate an entire double bacon cheeser there (all the way, plus BBQ sauce) then had a double waffle cone at Sylvan Beach up in Mt. Washington, IN THE SAME NIGHT, and it may have been the greatest culinary night of my life. So you can see why I was psyched, at the very least, for some quality ground beef. But KB didn't do her research, and both Ray's in Arlington and that fruit from Top Chef's place were closed, so we were left combing through "best burger" lists on DCist (the worst-ever website ) and Washingtonian, and we settled on Central Michel Richard, a shmancy dinner place near the White House with a slumming-it burger menu (read: $16 for the most basic of sandwiches).

My first reaction was, my God, why can't anyone in Washington make a restaurant that doesn't look like a morgue (see photo above)? But my second reaction was, Holy Hell Look At These Prices I'm Already In Debt! But then my third reaction was, Oh God That Looks Good upon seeing every entree that passed us by. And my fourth reaction, after drink orders (go Blusser over Mad Hatter) was to THIS:

[pure fat]

Sorry my picture sucks. That's a duck rieux appetizer, with a dish of faux gras chicken liver spread in the blurry, distant background. Each of these was like an entire stew in your mouth, generated by about .25 ounces of it spread on a piece of bread. Between bites, we cleansed with pickled gerkins and vinegarry pearl onions. I don't know much about pate or fois gras, so I'm not sure how able I am to rate these, but to me they were just amazing.

At some point in the meal we had to make a choice between splurging, making a date out of it, and ordering some dope entrees, which for sure would have catapulted our bill to somewhere around $130 total, but we decided to go with the original plan anywayz:

[ahhhhhhhhhhh!!!]

The burgers, for all their to-do about ginger mayo and other sauces, had surprisingly little flavor. I mean, I was wanting some ketchup by about 3 bites left. The bacon was near-perfect (crispy, a nice lean cut, etc), but it sort of overwhelmed the basic taste of the beef, which was relatively high quality, as I could tell by my bloody red rare version. There was also this thin potato wafer thingy that they put on top of these monsters that really blunted the meat taste. You had all this rich potential for flavoUr, with a capital U, that was offset by these salty starch buttresses whose purpose I can't pretend to understand. The fries were good, but not great.

I'd go back to this place, I guess, because it looked like they did a pretty mean ribeye, but come to think of it -- life's short. I mean, I guess if I were in DC again. For some reason... [sighs]. Grades:

FOOD: B

For reasons described above, I think these burgers have no place on "best of" lists of any kind. They were innocuous, at best. But all that bird giblet fat! Amazing! And everything we saw go buy was serious eye candy. Fish, meat, risotto, oysters, you name it. But alas, it was burger night.

BOOZE: B

I tried the Mad Hatter IPA first, which seemed like a good choice, but didn't arrive at all how I expected it to taste. I detected malts in it, and a serious top of the pallet flavor, unlike the low corners of the tongue thing that happens with a lot of really hoppy IPAs. Strangely, the waiter, when I ordered a new beer (a very pils-y and very good Blusser), said something like, "Yeah, it's really hoppy -- not a lot of people are used to it." KB's Malbec was tasty. I just could not order well that night.

AMBIENCE: B

Weird, extremely large video screens with slideshows of the food available at the restaurant greet you. Stuffy, claustrophobic dining room with glass paned walls separating you from the bar area, allowing bar-iers to spy on your dining experience. Bizarre art made of stacks of plates and more glass. Just not a place I'd like to be every night.

Old Fairfield

[tangly!]

I'm not entirely sure how many people know this about me, but I'm really into big, tangled masses of pipes, mechanical parts, and other sorts of crazy bits of metal. Yeah, that sounds weird, I know, but being in close proximity to large, powerful looking machinery with lots of exposed parts is something that I have, for most of my life, found really thrilling, even if I have no idea what the thing does (like the subject of the above picture) or how it works (like a car motor, a bicycle's gear-shifting apparatus, or my own liver). Maybe it's got something to do with growing up in Pittsburgh, where the old mills along the Mon sit and rust temptingly by the river on the way to Kennywood. Or maybe it's some innate male attraction to tinkering, the same place where Rube Goldberg devices come from: somewhere full of business and technicality but bereft of the reasoning or expertise that makes it real. 

Anyway, a few days ago, while working on a story, a local real estate attorney mentioned to me something about Fairfield, a port district in the oft-forgotten peninsula of industrial South Baltimore that sticks out into the Chesapeake, prickly with loading docks, sout of the Middle Branch, and Old Fairfield, a former residential area nearby. "Fairfield is one of my favorite places ever," he told me. "It's just pure heavy industry."

