On a Friday morning last summer, my husband and I handed our luggage to a porter and stepped aboard the lovely double-decker ferry that would deliver us to Bald Head Island, N.C.  It was a place I’d wanted to visit for years, after hearing about its three wide white sand beaches, pristine maritime forest and exceptional array of wildlife— not to mention its complete lack of cars. Now, we were on our way for a weekend escape, surrounded by families and couples who planned to stay a week or longer on the island, lucky them. The grandfathers and fathers talked about fishing while the mothers and daughters chatted about watching a mother loggerhead lay her eggs the previous summer.  A young couple on their honeymoon sat side by side on the deck to catch the wind in their hair, gaze at the sea and discreetly smooch.

When the horn sounded and our little ship left harbor, my husband and I felt the real world melt away. As we approached the island about a half-hour later, we could see West Beach and an impressive array of homes with wide, wrap-around porches. Several sailboats floated past; a group of pelicans spread their wide wings and flew mere inches above the waves, on the hunt for breakfast. To our south was a swath of marsh grass wide as a prairie. I couldn’t recall the last time a journey made me unwind so completely. We pulled into the harbor and, as our luggage made its way from the ferry to the home we’d rented for the weekend, we got into a golf cart and set out for a tour.

Bald Head Island is a 12,000-acre barrier island located about 30 miles off the coast of Wilmington, N.C., poised at the confluence of the Cape Fear River and the Atlantic Ocean. Its location gives it a unique natural splendor, one preserved by the conservation restrictions put in place by the island’s owners and developers that ensure that only 2,000 of the island’s acres will ever be altered by humans. The result is simply paradise: clean, white beaches; thousands of acres of marsh; and a pristine forest of palmetto and ancient canopied live oak trees bearded with Spanish moss. On our tour, we, along with several other families, pulled our cart to the side of the road and sat in hushed awe as two red foxes trotted up the road and scurried into the forest.

Bald Head Island has all this, and plenty of creature comforts, too. There’s the Shoals Club on South Beach, with its Olympic-size pool, championship golf course and fine dining. There you can view both the sunrise and sunset and watch the dramatic clapping waves formed by the confluence of ocean and river. There’s a variety of eating options, from fine dining to casual beach grills. There’s an art gallery, a gourmet market, a charming B&B and a new spa. The island even boasts its own historical museum (Smith Island Museum of History, which is housed in the old lighthouse keeper’s cottage) and a nature conservancy (the Bald Head Island Conservancy and Smith Island Trust). There are about 1,000 private residences and approximately 215 year-round residents.

Long before brothers Kent and Mark Mitchell bought the island in 1983 and transformed it into an upscale escape, its proximity downriver from the Port of Wilmington made Bald Head Island (known at the time as Smith Island) a prime hangout for marauding pirates, including Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard. In addition, the island housed Fort Holmes, which during the Civil War helped ensure the safe passage of blockade runners and protected the river from the Union Army. My husband and I parked our cart outside Old Baldy, North Carolina’s oldest standing lighthouse, which marks the entrance of the Cape Fear River, and climbed the 108 steps to the top. There we were treated to a splendid view of the marsh, which is marked by a flowing maze of creeks. We made a mental note to rent kayaks to explore it the next day.

When we arrived at our vacation home on East Beach, we found it to be as delightful as the rest of the island. The front porch faced the ocean, the long windows in the dining and living rooms offered a view of the river and the ocean both, and a lush maritime forest was just outside our bedroom. Our home was part of a little neighborhood, yet the arrangement of the houses was such that I never felt like I had neighbors. Vacation home options on the island are varied. You can choose a home high on a bluff that overlooks the ocean and has no neighbors nearby, select a home tucked in the maritime forest under a canopy of 200-year-old live oak trees, stay on the harbor in a one-bedroom bungalow or rent a home in the Hammocks, which has a neighborhood pool and is popular with families. Each home comes with its own golf cart or two and a small carriage house for parking.

My husband and I had toted a few provisions over from the mainland but Bald Head’s maritime market has everything you need. So unlike other beach vacations, we didn’t have to worry about packing food for the whole weekend. We simply walked into our home and enjoyed cocktails as a brief summer storm blew through. Later, we took the golf cart over to Eb and Flo’s Steam Bar for a lovely meal followed by a walk on the beach. The beach was lit only by the moon and the stars, except for the flashlights held by a small group of folks from the Bald Head Island Conservancy who were hoping to see a mother loggerhead crawl from the ocean and lay her eggs. The island is one of the East Coast’s most important nesting grounds for the massive turtles. Between May and October they swim ashore at night to nest, and about eight weeks later, the nests “boil” and more than 100 baby turtle hatchlings scurry to the sea. One little boy said if they didn’t get to see a turtle, they would at least see the amazing phosphorescent plankton farther up the shore. My husband and I trailed behind the group and, sure enough, there were areas where the plankton-rich water seemed magically lit from within.

The next day we rose for a sunrise paddle through the marsh, spotting pelican, heron, egret, ibis, American oystercatchers— and, most impressive, a red-tailed hawk teaching her two juveniles to hunt. We stopped for brunch at the River Pilot Café, then strolled through the Woods Gallery and the little stores along Maritime Way before heading home, grabbing two beach chairs from our house and strolling down the wooden walkway for an afternoon of sunning and swimming at East Beach.

We capped off our weekend with a romantic dinner at the Shoals Club, perched high on the sun-kissed dunes that overlook Cape Fear. I felt a little wistful when we boarded the ferry for home the next day. Bald Head Island’s pace and charm make you want to stay as long as you can. I’m already planning to bring the whole family back.

GETTING THERE
The ferry leaves Deep Point Harbor in Southport, N.C. (30 miles from Wilmington International Airport) every hour on the hour (off-season schedule is abbreviated). Round-trip tickets, $15. Ferry reservations should be made in advance.  910-457-5003, baldheadisland.com/contact/ferry

STAY
The accommodations on Bald Head Island run the gamut from cozy homes and condos to expansive oceanfront beach homes. Rates start about $250 per night and go way up. The most straightforward way to arrange lodging is at 800-432-RENT or vacations.baldheadisland.com.

>You can also check in to Theodosia’s Bed and Breakfast, a beautifully appointed Victorian-themed B&B on the harbor. Rates start at $225. 800-656-1812 or http://www.theodosias.com.

PLAY
>Smith Island Museum of History, 910-457-7481, http://www.oldbaldy.org

>Bald Head Island Club Golf Shop, 910-457-7310, http://www.bhiclub.org

>Island Retreat Spa, 910-457-5003, http://www.baldheadisland.com/explore/spa

>Riverside Adventure Company, 910-457-4944, http://www.riversideadventure.com

EAT
>Eb and Flo’s Steam Bar, 910-457-7217

>The Pelicatessen, 910-457-0266, http://www.bhiclub.net

>The River Pilot Café and Lounge, 910-457-7390

>Shoals Club, 910-454-4850, http://www.shoalsclub.com

I get around. Part of my duties as editor of this magazine is to be aware of openings around town of new restaurants, stores and other businesses. I personally write about new restaurants and clubs in our Epicure pages in each issue and on my blog. And for all the musings about the sour economy and sad announcements of store and restaurant closings, there’s a bright spot: There are just as many new restaurants opening up regularly as there ever were. Maybe even more, by my measure.

In this issue, you’ll read about four new restaurants in Baltimore City: Langermann’s, Field House, The Rowhouse Grille and Sam’s Kid (see pages 32 and 34). In the May/June issue, we’ll cover more: Milan in Little Italy, Miguel’s at Silo Point, Blue Grass in Federal Hill, Portalli’s in Ellicott City and Venegas Steakhouse in Maple Lawn. And they keep coming: Ullswater recently opened in Federal Hill, and slated to open this spring are the City Tap House in Harbor East, Charmington’s in Remington and a new tapas bar in the space once occupied by The Bicycle in Federal Hill. That’s just what’s on my radar right now.

So take heart, friends— things aren’t all that bleak. Every new restaurant, pub, bar, lounge and club adds more diversity and excitement to our cultural landscape. It all helps form a more vibrant, livable city.