Really? I thought. Last time I was there it was just one parking lot filled with recently-offloaded cars after another, with some overgrown weedy lots in between. For me, I thought, it ranks somewhere between a courtyard in front of a municipal building and a public restroom on my list of favorite places. 

But then I was back there the other day working on a related story, this time in that soft light of the afternoon, and I actually stopped and looked at all the goddamn tangled masses of pipes and other things, and I ended up wasting a whole lot of time taking pictures, which are totally industrial-artsy-chic. And if you can't see the beauty in these, then you, sir, have no soul. 

[containment]

This are shipping containers, those ridged tin cans that are ubiquitous to any port city, and which Scuppies like to turn into elitist houses. These ones looked particularly depraved to me. 

[brewin' health tonicks]

This is a chemical manufacturing facility of some sort, belonging maybe to Condea Vista or Conoco Phillips or some such company, but all I know about it, really, is that they brew medicines in there, or at least the chemical compounds that become medicines the same way whiskey is distilled (now THAT caught my ear): on a large scale, at high heat, with lots of pressure. Sweeeeeet. 

[sniff sniff sniff]

The above monstrosity of a piece of equipment struck me because of how animal-like it seemed. Like it's scratching around for grubs to eat. Or something. 

[pwn3d.]

And then, oh glory of glories, the car-chewing machine. There were thousands of cars piled up at the Fairfield Scrap Yard, in huge, heaping, triumphant piles. Because they were compressed so thin, they all looked like 1960s Cadillacs, no matter what type of horrid wood-panelled wagons they were to begin with. It was like huge piles of Americana!

[the mighty chewer itself]

[crunch'd]

And this peekchurr I like because it reminds me of a Richard Estes painting I used to have hanging in my room in high school, after I became enamored of that guy's work in senior AP art history class and a field trip to the Met. 

[beauty.]

And then, just in time for Halloween, I found this creepy-ass church, which once provided a place of worship for the hideous vampires of Old Fairfield:

[brrrrr]

Cookin' Simple with Robbie & Jon: Dijon Chicken and Brie Open-Faced Sandwiches and a Succulent Hash

[the tools]

Welcome to a new interactive feature here at Whelan's Travels -- Cookin' Simple with Robbie and Jon! It's similar to earlier ventures of ours, like How to Play Piano Like a Blind Man or Playaz Goin' Places, in that you watch, look, listen and learn, and then you get to have a great time emulating us! Here's how it began: 

So last night I came home late from work with no dinner plans, and the house was empty, except for Jon, who was upstairs, shirtless of course, working on a grant proposal to go Burkina Faso or some other place that's hot and uncivilized, and it struck me that as winter descends, so does weather-induced depression. As the days get shorter, so does my desire to do anything productive, go on runs, do butterfly curls, shave my chest -- you know, the usual stuff we all do to stay positive. One of those things is eating well. And as we all know, our diets are windows to our souls. At least that's what Elizabeth Gilbert taught me, and she's a MILF. 

Anyway, Jon and I looked at our rations and decided to make a dinner that's easy and delicious. He's the one what mostly thunk it up, although the hash is a specialty of mine, but here's how with did it:

[toasty]

Slice some pumpernickel bread, put it in the oven with some brie on top of it. Toast that ass.

The lead picture above is of your toppings, so also slice some apples (I got mine at the farmer's market, and brought them home in my re-usable hemp Whole Foods shoulder bags -- Style Plus!!!) and grab one leafy green for each open-faced sandwich (lettuce came from my CSA -- Locavorianism Rules OMG!!!!). 

[sizzled]

Jon used butter (with my approval) to fry up two Trader Joe's chicken breasts (from one ofthose big bags), which he had sliced into long thin strips before hand, and spiced with a shitload of dijon mustard, with some added spicy brown and wasabi-raspberry mustard (we had three types of mustard in the fridge, but you can use whatever you want) and lots of black pepper. 

[misty]

I chopped one large sweet potato, one medium-sized regular potato, and half a medium-sized onion into 1/2-inch cubes, fried them in a skillet with olive oil, and spiced them with cumin, salt, pepper, cayenne, and cinnamon to make our succulent hash. Fry that shit for like 12-15 minutes until it's brown and tastes like the bomb and looks like this:

[crispy]

Then lay your leafy greens, then your apples (in rows) across your pumpernickel-brie toast, and then you best be sure to criss-cross the chicken with the apple rows, because that's just how it's done:

[criss-crossed]

The finished product (Jon has put on a shirt):

We then watched "The Office" and the Thursday night SNL special, and giggled together, our mouths full, our hearts fuller. What a night!

Keep it simple.

Chap's Charcoal

[how do you like your meat? rahhhhhhhhh]

This post is way overdue and the tastes may not be as fresh in my mind as deemed appropriate for other aspiring Robert Sietsemas and R.W. Apples of the world, but I felt I needed to say a word or two about Chap's Charcoal Restaurant, one of the three pit beef joints that occupy a particularly unattractive mile-long stretch of Pulaski Highway in (way) East Baltimore. I was there about two months ago, whilst reporting on a relatively recently-opened housing development, and when I see me some pit beef, I stop for some pit beef. 

Now to explain: Baltimore pit beef is, like crabs, a dish of some local note. There are ways of cooking and eating it and ways not to eat it. But to start, you could read this, or just take my word for it that pit beef is delicious, but certainly less complex or nuanced than Southern barbecue or other types of slow-cooked or smoked meats. It is crisped over charcoal, and the inside left very, very rare, which is 100% my thang, and served on a kaiser bun with (lots of) horseradish and pickles. For the longest time I had no idea that Baltimore had a sandwich other than the crab cake. But turns out that's because I had never been to Boog Powell's at Camden Yards -- or at least, if I had, when I was a kid and came with grandma a lot, I'd forgotten. 

Since eating at Chap's I've been to the original Boog's in Ocean City, on recommendation from the inimitable Danny "Security Firm Wins Insurance Coverage Dispute" Jacobs, and learned the true meaning of pit beef and boardwalk fries, consumed together with lemonade.

So not to get off track here -- Chaps was great, but not incredible. There was some flaky, carbonized crust mixed into my sandwich for texture's sake, but I felt like the meat had been off the grill for far too long. It was, I dunno, lukewarm. There is, however, something nice about inhaling diesel fumes offa Pulaski, being surrounded by nudie bars and trucker hangouts, and eating a dish that is as working class as it is local (who can afford crab cakes, with an economy like dis, huh?) that made it worth the drive. All I needed was some Thrashers to further coat my stomach. I had lemonade, though. 

Vidalia

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Get your own

So Washington, D.C. is where KB lives, so I go there a lot. She recently took me to a restaurant that was so frustratingly District in terms of decor (see their hotel basement, empty of people entirely marketing strategy on their web site), but so impressive, food-wise, that I'm now obliged to reconsider every jab, insult and curse I've ever fired off at the nation's capital. That restaurant was Vidalia, in Dupont Circle.

Chef Jeffrey Buben's mom is from North Carolina, and so's his wife (who cutely answers the phone to take reservations with her belle-ish accent), so the restaurant's Dixie cooking is roughly the chef's equivalent of "write what you know," except it's more like, write what the women in your life know. Maybe that's a better plan? Who knows. Whatever the story behind it, his cooking is outstanding.

We're talking about onions, here. Lots of onions. And maybe you think naming your restaurant after the chi-chi foodie word for "onion," and also making onions the main ingredient in most dishes is an off-putting idea -- hell, I did, at first -- but I assure you there's nothing to worry about, and nothing on the menu that isn't worth celebrating, as far as I could tell.

The de facto starter is a sweet onion-and-apple tatin in which you dip this pillowy onion bread that reminds you of those rolls you used to get in the lunch line in elementary school, only sweet (but just so) and foamy and delicate. Amazing. I quenched my inordinate, burning, desirous urges for booze with an honest-to-goodness Sazerac, which was cool and delicious, but a little puncy on the rye, if you know what I mean. The perfect apertif.

We got a rabbit starter as well, that I unfortunately don't have a picture of, but again, Damn.

The real coup, however, was the goat-n-garlic plate. Goat is a difficult meat to work with, like skirt steak or venison or something. You've got this gamey, disgusting animal, and you've got to make him tender, juicy, and delicious by dinner. For the goat plate, Bubes got out his grinder and served us up two very tender meatballs with a scallion cream sauce, and threw in two mini-slices of roasted goat and goat sausage, both in a tart barbecue-ish sauce for good measure. KB and I agreed that the roasted was great, but not the best thing on the plate. She liked the 'balls, I the sausage.

Then, scan your eyes to the center of the plate in the photo above, and you'll see the roasted full bulb of garlic. Now, I'd never had roasted garlic before, and I was afraid. What will this do to my breath? Is garlic complex enough that I can just eat the whole thing? Will this just be like spooning minced garlic into my mouth?

The answers are not much, yes, and no. When roasted, especially in broth like this one was, garlic because incredibly soft and juicy and takes on this robust flavor that you just can't stop eating. And the meaty parts of it just come right out of the flaky skin with each jab of the fork. Mmmm.

Mains included a juicy ribeye that was just on the mark, paired with a Malbec that was just dry enough, and far too expensive (was this a special occasion? I forget...), and dessert was so good that we ate it before I could take a photo. It was made of pecans, I think.