Another part of what makes for a cosmopolitan, livable city is a thriving and diverse downtown retail landscape. Baltimore once had this in spades: four major, local department store chains— all with behemoth flagship stores centered on Howard and Lexington streets. A “ladies’ mile” of high-end boutiques and shops on Charles Street that lured fashionable women up from Washington to shop. Smaller neighborhood shopping districts on Greenmount Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue, in Hamilton, Hampden, Essex and along York Road. Sadly, most of these are gone.

On page 42, Style contributor Mary K. Zajac digs into the history of the Hochschild, Kohn & Co. department store and its grand, six-floor emporium downtown. It’s hard to imagine the bustling energy that these stores had, and how intricately they were woven into the day-to-day lives of Baltimoreans. The memories of the decorated store windows at Christmastime, the formal dining rooms and tearooms, and the much-cherished Thanksgiving Toytown Parade that brought Santa to town and kicked off the Christmas shopping season— all make one a bit melancholy that Hochschild’s is no more.

You can still see Hochschild’s engraved-stone store logo on its big, old service building at Park Avenue and Centre Street. And you can still appreciate its taste and cachet in its 1948 Streamline Moderne-designed Belvedere branch, still looking spiffy on York Road at Belvedere Square (now Daedalus Books and a Lynne Brick gym). The next time you’re there, walk down that sweeping entrance ramp to the lower level (near where Hochschild’s Coffee Cup snack bar once was). There’s a nice display there with big, vintage photographs that relates some of the history of this once-great store. 

Brian Michael Lawrence
editor-in-chief
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http://www.baltimorestyle.com

For most of my life, the world was flat to me, bounded by California on the west and Turkey on the east, the farthest points to which I’d ever traveled. Now, after 14 plane trips, eight currencies and 24 time zones, this country girl (and longtime fearful flier) can tell you the world is indeed round. I started out going west, kept going and showed up back in Baltimore again 64 days later. Hey!
Even though I wanted to go ’round the world, I didn’t want a whirlwind tour, a different country every day. You’ve heard of “slow food”— what I desired was “slow travel.” I’d stop only a few places— six or seven in all— but I’d sink deeply into each. And while I’d travel alone, I’d rely on guides and hosts to welcome me, introduce me to their home countries and allow me to know them. Thanks to an air booking agency, Twitter, online traveler review services and my own research, I was able to make all the arrangements for my adventures before I left.

And what adventures they were! I walked the rooftops in old Jerusalem, took a 14-hour market-to-table cooking class in Aix-en-Provence (oh, the lavender-infused creme brulee!) and discovered my own personal ruined castle among the frost-tinged moors on an island in Lochindorb, Scotland.

But, of all my experiences, four stand out.

The Myoshinji Temple Complex
Kyoto, Japan
“Myoshinji?” I said hopefully to the woman who stepped down behind me from the bus. It was 11 p.m. and I’d just realized that I’d overshot my bus stop. She smiled and led me silently back down the road until we reached the entrance to the Myoshinji temple complex, which includes about 40 temples, each with its own resident group of monks. The huge and forbidding gate was closed, but a little wooden side door was unlocked.

I walked through it and for the next few minutes felt my way silently through one moonlit temple courtyard after another until I reached the Shunkoin temple, which rents a few rooms to visitors. Like all of the rooms, mine was small, with a mat on the floor and a pillow filled with a kind of seed pod. Delicate sliding screens separated it from the outdoors. I slid the screens closed and fell into a dreamless sleep.

At dawn I was awakened by the sound of gentle rain on wooden shingles and a deep-voiced bell being hit with a wooden hammer. This was the day I would meet Maeda Roshi, head of Zuihoin Temple, teacher and mentor to Masato Fujiwara, the architect and builder who’d been serving as my guide in Kyoto. I had chosen to visit Kyoto because it is a city of art, literature and music, and because its Buddhist temple gardens are miracles of understatement, discipline and humor. But it was the first stop on my trip, and I was feeling a bit disoriented and intimidated by all the foreignness.

My hour with Maeda Roshi changed that. A vigorous man in his late 60s, he was waiting for us in one of the inner temple rooms reached by a corridor lined with magnificent works of art. I managed to get into a fairly comfortable position on the floor— not easy for me— and Masato seated himself to the side so he could translate. Within minutes we were talking and laughing. I felt at ease and understood.

After Maeda Roshi performed a simplified tea ceremony, I ventured a question. “I love to walk among the trees and animals,” I said. “I can feel God there so easily, but I don’t always like to be around people. I can’t feel close to God with other people, especially in a crowd.”

“See the people as trees,” he said. This was a perfect Zen answer: With five words, Maeda Roshi completely resolved my question, lifted me to a new level— and set before me a challenge.

The next day I tried to practice “people-as-trees” in the Ryoanji Temple garden, which is one of the most famous, and most simple, of all Zen gardens in the world: just raked gravel and a few large rocks. The garden was tranquil and peaceful; the other visitors were not. But when I expanded my vision so that the human visitors were part of the scene, not an intrusion, something let go. I was, at least for that moment, in charity with all my fellow human beings— even ones who tell bad jokes in a famous Zen garden. Throughout my entire trip, people-as-trees became a touchstone when I was impatient with anybody or anything— even myself.

The Golden Triangle motorcycle ride
Chiang Mai, Thailand
I was straddling a rented Honda Phantom motorcycle in the northern Thailand city of Chiang Mai, threading my way through traffic, trying to keep my eyes on the bright yellow helmet straight ahead. The helmet belonged to my guide for the weekend, Jim Spence, and when I took my eyes off of it to look ahead, I gasped. Just outside the flat cityscape, the Himalayan Mountains, dim in the morning mist, seemed to fill the whole sky.

I’d bought my first motorcycle when I turned 60, and when I heard about the Golden Triangle loop in northern Thailand, 450 miles of fairly good mountain road (with 4,000 turns) that winds through some of the most spectacular countryside in the world, I knew I had to try it. This would be a day trip; the plan was just to do a small section of the Loop.

My first hint that the day wouldn’t go according to plan occurred at Mae Rim just north of Chiang Mai, when Jim turned off the main road onto a lesser but still mostly paved road. Whenever the road turned sharply, it gave way to a series of ruts.  To my surprise I not only stayed vertical, I was enjoying myself. I had asked Jim to take me away from the tourist routes. Here I was, riding past lush fields of green— this part of Thailand could probably feed most of southeast Asia— and stopping at a marvelous roadside restaurant where the owner cooked us a meal straight from her garden.

After lunch, Jim turned off the lesser road, this time to one made of dirt and rock. This was a track he’d taken before, but not for six months and in that time the road had deteriorated to the point where a constant effort of will and muscle was required to forge forward. It was exhausting and scary. But I was still doing well, and still enjoying myself.

Then we came to a stretch of road paved in uneven cobblestones that led to a steep downhill with a curve at the bottom. I stopped and got off the bike, trying to gather my fast-ebbing courage. Right then a scooter sailed past bearing a young Thai woman with two children on the back. “There go all my excuses,” I conceded, saddled up and headed downhill to meet my fate. A man on a scooter was coming up right at that moment and his eyes grew wider and wider as he saw me coming right for him in an impromptu game of chicken. At the last moment I remembered that in Thailand you drive on the left side of the road and swerved out of his way.

Our adventures didn’t stop there, but continued for hours under the hot sun. We got lost, stopped to help a young Thai who had failed to navigate one of the treacherous turns on his scooter, then found ourselves. To my infinite relief, we made it safely back to Chiang Mai just as darkness fell.

My reward for the day was Jim’s quiet comment that I had done very well, and that most riders even with off-road experience would have likely fallen off their bikes at least once on the route we’d traveled. For my own part, I took from the day a sense of quiet confidence that I could handle danger and stress in unknown conditions. Given the choice, I wouldn’t have picked such a difficult route, but I treasured having survived it as much as I treasured my view of the remote Thai countryside.

The Haa Valley, Bhuta
Only eight pilots in the world are licensed to make the entry into Bhutan’s lone airport and if you have a window seat for the approach, you can see why. The day I flew in, the plane played thread-the-needle with a series of mountain spurs, getting closer and closer to the ground, to the accompaniment of wooden flute music piped over the communications system. All the passengers erupted in applause when we dodged the last haystack and touched down.

By Bhutanese law, travelers must be accompanied at all times by a guide. I chose Bridge to Bhutan, which is run by two young brothers, Lotay Rinchen and Fin Norbu. Lotay and Fin come from the village of Dorokha, in the Haa Valley, a pre-industrial farm area in western Bhutan that did not have electricity, roads or cell phones until two years ago. Everywhere I went, I met members of the men’s extended family. The urban family members were educated; at the other extreme were the nomads who follow the family’s herds of cattle to new pastures each day, and who do not read or write (but use cell phones!).

After a day touring the area around the airport so I could acclimate to the altitude of about 8,000 feet, Fin and his cousin Phuentsho and I set off by car for the six-hour trip to Dorokha, which is reached by crossing the 13,000-foot Chelala Pass. The top of the pass, where hundreds of white prayer flags whip in the wind, is mute, heartbreaking and hopeful. Stretching beyond our feet was a series of mountains enclosing fertile settled valleys. As we descended the other side, I saw beautiful farms with carefully tended fields and fences, all built by hand.

In my two days of living with Phuentsho’s sister Deki and her husband Ugyen in Dorokha, I helped prepare an evening meal picked from the garden that featured butter churned that morning and rose at dawn for the milking of the family’s cows. I knew that in 1972, the king of Bhutan coined the phrase Gross National Happiness as an alternative to Gross National Product for measuring growth and progress. And, witnessing a standard of living in Bhutan that includes large well-built farmhouses, good food, beautiful clothing and decoration and an extensive and intricate system of family and village connections, I wondered, “What have I been missing?” And what will happen next year when a hotel is constructed so that foreigners can visit the Haa Valley and soak up all the pre-industrial bliss? I’ve often dreamed of time-traveling to Maryland in the days before the Industrial Revolution, and spending a few days there. Visiting Dorokha gave me a taste of that, and it was wonderful.

Masai Mara Game Reserve, Kenya
My week in a game camp in the Masai Mara was full of excitement. One day my guides Frederick Ronko and William Rotigen (Masai warriors commonly take English first names and Masai last names) and I helped three young goat herders avoid a troupe of hyena. One night we heard a terrible prolonged roaring noise and the next day found a slaughtered water buffalo and her calf. And, since my cabin was next to a water hole, I was endlessly entertained by zebra grazing, impala and warthog skirmishing and tiny monkeys carrying their even tinier babies watching to see whether I’d left my door open.

But my greatest adventure began when my guides offered to introduce me to a young Masai woman so she and I could play the African drum together. When I saw Agnes Mako sitting shyly on my porch holding two drums in her lap, my heart just melted. After a half-hour or so of exchanging rhythms and smiling, we talked easily (she had learned excellent English in school), and the next day she sent a carefully handwritten note inviting me to attend her school graduation.

A brave and determined 16-year-old with a sweet and slightly mischievous smile, Agnes was one of only two girls in her graduating class. Her mother is a widow living in her late husband’s village, unusual circumstances that allow both Agnes and her mother the rare chance to control their own property, which, for the Masai, is primarily cattle. (In general, Masai women do not own property and have almost no legal rights.)

As Frederick, William and I walked to the school for the graduation ceremony, I told them I wanted to give Agnes a calf that could be raised and sold to pay the fees that would allow Agnes to continue her schooling. It was a radical idea— Agnes will probably be the first Masai young woman ever to have a calf of her own. But Frederick and William and I had had a chance to discuss the idea of women’s rights during our long game drives, and now they offered to help oversee the purchase of the calf and protect Agnes’ rights, if necessary.

When we got to the school, Agnes greeted me along with the other adults, with her head bowed for blessing. I met her mother and asked her permission to make my gift. Then Frederick and William gathered all the adults together and spoke to them about the plan. Though I couldn’t understand what was being said, I could see the excited expressions on the villagers’ faces. Agnes herself was clearly embarrassed by all the attention, but was pleased.

Afterward, when we walked to where the village women were preparing a feast, they all told me they would help see that Agnes continued her schooling. Agnes’ mother took two beautiful beaded necklaces from her own shoulders and put them on my neck. Of all the souvenirs collected on my trip, I treasure those necklaces the most.

I had thought that my ’round-the-world trip would be the last traveling I ever did, that I’d spend the rest of my days “home by the fire.” But now I have friends all over the world to visit. At the very least, I must return to Africa, to see Agnes grow into a leader of her community, and to play the drum with her again.

As you might expect from its name, Field House is a sports bar. Or rather, a sports bar on steroids. Two floors. Multiple bars. Fifty plasma screen TVs, all tuned to sports (including many booths with private TV screens). Located in the double-height space that once housed the elegant restaurant Atlantic and, more recently, Ray Lewis’ Full Moon Bar-B-Que, Field House is an offshoot of the identically named upscale sports bar in Philadelphia. Claim a table, booth or seat at the bar and peruse the menu of classic American pub fare: soups, sandwiches, salads, pizza and entrées like shepherd’s pie and roasted chicken pasta. French fries come four ways: Chesapeake (with Old Bay and cheese sauce), Southwestern (chipotle dipping sauce), Spanish (chorizo sausage, pico de gallo, jalapenos and pepper jack cheese) and Cheesesteak fries (with shaved ribeye, sauteéd onions and Cheese Whiz)!  2400 Boston St., 410-800-4004

Maybe the Orioles’ problem these last dozen years or so has to do with the same old spring training regimen year after year in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Perhaps some fresh scenery in a new city will provide that shot of winning karma the team so desperately needs. (And maybe Cal Ripken will come out of retirement to bash 40 home runs, too.)

At the very least, the move to Sarasota’s Ed Smith Stadium means frustrated O’s fans have a new city to explore— one with a great mix of cultural, culinary and recreational activities and more than a few similarities to Baltimore.

> ATTRACTIONS
Culture vultures’ first stop should be the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art (941-359-5700, ringling.org). Like Baltimore’s William and Henry Walters, circus magnate John Ringling combed the world for artistic masterpieces. In 1931 he built a museum with 21 galleries in which to display works by Rubens, van Dyck, El Greco and hundreds of others.

To see how the Ringlings lived, stop by the couple’s sprawling mansion, Ca d’Zan, on the museum grounds. The 36,000-square-foot Venetian Gothic terra-cotta manse with 41 rooms and 15 bathrooms looks as if Don Corleone and Louis XIV teamed up on the design. Mable Ringling had a thing for roses, and visitors can wander her 22,000-square-foot rose garden out back.

Also on the premises is the Ringling Circus Museum, a trove of memorabilia and artifacts documenting the history of Ringling Bros. and “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Note John and Mable’s over-the-top private rail car, the Wisconsin, in which they traveled the country in luxury.

Like Baltimore’s National Aquarium, the Mote Marine Laboratory (941-388-4441, mote.org) offers live dolphin shows and a shark tank, but also features indigenous manatees and rays for petting.

A short drive away lays the Sarasota Jungle Gardens (sarasotajunglegardens.com), an old-time Florida attraction comprised of “jungle” pathways and dozens of tropical birds, alligators and other South Florida critters. The highlight here is a free-range flock of pink flamingos, which visitors can feed by hand. Check also for daily performances by Frosty, the aging cockatoo who’s been riding a unicycle for audiences since his days on the “Ed Sullivan Show.”

> DINING
Like Baltimore, seafood dominates menus in these parts. But the crabs are stone crabs. (You eat only their claws, usually served cold, with a little cocktail sauce or mustard.) The old-school, Obrycki’s equivalent here is Moore’s, an institution on nearby Longboat Key. It may look like a seafood packing house from the outside, but its open-air, bayside tables make for a perfect crab-cracking setting (941-383-1748, stonecrab.cc).