FOOD: A
You could tell this place spends a lot of time on their meat, which is just one of the ways it's very Southern in character, but putting the onion at the forefront of everything was just so new to me (even though this place has been open since at least the mid-90s) and worked so unexpectedly well. Admittedly, I'm a sucker for strange game (goat, rabbit, etc) but this was the best goat I've had since Mallorca, a Pittsburgh Spanish restaurant that makes a mean goat stew. Vidalia's pricey (we went during DC Restaurant Week -- probably no chance for their regular menu), but scrumptious.

AMBIENCE: C-
I'm 24. I'm not ready to resign myself to eating all the time at restaurants that look like they're in strip malls filled with couples who look like they met on "companionship" match-up sites. Y'know, give me a hipster bar with tater tots and a few scumbags who look like they met on Nerve.com, like, every once in a while? Vidalia's just very stuffy -- all done in beige nylon upholstery and mirrored walls and while tablecloths. It's like being sucked through a vacuum of drabness into the most colorless hole of the 1960s.

LIQUOR: B+
I've actually made a better Sazerac than the one I had here, but they get props for even putting it on the menu. Plus a lot of tasty South American reds on the list, which really gets my goat (tee hee).

Domino Sugar Plant, Mid-Day

Art/Whartscape 2008

I've been suffering from serious blog-block lately -- just not been finding the time to write, unless I'm on the clock and getting paid for it.

But I figured I'd jump back into it with a post about this past weekend, the best weekend in Baltimore music, the perennial face-fest that is Artscape, and more recently Whartscape. My photos (in my newly-minted slideshow format!) give a food impression of the bands I saw, and what I thought of 'em, but a few more observations.

1. What does it take, exactly, to get booked at Whartscape, the Wham City-hosted freakfest of concerts, art displays, etc, that is the warehouse-dwelling art kid's alternative to Artscape, the big city fair? What I've found is that you have to produce music that is completely unearnest, or that doesn't conform to any sort of musical form -- i.e., it's noise-based or involves a lot of screaming. Now, I'm not saying I don't like these sorts of bands. Ponytail, Double Dagger, Mae Shi -- they all gave killer performances -- but it was all just so weird. The only exceptions, I thought, were Parts & Labor and the Death Set, the former of which actually sang, melodically, over the noise, the the latter is pretty earnest (if spazzy) and has quite a bit of melody to them as well. When, and under what circumstances, might Wham City book a non-freaky act, that actually highlights traditional talents, and when would WC fans ever find time to appreciate such an act?

2. Standing (dancing) in the Saturday night crowd in front of the DJ stage at Artscape, watching Blaqstarr and Rye Rye, and then looking around myself and seeing people of all ages, and mostly African-American, with a healthy mixing of other-colored people as well, it occurred to me how different a "public festival" is in Baltimore than in Pittsburgh, where I grew up. There, you're likely to have some sort of benign, peace-and-happiness-promoting ethnic act on the main stage, so that the white people in the crowd feel educated or open-minded, I guess, while the minorities presumably appreciate what's going on onstage for what it's worth. In Baltimore, it's accepted that people like to party, and in particular, the black crowd likes to party to Bmore Club music, so why not book the best acts to do that, and not worry about being inoffensive or didactic or "inclusive"? I found this attitude, with local, popular, and somewhat unwholesome acts onstage at what is otherwise a family event, to be really refreshing. Also, I danced harder that I have in a long time. Bravo.

3. South Carolina BBQ's "minced barbecue" is not nearly as good as cracked up, and I make better pulled pork. Sorry guys.

4. How is it possible that Druid Hill Park pool would close its deep end on one of the hottest Sundays in the summer? Shaun rode the back of my 10-speed all the way there, and they wouldn't let us in, so we had to wash off in an opened fire hydrant in front of a million people down at Artscape. Major bummer, but a fun expedition to the pool in the first place.

5. Be careful at night near Park Ave. and North Ave. The kids over there are off the handle. They gave Macgregor Burns a beating, unprovoked, on Saturday night, involving a hubcap and a rock that sent him to Union Memorial for a few staples in his scalp. Rough.

Baltimore Media Roundup June 5th -- "Does Nurice have a react quote?..."

"i bet if we locked a bunch of monkeys in a room, chained to typewriters, we could come up with better crap than this..."

I'm going to have to concede that I'll have to start doing this column/blogfeature more often, or else it's going to get irrelevant, but work's been busy, with lots of ink required of me, plus a trip to Vegas, so I apologize for my dereliction of duty. Here are my thoughts of late on the great, glorious world of Smalltimore media.