Siesta Key, an 8-mile-long barrier island just south of downtown, has its share of rollicking crab and oyster bars, including Captain Curt’s, whose clam chowder scored first prize at last year’s International Chowder Championships (941-349 3885, captaincurts.com).

If you prefer white linen on your tables instead of brown paper, try Aqua, one of the area’s hot new seafood restaurants (941-918-8041, aqua576.com). It has great views of Sarasota Bay from its third-floor dining room and sublime caramelized sea scallops with Moroccan couscous.
> RECREATION
You’re in Florida, aren’t you? Hit the beach. Stephen “Dr. Beach” Leatherman, a coastal researcher at Florida International University, ranked the white quartz sands of Siesta Key the second best in the nation in 2009. Incredibly, the powdery sand stays cool to the touch even in summer.

If shopping is your pleasure, head to St. Armands Circle (starmandscircleassoc.com), a tony enclave of 130 stores (mostly independent) and restaurants, located on St. Armands Key, a short drive from downtown. That busy eatery spilling out onto the sidewalk is the Columbia Restaurant, (941-388-3987, columbiarestaurant.com), which has been serving Spanish food in Sarasota since 1959. You won’t find Natty Boh on its menu, but you can find fantastic sangria, made tableside— a wonderful drink with which to toast an Orioles’ win. Or, alas, mourn another loss.

> DETAILS
AirTran Airlines offers nonstop and connecting flights from BWI Airport to Sarasota. Southwest flies direct to Tampa Bay, about an hour’s drive away. The Orioles provide a list of hotels near the stadium and offer several travel packages, including air, hotel, rental car and tickets at baltimore.orioles.mlb.com/ spring_training. For info on Sarasota tourism: 800-800-3906, sarasotafl.org. 

At Tortilleria Sinaloa on Eastern Avenue, men in thick wool shirts buttoned over hooded sweatshirts eat posole. They lift spoons to mouths to taste the pork-enriched broth. They add spoonfuls of chopped white onion and pinches of cilantro, and lift again, this time chewing steadily on the nuggets of hominy that have opened and bloomed like popcorn in the soup. Never mind that it’s morning and that each opening of the door brings a slice of frigid winter air. Never mind that the metallic squeal and grinding of the tortilla machine makes conversation all but impossible. The posole, its steam warming their faces more than the weak sunshine coming through the plate glass storefront, is their focus.

It is my focus, too. This morning, Isabella Leon, a four-year employee of the tortilleria owned by Melissa and Robert Willingham, is going to show me how to make the spicy soup.

My curiosity about posole springs from a curiosity about hominy. Lately I’ve been seeing hominy as a recipe ingredient in contemporary food magazines, like the Chili with Guajillo and Ancho Chiles and Hominy featured in a recent Food and Wine. But like many of my generation, hominy is an enigma. I know it’s a corn product and a staple in some Southern kitchens. I have a vague memory of seeing cans in someone’s pantry. To be frank, I’d been turned off by descriptions of it as congealed (who wouldn’t?) until I first ate hominy in posole, a dish that has grown in popularity in Baltimore thanks to the Mexican cooks who serve it in the Latin American restaurants that populate Fells Point.

A little research reveals that hominy is no newcomer to the city. Philip Stieff’s compilation “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry in Maryland” features a recipe for “Hominy Chafing Dish,” a rich dish of hominy baked with butter and cream. More recently, recipes for hominy muffins and hominy with sausage and pan gravy are included in John Shields’ “The Chesapeake Bay Cookbook.” And, as I learn, it wasn’t that long ago that East Baltimore boasted one of the region’s best known hominy producers, Mrs. Manning’s Hominy.

A conversation with Mrs. Manning’s grandson, Parkville resident Chris Manning, kick-starts my hominy education. He explains that hominy is the dried cracked kernels of white corn that have been steamed to both plump the kernels and allow the hull to be peeled away (a similar product, whole kernel hominy, depends on lye for peeling the hull).  “To make it from scratch yourself, it takes a long time,” says Manning. “It’s very tedious.” In that sense, he muses, his grandmother’s canned hominy was “one of the first fast [prepared] foods.”

Margaret Manning, a German emigrant, began selling her homemade hominy, along with other products like sauerkraut, door to door in 1904. By 1917, her hominy was so popular that the family began mass producing it under the name “Mrs. Manning’s Hominy” from a packing house at 803 S. Clinton St. Chris Manning even remembers hearing a live local radio ad during World War II when he was 12 or 13, in which the announcer extolled “the virtues of Mrs. Manning’s Hominy”... saying “Don’t forget to look for Mrs. Manning on the can.” He pauses adding, “That’s what’s known as a blooper.”

During the Depression, Baltimoreans turned to hominy as an inexpensive, filling side dish, says Chris Manning, who still eats hominy the way he ate it growing up at that time.  “I put it in a pot,” he explains. “Heat it up. I add a little milk and a pat of butter and maybe a little bit of pepper. You don’t need to add salt. When you heat it, it uncongeals.” Manning says the hominy is especially good with sausage or pork chops, particularly if you replace the butter with a little pork fat from the skillet.

According to Manning, the Mannings’ cannery was the last remaining canning factory in Baltimore City until the business was sold in 1995 to Lake Packing Co. Inc.  in Lottsburg, Va., who retained the name but moved the operation. Even the can’s packaging is the same as it was—a clean white label with “Manning’s” in red capital letters above a blue bowl of the fluffy white hominy and “ALL NATURAL HOMINY” in yellow on a navy band below. The only change may be the addition of “Maiz Pozolero” on the label, a nod to a new wave of immigrants seeking out hominy for posole.

At Tortilleria Sinaloa, however, Isabella Leon uses dried hominy rather than canned in the posole, explaining that the dried hominy has more flavor. She begins by boiling the dried hominy in water until the kernels are soft. Every so often she reaches in with a spoon, pulls out some hominy and prods and scrapes the hull with a French manicured fingernail to see if the hull is loose. When it’s ready, she rinses the hominy, and puts it back in the pot to boil for another half-hour with a large, peeled onion and a small handful of garlic cloves.

“Everyone in Mexico eats posole,” says Isabella, while she defrosts the pink and white pork ribs and split pig’s feet that will go into the stew. In Mexican homes, it’s made for birthdays, Christmas or whenever a family gets together. The tortilleria makes posole several times a week, although at busy times it can be made twice a day. All of the women at the shop take turns making the soup, and while they might vary their recipe at home, making a green posole using green peppers and tomatillos or creating their stock with chicken, here at the tortilleria, Isabella explains, the posole is pork-based and red.

To make the “red,” Isabella and I pull the stems off of dried shiny red guajillo peppers that have been soaking in water, and push them into a blender with an onion, garlic and water. Once the mixture is blended into a tomato colored cocktail, Isabella strains it into a bowl where, separated from its skins and seeds, the mixture loses its redness and becomes a bright luminous orange. It looks dangerous and spicy, but it smells (and tastes) fresh, like the juicy ripeness of a raw red bell pepper.

Once the pork has cooked in the hominy broth for about 30 minutes, Isabella ladles several spoonfuls of the guajillo mixture into the soup, adds some salt and it is done. She dips me a small bowl and I inhale the soup’s multi-layered scent before bringing a spoon to my mouth where I taste pork fat, sweet pepper and the chewy nuttiness of the hominy. It is incredibly humble and incredibly good.

I ask Isabella how she learned to make posole, but she simply shrugs and smiles. “Everyone knows how to make it. It just takes a long time,” she says, gesturing to another pot of hominy bubbling on the stove.

Hominy, Oysters and Sausage Dinner
Pork Posole

Big changes have come to The Can Co. complex in Canton and Langermann’s is a welcome addition. The two-level space that was formerly Kiss Cafe has undergone a complete renovation, yielding large dining rooms both upstairs and down, as well as a spacious bar area with seating of its own. The menu, described as “Southern inspired,” comes courtesy of seasoned executive chef Neal Langermann (Red Sage, J. Paul’s, Clyde’s, Georgia Brown’s in D.C.) and doesn’t disappoint. Southern staples such as shrimp and grits, fried catfish and fried green tomatoes all appear, as well as a tempting jumbo lump crabcake served with corn succotash. The herb-roasted chicken (with stewed green beans and mashed potatoes) is a bargain at $14.95, and the aged white cheddar macaroni and cheese is reason enough to become a regular.  Serving breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. 2400 Boston St., 410-534-3287

Upon entering Stephen Fisher’s North Baltimore home, it is immediately apparent that a collector lives within. Nineteenth-century European paintings line the walls, salon style, first floor to third. Japanese cloisonné vases, singularly and in artistic groupings, pop up by the front door, in the den— and one with a crab motif sits by the kitchen sink, near the jar of silver polish and box of baking soda Fisher is using to clean each of the 130 objects to be displayed as part of the show “Japanese Cloisonné Enamels from the Stephen W. Fisher Collection” at The Walters Art Museum.

Finally reaching Fisher’s living room at the back of the house, one is surrounded by Japanese cloisonné, all of it produced from 1880 to 1915, during the late Meiji period, when Japan was attempting to advance economically and become a world power. Cloisonné boxes, jars, vases, bowls and trays fill lighted cabinets, perch on shelves, sit on a long table atop a gold obi, a kimono sash normally worn around a Japanese woman’s waist.

Begun in 1970 with one Chinese cloisonné toothpick holder purchased for $5 at a Bolton Hill yard sale, Fishers’ collection has grown in quantity and quality. When the 130 pieces leave his home for the museum, another 70 from storage will immediately take their place.

“I believe in ‘slow and steady wins the race,’” says the 60-something retired Baltimore County public school teacher, counselor and principal who is currently an interior designer. Over the course of 40 years, through patient waiting, inquiring, searching, saving, selling family silver, borrowing money, swapping and persistence, Fisher has amassed a collection that is considered by The Walters to be one of the finest in the world. His collecting has led him to Paris, Amsterdam, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Japan. Many pieces were purchased in London. “Think about it,” says the consummate teacher. “Everything went through London.”

Three of his favorite pieces in the Walters exhibition are an Ando gold wire fish vase that appears on the cover of the catalog, another vase by Ando depicting a mountain scene and a deep blue gull vase that was the centerpiece of the first Walters show of his collection in 1989. Fisher purchased that gull vase by Namikawa Yasuyuki, along with three other outstanding pieces, on Madison Avenue in the late ’70s. Those pieces moved his collection to a new level. “I was ready to mortgage the house,” he remembers. “I knew I had to do something, so I sold 40 [objects] to buy my first four major pieces.”

Fisher’s love of art began as a child in New York, where he grew up near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, frequented the Cloisters and had private art lessons beginning at age 10. As a student at Haverford College outside of Philadelphia, he was a history major and often visited the famous Barnes Collection nearby. After college he lived in Europe for several years, studying the works of Austrian painters Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.

Upon returning to the States, Fisher moved to Washington, D.C., and began a career as a teacher. It was the Vietnam era, and he felt that the future of America depended on quality public education. That is one reason he’s happy his collection is on display at The Walters, which offers educational programs for children. “I’ve always thought that collecting art is about sharing and teaching others about what you value,” he says.

Like any collector driven by passion, a major museum exhibition isn’t stopping Fisher’s momentum to acquire more. Just two months before the Walters show, he purchased a major piece, a large 1900 vase by Namikawa Sosuke depicting a raven in a maple tree. “The raven has special meaning; I’m a Baltimorean by transplant… and that raven has attitude. This piece is first-rate in every way,” he says, pointing to the beak, the detail of the shadows in the enamel and the work’s seeming simplicity, always a hallmark of great art. “People could collect their entire lives and be satisfied with just this.”

“Japanese Cloisonné Enamels from the Stephen W. Fisher Collection” runs Feb. 14 to June 13 at The Walters Art Museum. 410-547-9000, http://www.thewalters.org

Bordeaux is steeped in tradition. Even in the old-boy network of wine regions, it’s a powerhouse, with more than 1,000 years of winemaking history and some 300,000 acres of vineyards planted. When I visited Bordeaux last fall, I thought this would be the last place to get a pulse on wine trends for the future. I was wrong. During the visit, I experienced two major trends that I think are significant for the entire winemaking world.

> Biodynamic Winemaking Techniques Organic winemaking prohibits the use of pesticides, herbicides and, for the most part, preservatives. Biodynamics takes these concepts further by adding a holistic approach. Timing planting, harvest and other activities to the lunar calendar and using natural means to combat pests and disease are just a few of the tenets of Biodynamics. Clos Puy Arnaud— located in the Cotes de Castillon region of Bordeaux— is run by Thierry Valette, who is dedicated to these techniques. Thierry is the former co-owner of a prestigious estate in St. Emilion and a former choreographer. Now he makes natural wines that dance on the palate. Visiting with Thierry is as delicious as it is inspirational. He explained that the all-natural practices of biodynamics are riskier than modern techniques. He adds, though, “When you take risks you are truly alive.” Great words (and wine) to live by.

> New Packaging Options Ever have wine in a tube? I hadn’t until my visit to Chateau d’Arche in the Sauternes region. Sauternes and other winemakers in Bordeaux are experimenting with glass wine tubes for selling smaller “glass sized” portions. The tubes are 10 centilitres (3.38 ounces) in volume. Sweet wines, like Sauternes, are perfect for the tube. Rather than purchasing a $40 bottle of wine, you can pick up a tube to go with dessert and, also, to share with your date, for only $10. In the Medoc, Chateau Anthonic makes the tubes available to retailers in order to let consumers sample their wines. With each case purchased, a retailer receives tubes to use for samples. Many retailers are hesitant to open a $50 bottle of Bordeaux for sampling purposes but, if you have a hot prospect, you can crack open a tube. (I’m not sure if these are approved by the FAA for air travel, but I’m excited about the possibility of bringing tubes on board so I don’t have to choke down the mediocre wine that airlines usually serve. That would be progress!)

Bordeaux has a beautiful countryside, a long tradition of winemaking and gorgeous, Old World chateaux in every direction, but it also has a group of driven, passionate winemakers who focus on innovation. If you want to experience a place where old school meets the new cool… Bordeaux is it!

To experience the tradition and innovation in Bordeaux first-hand, join The Wine Coach for the Bordeaux Harvest Tour in September 2010. Visit http://www.thewinecoach.com/bordeaux for details.

Laurie Forster, The Wine Coach®, is a wine educator who creates corporate events, group tastings and team-building seminars. She is the author of “The Sipping Point: A Crash Course in Wine,” and can be heard each week on WBAL 1090 AM.

It’s somehow appropriate that O’Malley Antiques has moved from being next to a restaurant (where they were on the opposite end from Petit Louis in the Roland Park Shopping Center) to a space once occupied by a restaurant (the old McCafferty’s location in Mount Washington). The switch has enabled O’Malley’s to almost double the amount of inventory on display. What hasn’t changed? Their focus. You’ll still find 19th- and 20th-century American pieces, plus 18th-century Continental, Maryland furniture, Chinese and Japanese exports, Quimper, engravings, lithographs, Staffordshire, silver pieces, rugs, mirrors and more. What you won’t find? Empire and Victorian. “We like to stick with the blue blazer look,” says owner Charlene O’Malley. Indeed. Don’t Miss:  The chance to find exactly what you want. If you don’t see it in stock, Charlene will track it down. 1501 Sulgrave Ave., 410-466-0606

Claire Hecht Miller was anxious. She was out running last-minute errands before hosting her first major party in her recently renovated home for 55 guests. “When I came through the door and saw the job that Jake Boone had done on the flowers and the table settings, I relaxed,” she says. “I knew I was in good hands.”

The idea for the party had been hatched months before, when she and her husband, Lee, had seen the Brasil Guitar Duo playing at a small club in Rockport, Mass., during a summer holiday. Taken by the duo’s talent, Lee went online and discovered they’d be in Maryland for another performance in November, and the idea of having a party with a musical performance by the pair was born.