This article in today's Sun, written by my colleague and acquaintance, the charming Ms. Lynn Anderson, caused me to have a Wire Season 5 moment. Remember that scene where Gus is looking at the City Council agenda and he recognizes the name of a drug dealer that the city is buying land from? That's the kind of institutional memory the Sun has that I don't. In the case of Lynn's article today, somebody at the city Board of Estimates meeting on Wednesday (at which I was present) recognized Gil Sapperstein, the notably corrupt Baltimore developer (he did time for stealing money from Baltimore's school system, of all places), by face, then figured out that the resident agent address for the company selling land to the city to build a supermarket in Liberty Heights (much needed, by the way), is the same as his home address in Baltimore County. I guess one leads to another -- recognizing Sapperstein, asking him why he's there, etc. -- but any way you slice it, it's a bit despicable that the city still does business with this bum, so kudos to Lynn and the Sun for spotting it.

Enough fawning over the legacy paper, already, and on to the next corruption story. Last week, when the feds raided state senator Ulysses S. Currie's home and the offices of Shopper's supermarket, two stories ran out of the Annapolis bureaus of both the Sun and the Washington Post that I think illustrate the differences in resources between these two papers.

Now, just to be clear, I know some of the people involved with the writing of the Sun piece on Currie, and would never disparage them -- they are talented reporters who normally do really exemplary work -- but in a side-by-side comparison of the two accounts, as breaking news stories, the Post blows the Sun out of the water.

Here's the Sun's version, here's the Post's.

At the end of the Sun article, here's what we know: Currie's house was raided by the FBI, and it has something to do with his work as an "outside consultant" for Shoppers, the grocery chain. We don't know why he is being investigated, and he, his lawyer, and other politicians are keeping quiet about it. In addition, Currie, as chairman of the senate budget and taxation committee, is very powerful, and he's not the first Maryland lawmaker to be probed by the fuzz. We learn that the Currie's are quiet, their house is shuttered, they driver American- and British-made cars, and we get some poetry about a rusty basketball hoop in the driveway. Then a highly informative neighbor called Mickey Bailey says to us, "This is a lot more interesting than today's 'Dr. Phil' episode"--OMG, obvi.

But see--it's not. Because the whole article fails to answer the fundamental question posed by the news item: Why is a powerful Maryland lawmaker being probed by the FBI? This is really effing serious! Who cares about some unemployed couch potato neighbor and the history of Maryland corruption? This is breaking news, people, not some sort of third-day reaction piece!

Enter the Post. They basically got the same answers from everyone ("No comment,") except for a more colourful quote from the lawmaker about how his lawyer told him not even to talk to his dog, but then they actually went and did some digging at a level so basic that it showed how much more solid their bureau chief is than the Sun's. They looked into state legislature ethics rules and found that if Currie makes money as a consultant--well shit, he's got to report it. And guess what? He didn't. And that seems to be the most likely reason he is getting fingered...

From the Post:

Currie did not report receiving income from Shoppers in any of his three most recent filings with the State Ethics Commission nor has he ever filed forms with the state indicating that he might face a conflict of interest with legislation dealing with the grocery chain. Under state ethics law, legislators are required to report sources of outside income, including income from consulting activities, and are expected to report even the appearance of a conflict of interest on pending legislation.

Meyer, the spokeswoman for Supervalu, said in response to a question about Currie's employment by the company that he was an "outside consultant." She said his responsibilities included "various consulting operations."

Asked later to confirm that he was paid, she said she could provide no additional information. She would not say how long Currie has been a consultant for the company nor what issues he has worked on.

The instructions for the State Ethics Commission financial disclosure, which lawmakers must file yearly, lists income earned from "individual consulting activities" as an example of compensation that should be disclosed.

Without confirmation of what the whole thing is about, the Sun caught up the next day, reporting, amid the same kinds of doors slamming in their faces, that Currie had failed to report his earnings from Shoppers, a company that has contributed to his campaigns in the past. A few days later, they added this nugget in follow-up story, which I think is very salient, well-oriented, locally, and good reportage:

The state has pledged $1.8 million to West Baltimore's Mondawmin Mall, where a Shoppers Food store opened in November. That money would go to the mall's owner, General Growth Properties, for renovation of the property and has not been appropriated, Glenn-Hood said.

But still, I contend that the two initial reports really demonstrate that the Post is better equipped to deal with breaking news (they did, incidentally, have 3 reporters on it, compared to the Sun's 2). And to add insult to injury, the Post demonstrated how little they give a shit about Maryland, by burying their superior article in the regional section of the website, well past the front page (I didn't see the print edition). *sigh*

In other news, the Examiner has gotten really over-the-top New York Post style lately, running covers like this one:



I thought the Sinai Hospital front-page ad, right below the super-bold headline was pretty hilarious, though. Have I just not been paying attention, or is this whole screaming headlines thing new for the Ex? Maybe they'll mount an even bigger shrine to old Rupert by referring to Hezbollah as "HEZ" and putting it in 60-pt on the front page -- "HEZ AIRSTRIKES KILL 3". That'd be sweet.