Invitations with a black lace detail were mailed, Ridgewell’s was hired to provide catering and Jake Boone was brought in to design the flowers, tables and centerpieces.

Guests enjoyed butlered hors d’oeuvres and champagne upon entering the home, then were seated for the classical musical performance. Afterward, they adjourned to tables for the seated buffet dinner, which included peppercorn-crusted beef tenderloin, crab cakes, grilled vegetables, three-cheese potatoes and a red treviso salad with compressed Asian pear. Sauterne was served with dessert.

“Throwing a party is like putting on a little production,” says the hostess. “But once the planning was done and it was under way, I just relaxed and enjoyed myself.”

There were long, long lines. Customers were impatient. Clerks were rude and short-tempered. They were out of most of their stock. Furious patrons vowed they’d never be back. It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas. But it wasn’t Christmas. It was just a regular day at my local post office.

The post offices I frequent— the Roland Park and Hampden branches— now close each afternoon from 1 to 3 p.m., triggering a scene of merriment worse than the mayhem of the season to be jolly.

Lines normally associated with the Nazarene’s birthday, the April tax deadline or an old-fashioned savings & loan bank run are now daily sights. As Bob Dylan reminds us, “The post office has been stolen and the mailbox is locked ...” I imagine a similar scene is occurring throughout the city as post offices shut their doors for one- or two-hour spans (not the same spans, of course, because that would be too user-friendly). Some now close for the day at 1 p.m., making even bankers look like they’re doing overtime. If your post office has not started closing, don’t worry, it will soon enough.

At the Roland Park station, the automated stamp machines broke during the reign of Reagan and were never repaired. The old photocopy machine, a device that might be useful at a post office, died. So did the plants. Recently, drawings by small children based on their heart-warming visits to the post office were removed. (Why add insult to injury?) All of the old clerks have been transferred or retired and now only one harried clerk staffs the counter most days.

The clock has been removed, too. Why remind customers how long they’ve been in line?

Perhaps the end of the postal service should not surprise us. First they took away most of the corner mailboxes. Then they reduced hours. The mail arrives later and later every day. Soon they’ll throw Saturday mail under the bus. The cost of mailing has gone up as the service has gone down. The price of the first-class stamp in my lifetime has rocketed from 3 cents to 44 cents, more than half that increase occurring in the past 20 years.

Lately the funsters at the postal service have been running these madcap TV ads designed to make it seem simple and even fun to go to the post office. It’s just one big happy family. No problem. No worries. We’re your pals at the U.S. Postal Service. There’s lots of smiling, and I think there’s hugging, too! The ads are beyond preposterous. People taking hallucinogenic drugs must be making them.

Not long ago I was selected to complete a customer satisfaction survey about the postal service. It came on the very day that my mail was delivered after 5 p.m., the two weekly newspapers I subscribe to arrived two weeks late, and I’d stood in line for one hour at my local branch. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that Americans are losing their sense of humor.

The salutation alone was the first belly laff.

“Dear Valued Customer…”

Valued customer?

Some days I receive mail that has been chewed up by either animals or machinery. I get a lot of mail that is wet. We’ve had droughts and my mail was wet! I get mail for people who lived at my address when James Polk was in the White House. When I get mail for my neighbors, I deliver it to the correct addresses, as they are nearby and I can use the exercise. (I know that this is probably a federal crime and that the FBI may come and see me now because they aren’t very busy.) This gives me an opportunity to engage in banter with other members of the valued customer family. Most of them do not like the postal service, either.

I did not bother to fill out the survey. Like most of my countrymen I rarely go postal. I have largely eliminated the postal service from my life. The Internet, UPS and FedEx have made that possible.

When I was a child, the mail was delivered by a postman right out of the imaginings of Norman Rockwell, a grandfatherly gent with a good word for one and all. He whistled. You could time his arrival with a calibrated watch. Even dogs liked him.

Once, mailmen were the cheerful face of the government at its best— patient, helpful and reliable. Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail, and all that. We don’t have a regular mail carrier now, and we haven’t for years. We never get mail if it snows. NEVER.

And now, everything at my local post office seems like a bad omen. Last year, they left the flag up all year, near as I can figure. Those broad stripes and bright stars that flew over Fort McHenry during the perilous fight flew every day and every night. They never took it down! Finally, the flag disintegrated, just sort of unraveled in the wind, much like the postal service.

These days, nothing is more au courant than thriftiness and recycling. Doing what’s best for your pocketbook and the planet is easy at Re Deux, a new second-hand shop tucked into the courtyard of Wyndhurst Station in Roland Park. On a recent trip, Savvy found wonderful pieces in you-let-THIS-sit-unworn-in-your-closet— really? shape from Burberry, Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti and Prada, as well as loads of nearly new bags, shoes, belts and scarves. Yes, you have to sift through some what-were-you-thinking? Talbots castoffs, but there are also plenty of vintage gems as well as “score!” moments like the one Savvy witnessed when she saw a pretty teenager scoop up an Alexander McQueen dress for her prom. Now that’s social responsibility Sav can fully support. Don’t Miss:  The sales. Merchandise gets further markdowns at the end of each season, making designer finds extra affordable. 5002 Lawndale Ave., Wyndhurst Station, 410-323-2140

Savvy has yet to be to a town where she can’t find fabulous shopping of some sort (she’s bought boots in Billings, perused vintage pepper shakers in Peoria, snagged some silver in Santa Fe… ). When she’s asked about her favorite secret out-of-town shopping destination, she has one answer: Desert Hills Premium Outlets in Cabazon, Calif. Did Savvy just say outlets? Yes. While she’s loved sending Baltimore friends to darling little boutiques in Paris, London, Miami and more, nothing has ever quite matched the reaction of folks who come back with tales of current season Etro, Ferragamo, Prada, Zegna, TSE and more for way less. Just a two-hour trip from Los Angeles, the outlets are right outside of Palm Springs. Follow the hipsters to the Ace Hotel (701 E. Palm Canyon Drive, 760-325-9900) which is a little like staying at an Urban Outfitters, but you’ll get into it. After your day of shopping, head back into Palm Springs for a fabulous dinner at Johannes (196 S. Indian Canyon Drive, 760-778-0017) the only restaurant that Savvy has ever been to that does California and Austrian cuisine equally well (she loved the rack of lamb and the schnitzel!).

After Harvey Ladew read Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, “Silent Spring,” which many credit with jump-starting the nationwide environmental movement, he stopped spraying his 250-acre Pleasant Valley Farm in Monkton with DDT. Today, the folks who run Ladew Topiary Gardens use that decision as the guiding light for their commitment to an increasingly environmentally sustainable approach.

“Sustainable and green practice now seems the common way to do things,” says Emily Wehr Emerick, the gardens’ executive director. “It didn’t used to be. ... Once everyone saw a problem and said ‘spray.’” Environmentally sound practices are key to maintaining the health of the 22 acres of historic gardens and five acres of meadows, says Emerick, as well as to reducing the roughly $400,000 annual cost of maintaining them.

Though environmental purists eschew lawns, Ladew would not be Ladew without the lush Great Bowl or the verdant lawns adjoining the two garden axes. But Tyler Diehl, head of gardens, has eliminated the mowing of some areas and adopted the ancient American Indian practice of burning the meadows every three to five years rather than mowing or spraying them.

Diehl and his crew add sand to the soil to prevent compacting in high-trafficked areas. And in several areas where thatch builds up and reoccurs, Diehl mows, scrapes it up, composts it, then re-seeds.

Perhaps most radically, instead of “blanket spraying” of broadleaf weeds, a small canister is used to target specific areas. Fifteen years ago, the turf was sprayed with fertilizers and weedkiller six times a year. Ten years ago, that was reduced to three times. Now only some areas receive treatment, and at most two times a year. Many areas receive no spraying at all.

The same is true in the Rose Garden. Diehl has reduced spraying to once a year and has gone back to planting old roses that require less maintenance. “Besides some ‘Knock Out’ roses we have only 18th- and 19th-century roses— no hybrid tea roses,” he says. “Ladew’s original climbing ‘New Dawn’ roses are well established. They’re also underplanted with banking plants, like perennial geraniums, to protect the beneficial insects that control aphids.”

Diehl and his gardeners have increased their tolerance of certain pests like aphids, and they don’t do anything to eradicate Japanese beetles on the roses. When he does spray the roses, Diehl uses the old-fashioned lime sulfur one year and dormant oil the next.

Throughout the gardens, especially on the 10-year-old Nature Walk, where tours and classes take place, Diehl is on a quest to curb the spread of non-native invasive plants. Trees like Norway maples, which Harvey Ladew planted, have now put out so many seedlings that they create a dense canopy that prevents understory trees and other plants from growing.

Other non-native invasives Ladew is working to reduce include multiflora roses, privet, garlic mustard, Canadian thistle, Japanese honeysuckle and miscanthus grass. “We can’t eradicate these completely, because the deer population feeds on them farther up the road, then deposits the seeds here,” says Diehl. But he tries. He pulls 75 percent of the plants. He also cuts them. Only if there is a big stand or something with a substantial trunk does he apply a pesticide to the stems by paintbrush or spray.

Diehl looks to natives first when he has to replace a plant. “Mr. Ladew used natives in his gardens— hemlocks, tulip poplars, sugar maples and locusts,” says Diehl. Because the aim is to preserve the original design and plantings, when a blue spruce dies another blue spruce is planted. But Diehl also uses natives like hornbeam and dogwood trees, witch hazel, clethra and Echinacea, and he’s replaced non-native invasive grasses like miscanthus with panicum (“switch”) grass.

For the past several years, Diehl and his team have devoted more time to sustainable practices like composting. The gardeners haul everything no thicker than a baby finger onto the compost piles, which are turned three or four times a year. “It takes a few years to pay off, but it pays off big,” says Diehl.

Although they do water the lawns (because they are key to the historic gardens) they do so judiciously. “Careful turf maintenance leads to healthier lawns, which in turn lead to a decreased need to water,” says Emerick. “The secret is to water thoroughly when you water. Turf is no exception.”

Undoubtedly Harvey Ladew would be proud of the increased knowledge of sustainable practices the current administration and horticulturalists adhere to in his gardens. Problems that plagued him, like the perennial challenges of hemlock pests and diseases, have been checked by more “green” protocol.

“Harvey Ladew was a hands-on gardener who knew his plants intimately,” says Emerick. “He knew a successful garden was a healthy garden. He’d be fascinated with what our horticulturalists know now, what we are learning, and, more importantly, what we are putting into practice every year.”

Imagine a neoclassic palace of a building. Rounded arches, carved cornices, six levels of shopping and large windows at street level to show off the merchandise. A place where you could buy dry goods, notions, shoes, books and appliances all under one roof, a store convenient to the streetcar and to other downtown shopping at its location at Howard and Lexington. You would think such a place would thrive forever.

And yet, not long after the building’s opening, one of the store’s owners overheard one woman tell another, “It’s beautiful, but it can’t possibly last.”

The store owner was Max Hochschild and the store, Hochschild, Kohn & Co., was Baltimore’s first downtown department store. Hochschild’s more than outlasted that anonymous woman’s predictions. It even outlasted Max Hochschild, a man known for his longevity (he kept an office in the downtown store from his retirement in 1925 until 1957, two weeks shy of his 102nd birthday).

Founded in 1897 by Hochschild and brothers Benno Kohn and Louis B. Kohn, and designed by Joseph Evans Sperry, an innovative architect whose firm was one of the first to design buildings with elevators and flush toilets (the Bromo-Seltzer Tower is his most famous creation), Hochschild, Kohn & Co. remained at Lexington and Howard until 1977, when it became the first of the Baltimore department stores to abandon its downtown flagship.

Until then, it was the place to go to visit the Smoothie Shop for ladies corsets and full slips, or the hat department, where you could buy a Tailored Topper with your charga-plate. Shoppers left messages in Hochschild’s Appointment Book just inside the Howard Street entrance to tell friends to meet them for lunch at the sixth-floor Georgia Tea Room, checked purchases that would later be delivered home by the uniformed drivers, and perused the well-stocked book shop. Hochschild’s sold lamps and typewriters, fountain pens and furs, “better dresses,” pet supplies and beauty services. But still, as Michael Lisicky, author of “Hutzler’s: Where Baltimore Shops,” reflects, “Hochschild’s was where the common folk shopped.”

Hochschild’s president Martin Kohn echoed this sentiment in a store bulletin from the 1970s when he described Hochschild’s place in Baltimore’s department store history.  “Hochschild Kohn was not known as a high-fashion store,” he wrote. “Its volume was in the middle to better price range, and for its volume, it depended on its interesting and aggressive promotion, its broad stocks, its competitive pricing— but most of all, on its good will.” Hochschild’s valued customer service favored a liberal return policy and boasted that they sponsored “no fake sales,” even fashioning a complex set of rules for their Bargain Fridays, where set items were priced at least 15 percent off the regular price.

Despite this, Hochschild’s still had class. Former Hochschild’s employee Virginia Brunk Franklin recalled a 1943 training lecture in which female employees were told: “No bare arms, no bright dresses, no loud jewelry, no fancy hairstyles, no gum, no pencil behind the ear, and never, never call the customer ‘Hon’ or ‘Honey!’”

Sister Dorothy Daiger, SSND, whose father, Harry E. Daiger, was Hochschild’s production manager and did layouts for newspaper ads from 1945 to 1969, was a teen model for the store in the mid-1940s when girls from local high schools were chosen to model store merchandise. “You went to Teen World and picked out what you liked and then you put it on and you would model it in the tea room,” recalls Sister Dorothy. “I would walk through with other girls, stop at the tables and there would always be a lot of ladies up there having lunch and they would admire you and smile. And you would say, ‘This sells for $17.95 in the Teen World department.’ I did it for a couple of years.”

But what Sister Dorothy and many Baltimoreans remember best about Hochschild’s was the annual Thanksgiving Toytown Parade— a jumble of balloons including Mickey Mouse, Little Bunny Cotton Tail and a huge inflated dragon, marching bands, reindeer and, of course, Santa Claus. Beginning near the Baltimore Museum of Art, the parade wound its way downtown, signaling the beginning of the Christmas shopping season and drawing shoppers to Hochschild’s other major Christmas attraction, the street-level display windows, which were decorated with a different Christmas-related theme each season. What didn’t change from year to year, however, was the Laughing Santa Claus. Jovial to some, but terrifying to others, the giant mechanized Santa would lean forward in his chair, booming “Ho! Ho! Ho!” through speakers to shoppers on Howard Street.
In the following years, Hochschild’s would be known for a series of firsts. In 1947, with the opening of Hochschild’s Edmondson Village, it became the first downtown department store to expand into the suburbs. (The following year it opened a second suburban branch, its sleek Hochschild, Kohn Belvedere store, now a mixed-use retail complex at York Road and Belvedere Avenue.)

In 1960, Hochschild’s served 120 Morgan State student demonstrators in the downtown store restaurant, becoming the first of Baltimore’s department stores to integrate and eventually change their strict policies of not allowing African-Americans to either try on or return clothing.

In 1966, Hochschild’s, which had remained in the hands of its founders’ families, became the first acquisition of Warren Buffett’s Buffett Partnership Ltd. And in 1977, it became the first of Baltimore’s department stores to close its downtown store (the chain had expanded to include at least eight other locations, including Security Square, Columbia, Eastpoint, Harundale and Kenilworth).

The grand, six-story building at Lexington and Howard streets burned in a 10-alarm fire in 1983, the same year the Hochschild, Kohn & Co. chain went out of business, closing all of its branches. In 1985, Hutzler’s erected its glitzy new downtown “Palace” store on the former Hochschild’s site, but closed it a few years later as that venerable local department store chain also faced closure.  It has since been converted to a multi-use building including offices and several storefronts, none that boast a Laughing Santa.