We Finished!

KB, my brother David, and I ran a half-marathon yesterday in Frederick, Maryland. All 13.1 miles of it. I finished in under 2 hours (which was my goal), and both David and KB express that they have "bug" for running, and want to run several more such ridiculous and tiring races. What have a I got myself into?

Josie says congratulations! (but to KB, only):

Baltimore Media Roundup 4/28: Rainy Day Music

"i bet if we locked a bunch of monkeys in a room, chained to typewriters, we could come up with better crap than this..."

I'm confused. Why was this article in the Sun today? I've read it, and re-read it, and not only is it incomplete, but what's the time peg? Let me explain.

This article, which is about 3,000 words at my best guestimate, is a sort of L.A. Confidential-meets-Catch Me If You Can- style detective chase story about a con woman named Cynthia McKay who has stolen some un-tallied, but no doubt huge amount of money from a bunch of local non-profits, churches, and individuals. She's a creepy-looking, "seductive," identity thief. But according to the article, most of it happened in 2002/2003. Then, weirdly, I looked at the photo slideshow online, and it said something about McKay's arrest, along with her son, for the murder, in February 2006, of some guy who isn't even mentioned in the article.

A good read, but what's the deal? I feel like at least a page of explanation, where they finally explain to me why I'm reading an article about a con-woman who was caught in 2003, and who is suspected to have murdered her cop husband, 5 years later, except that maybe a year ago she was accused of another murder. And I think sun.com removed the comments thread on the article, making things even more unclear.

The other day, City Paper got all snarky on the Examiner, calling them out for just having discovered the internet, like, a few days ago. And they're right, the Ex is basically running for the brewpub-patronizing, Macbook-owning, yuppy-populated hills ever since b started chewing into its advertising portfolio (which was, admittedly, just a response to when the Ex started chewing into the Sun's advertising portfolio), but they didn't discuss the content of the blogs at all.

So we decided to take a look at a few of the new blogs and see what's to be seen.

* Cara Ober's take on art in the city is more like a listing, with a few photos, of art-related events. Not much substance yet, but she's a pretty accomplished writer, so I'm not worried about it. She's also kinda cute, from the look of her pic.
* Some guy called Mark Burlet, who claims to be a "drunken intellectual" and who allegedly enjoys drinking "not in a 'get me another Pabst and a shot of Jack, woman, and where the hell is my dinner' kinda way, but more in a 'let's come together with friends to celebrate the beautiful weather and/or special occasion' kinda way," is writing about alcohol in another blog. So okay, Mark, we get it, you're safe, and you're not going to make me your subservient wife, but what about the writing? He describes Brewer's Art Proletary Ale, which I enjoyed last night, actually, twice, as such: "The 'beer of the people', so they say... dark and mouth-watering, like Baltimore in April. (What does that even mean?)" Indeed, Mark, what does it mean?
* Phil Macek, Home and Garden Examiner, peddles a very gay backyard fire-pit, and offers nuggets of enthusiastic wisdom like, "Enjoy your home, your garden, and your friends!" Thanks Phil!
* Nina Guise-Gerrity, a famous "ethicist," apparently, posed this scintillating question on April 22: "Should households receive tax credits for taking conservation measure that lower electric bills, water usage, and meet state compliance measures to make their houses ‘greener’?". Then she didn't answer it, just sort of let it sit for the last week, with no explanatory links, comments, or follow-ups. We like to think that Nina Guise-Gerrity is like 90 years old and fell asleep on her keyboard, woke up disoriented to find that the notion of "computer" and "internet," like the rest of the stone-age Examiner staff, had disappeared down the winding, Alzheimers-riddled toilet pipe of her mind.
* Brenda Carl's media blog is the best we saw today, but only if you consider "media" limited to TV and radio. Who listens to non-public radio, anyway? What's that you say? Real people? Like, people outside of my college-educated, elitist, gun-fearing, Obama-loving social circle? Okay, maybe you're right, but Brenda also pointed me towards Marc Steiner's new Center for Emerging Media website, which I had been meaning to check out, and on which you can listen to archived stories of crack-heads gibbering about life in the gutter, on his show "Just Words," which won that lovable commie a Peabody award this year.
* Andy Belt, the Ex's "music man through and through," who is also an "insider," despite the fact that he doesn't get out of Towson much, seems to have just discovered "today’s world of high speed internet, fast food, fast cars and other indicia of instant gratification," in which "local musicians now can enter a recording studio and leave in a few hours with a finished demo burned on CD" WOW! THAT FAST?? THEY CAN RECORD A WHOLE DEMO IN A FEW HOURS?? SIGN ME UP OMG!!!. Then again, he's only posted 3 times. Maybe the insider tips are coming.
* And our favorite discovery of the day, is that Greg Smith, who used to be a reporter for the Northeast Booster and sat across from us when we were a reporter at Patuxent's north Bomo County weekly, the North County News, is now blogging about the Eastern Shore and its many coming crafts fairs (He says: "While brighter weather amplifies the anticipation of summer for all beach business owners and beach residents alike there are some upcoming events in the surrounding Delmarva area that may make the waiting period less like pulling teeth." What?). Smith was a pretty nice guy, but he had a big crush on Luke Broadwater and his muscles, and under his shirt, curious enough, Greg had a tattoo of the Examiner's logo, in the middle of his chest, as an homage to the publication that printed his first intern clips. So I'm guessing Greg is somewhere in the third ring of heaven, right now, writer for his alma mater. Or maybe he's just on the Eastern Shore.

In other, non-Ex related news, Lorraine Mirabella has been collecting some really good string, it seems, and she beat me to this trend story, which is really good. Just a good primer for what is going on in Baltimore development right now, and the projects that really matter. Kudos to her.

WJZ has an exclusive (I think?) on WDS moving into a fogies' home (which I wrote about a little while back, see here).

Aaaaaaand Coconut Lime has a delicious recipe for turkey with mole (who woulda thought?) that I will never have the time, nor access to fancy chiles, to make. But a person can dream, right?

Cendrillon

[the girl, the legend, the phillipino burrito]

Yesterday I was in New York and I had the time to squeeze in a quick lunch with my friend Janki, before rushing over to the Waldorf-Astoria to interview real estate tycoon William P. Carey. We needed somewhere close to her SoHo office, so we chose Cendrillon, a Phillipino place that J. said she enjoys. That is she, above modeling the fresh lumpia, which is sort of like a Phillipino spring roll. This one was, well, lumpi. The Napa cabbage, mushrooms, jicama, and leeks all melded into a mushy, boiled, mash, all inside a purple yam wrapper (Phillipinos are wild about yams) and it could have been a bit more savory. It was bland.

I've been intrigued by vegetarian cooking lately. Not because I'm considering going fruity, but because I've had a lot of it lately that has struck me as very adventurous, and surprisingly, pretty filling. So I wanted to order something Asian and veggie, but there were only two veg items on the menu, and one of them looked gross, so J. got the mixed noodle bowl, with shiitakes, scallions, and an eggplant fritter that looked like a petrified duck:


[wading in the scallion sea]

And I got the "Phillipino fried chicken," with a potato salad made with (what else?) yams:


[old-fashioned, down-South Pacific soul food]

The noodle bowl was rather tasteless, I have to say. I was starting to see a trend of blandness, here. It kind of reminded me of when Indian people, when I was living in Bombay, would refer to any food that wasn't picante as "bland," which I objected to because I think "bland" means without taste, and not not-spicy. This was both tasteless and not spicy. It seems that Phillipino food is mostly about pork (like their Spanish colonial wardens) and sausage, and we didn't get any of that.

The potato-yam salad was just terrible. Undercooked, flavorless, boring.

The absolute salvation of the meal was this:


[babymomma coconut]

That's baby coconut cream pie with vanilla bean ice cream and a raspberry demi-glace. It was impossible not to eat quickly, and the baby coconut meat came in thick, fleshy strands. Very creative, very delicious.

Here are my grades, overall:

FOOD: C
Both entrees, and to a lesser extent, the lumpia, were incredibly bland. Very well presented, but essentially a flavorless waste of good vegetables. That pie, though -- damn.

AMBIENCE: A
We sat in the back under a beautiful skylight, and the place was mostly empty during lunch. A well-decorated, Asian-modern ambience with good lighting.

SERVICE: B+
Friendly server who was the only one on staff at lunch. She took a long time coming back to us at one point, but otherwise, was entirely satisfactory.

Oyster Flitters at the Wine Market

[front to back: wild mushroom fricassee, corn-meal battered oysters, fried green tomatoes]

"Such concoctions as panned and scalloped oysters have never been eaten in my time by connoisseurs, and oyster fritters (always called flitters in Baltimore) are to be had only at free-for-all oyster roasts and among the wharves."

- H.L. Mencken

Apparently it's been around for a few years, but KB and I went to the Wine Market in Locust Point for the first time last night. I had heard about it from someone I met through work, and apparently it's the pride of Locust Pointillists -- an upscale wine store with an attached restaurant serving delicious, inventive food. That's what it was, and it was really, really, tasty, but it was not a perfect dining experience. Before I get into that, thought, I have to explain that I was roped in because I read on their menu that they serve fried, corn-meal battered oysters, which are the closest things to oyster flitters I've seen on a menu in Baltimore. A bit more literary context from Mencken's essay "Baltimore of the Eighties" (that's the 1880s):

Oysters were not too much esteemed in the Baltimore of my youth, nor are they in the Baltimore of today. They were eaten, of course, but not often, for serving them raw at the table was beyond the usual domestic technic of the time, and it was difficult to cook them in any fashion that made them consonant with contemporary ideas of elegance. Fried, they were fit only to be devoured at church oyster-suppers, or gobbled in oyster-bays by drunks wandering home from scenes of revelry. The most celebrated oyster-houses of Baltimore—for example, Kelly’s in Eutaw Street—were patronized largely by such lamentable characters. It was their playful customer to challenge foolish-looking strangers to wash down a dozen raw Chincoteagues with a half-tumbler of Maryland rye: the town belief was that this combination was so deleterious as to be equal to the kick of a mule. If the stranger survived, they tried to inveigle him into eating another dozen with sugar sprinkled on them: this dose was supposed to be almost certainly fatal. I grew up believing that the only man in history who had ever actually swallowed it an lived was John L. Sullivan.

The Wine Market's oysters were deep-fried, not pan-fried, which KB was able to ascertain on her first bite (I had to ask the waitress), but they were dee-lish, all the same. Just a very murky, salty, savory seafood flavor underneath the batter, and they made you want to eat them in one bite, the way you slurp a raw one right out of the shell. I think I would have been more impressed if they had been battered then pan-fried, but KB had some theory about how doing that would make them limp, or something.

The mushroom fricassee ("just well-seasoned and well-cooked," KB pithily quipped upon tasting them) and the fried green tomatoes with a goat-cheese aioli -- our other two appetizers -- were excellent. Not the type of starters you can eat for a full meal, but substantial, tart, and food that wakes you up with riotous flavors.

We were drinking an Argentine Mendoza, because I thought it might go well with my next course (and because the only other cheap wine that looked was called a "Super-Tuscan," but was, inexplicably, from Umbria), this ribeye, which came with herbed compound butter (served on the side, when it should have been on top of the steak) and mini-Yukon Gold potato pancakes and hash browns and grilled beats, all in a thick jus.

[oh, gaaaawwwd]

This was a great steak, although it came out much redder than the medium-rare I ordered it, so I sent it back. But this thing I liked best about this entree was that it lined up a progression of flavors so complimentary, that I couldn't stop eating it -- I just had to have it, in that same order (steak-herb butter-salty potato-sweet beet-red wine) over and over again. I'm pretty sure I ate more than my share of half the plate before passing it on to KB and trading it for...


[mmmm....]

...head-on jumbo shrimp and grilled peaches served over some very cheesy (almost rissotto-like), very tasty grits. We were on the fence about this one -- KB wanted the seafood stew with fish and mussels, but I talked her out of it because I thought the side, olive crackers, sounded lackluster. And oh how right I was! This dish was brilliant, not only taste-wise, but conceptually. The shrimp-grits pairing gave it a very Southern, almost Cajun-style feel
to the dish. Enjoyed thoroughly.

Here are my grades, overall:

FOOD: A-
Fried green tomatoes are usually solid, and TWM was no exception. The mushrooms were nothing special -- just "well-seasoned, well-cooked," but delicious nonetheless. Oysters weren't mind-blowing, but damn good for the only place in town I know of to get flitters. Steak initially undercooked, but came back on the flipside. Shrimp and grits very creative, very good.

AMBIENCE: B-
We thought this place was going to be a big wine store with a cozy, charming little cafe tucked in the back. It was the opposite. A too-large dining room behind a surprisingly small wine shop. KB thought it was too loud and hard to have an intimate conversation, and the decor was bare-bones artsy-industrial, which I'm not that into because it feels too yuppy (it's why Tapas Teatro is more comfortable a restaurant than Pazo).

SERVICE: B
Both hostess and server were pretty stiff and awkward. Also, the waitress failed the "Which dish is better?" test by failing to steer us towards either of the seafood dishes we were conflicted about, claiming they were both equally good, and not helping at all on that one. I tested her again, asshole that I am, by asking her if the chef had put my whole dish, and not just the meat, back in the oven when I sent it back for more cookin', and she was not as obliging as I thought she'd be.