The first ladies of Baltimore’s boutique scene, Melissa Kirby and Jamie Campbell, have left The Avenue (Shine Collective’s home since Melissa and her husband, Matt, founded it in 2002) and relocated to Clipper Mill. Now open Thursday to Sunday, Sav’s fave gals are spending more time focusing on their fashion blog and e-retail. But fear not, Shiners, you can still get your fill of Iosselliani stack rings, Linea Pelle handbags and great pieces from Monrow. And now also look for polish by RGB (Savvy is obsessed with Toast, a modern taupe shade, even though it makes her look like a corpse), the dresses from J Lee Silver and the charms from Mifflin. Stop in (yes, it’s in the back of the building next to the woods— it’s shopping among the squirrels, girls) for affordable luxuries and key pieces that will instantly up your fashionista factor. Don’t Miss: Catapult Vintage, amazing clothing and shoes edited by Shine resident stylist Alana Madill. Clipper Mill, 2010 Clipper Park Dr., 410-366-6100

Federal Hill loves its converted rowhouse bars, and recently gained another— called, not coincidentally— The Rowhouse Grille. The new owners gave the space a thorough renovation, and the result features blue-gray walls, glowing cherry floors and a polished oak bar and woodwork. A smallish dining room in the rear contains tables for gathering, and the upstairs holds another larger dining room, along with a smaller bar area complete with roaring fireplace and windows overlooking the street. Craft beer fans will delight in eight flowing taps (three of those dispensing Clipper City ales). The kitchen has been concentrating on lite fare, starters, salads and sandwiches (including some scrumptious paninis— roast beef and mozzarella, smoked salmon, Italian chicken, to name a few) for now, and plans to expand the menu in the coming months.  Open 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. Monday-Friday; 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Saturday. 1400 Light St., 443-438-7289

During my 35 years in the corporate world, I encountered my share of job applications. But the one I filled out in June 2009 was the first that required a dance audition and a photograph of me in a tuxedo. This application wasn’t for a job per se, but for a gig as a “gentleman host,” where in exchange for free passage on a 30-day luxury cruise from Cape Town, South Africa, to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., I would (mostly) dance with single ladies of a certain age.
At 74, and retired for 12 years from my position as president of a $20 million, world-wide company, I felt my life had become stale and sedentary. I needed a new challenge. The role of gentleman host seemed perfect. I’d financed my first trip abroad— a student tour of Europe in 1955— by giving ballroom dance lessons and, ever since, I’ve loved to dance. I also love travel, especially at sea. And I love people… or so I thought.

After I boarded the ship in Cape Town, I learned from Ellie, the ship’s social hostess and my direct supervisor, that my responsibilities would encompass much more than a few fox trots and rumbas. I’d host a table of “Solos” (as both women and men traveling alone are known) at breakfast; assist with half-hour dance lessons twice a day; join Solos for cocktails; make up tables and host Solos for dinner; accompany a Solo to the evening show; and, finally, dance with single women until midnight, a time when any sane person my age would already be in bed. I’d need to learn and use all of the Solos’ names— roughly 45 of them— greet all of the 700 guests aboard with a cordial “good morning” or “good evening,” and always smile, smile, smile! And, Ellie said, I must never enter a passenger’s stateroom under any circumstance. There must not be even a hint of impropriety.

I spent my first few hours exploring my home for the next month, one of the most luxurious small cruise ships in the world. First, I located the Horizon Lounge, where most of my hosting activities would take place. It featured a long bar, a small stage and dance floor and scores of low-slung, heavy chairs that wouldn’t slide around in a rolling sea. Then I peeked in on the ship’s several dining rooms and the open-air pool deck, with its rows of deck chairs. Access to these attractions and many more— the theater, a computer center, the library, the boutique, a casino, a disco bar— was from a beautifully decorated atrium that soared from Deck 3 to Deck 11.

Then I met Heinz, the other host aboard who would share my 300-square-foot stateroom. At 67, Heinz had been traveling as a gentleman host since 1997. Tall and thin, with white hair and a mustache to match, he was from Munich and spoke with a slight accent. He favored a white dinner jacket and colored shirts, and wore rectangular Jil Sander glasses by day, and round-framed ones embedded with multi-colored speckles at night. He had seven pairs of shoes, some with contrasting laces, and immediately dismissed my Crocs as ugly and inappropriate, even after I’d explained that they were the only shoes comfortable for my feet and that I had gotten special dispensation to wear them.

At the opening cocktail party that evening, I met the first of the Solos. Brenda was retired from a career in private banking, and would (oddly, I thought) soon become addicted to the onboard casino. Terry was a jolly former bookie from London, obviously on the prowl for a single woman. Patrick, from Australia, emphasized points by drawing out vowels and dramatically blinking his eyes. Shirley, a retired airline stewardess, immediately announced I should be “ready,” because she loved to dance. And Mariella from Los Angeles was a sleek, Afghan hound-like divorcee who’d been married to several men (at separate times) in the movie industry.

Over the next day or two, I met more Solos. Gabriele was a 70ish, slight and stylish widow with carefully coifed gray hair and a long neck like a gazelle, which was often circled with a sparkling cuff of silver or gold. Born in Switzerland but now living in Florida, she spoke with a charming accent. Always elegant, and elegantly dressed, she favored the cha-cha, which she performed with an ease that could only have been achieved through many lessons. She shared my love of photography and when I showed her the sharpening function on a photo editing program, she declared me a genius.

Margot, on the other hand, was not so easily charmed. When we met, she insisted that her name was pronounced “Margo,” but spelled with a T. “Remember that,” she warned, pointing an arthritic forefinger in my direction. Margot didn’t often dance, but when she did, her girth and intransigence made leading her across the floor like steering a tank. One night at dinner, Margot got into a serious dispute with a woman named Diane, about some place in the world each had visited.

“Isn’t it strange?” Margot said, leaning toward Diane. “The limes there are yellow.”

“No,” said Diane. “They’re green.”

“No. They’re yellow.” Margot was not giving up.

“They’re not yellow,” Diane insisted.

“Yes, they are, dear. I’ve been there. And they’re yellow.”

“I’ve been there, too. And the limes are green!”

“Can one of you reach the butter?” I asked, falling back on years of corporate experience in conflict resolution by saying something, anything, to change the subject.

Then there were the Claudines— One and Two— French ladies in their 60s who spoke no English and were always beautifully dressed. They didn’t care about actual dance steps so long as they could push and pull me around and endlessly twist on their toes to the beat. Trying— not always successfully— to keep up with one of them on a moving dance floor, I often had to apologize in my stumbling, high school French for stepping on their elegantly lacquered red toes.

One night just as I was knotting my black tie in preparation for the captain’s reception, Ellie called my stateroom to ask if I could escort a Solo named Dr. Ruth to the boutique. The Dr. Ruth, I wondered? When I rang the bell to her suite, the woman who opened the door was as small as Dr. Ruth but otherwise quite different. Her dark hair, short and spun casually around her head, framed a face so full of wrinkles that its only smooth surface was at the bridge of her nose. She was stooped and slightly humped from osteoporosis but her dark eyes were alive with intelligence and mischief.

“Oh,” she said, “I deedn’t expect such a handsome gentleman.” She smiled and took my arm for the short walk to the elevator. “Be careful, Dr. Ruth,” I told her.  “The ship is jumping around a little.”

“Not a problem for me. Joost as long as I haf you,” she said with a coquettish grin. “And pleese call me Dr. Reetah.”

When we reached the boutique, Dr. Rita explained to the saleslady that she had regrettably left her jewelry at home and needed something to wear with her dress. Dr. Rita tried on a few necklaces before selecting one with an array of mauve glass beads set in silver. She turned to me and said, “Vat do you sink?”

Most of the Solos were so invested in themselves that it wouldn’t have occurred to them to ask my opinion about anything. “I think it’s lovely,” I said. And I did.

I found Dr. Rita a comfortable chair in the Atrium and, embarking on my usual conversational overture, asked her about her travels. “Oh,” she said. “I travel a lot. Zee last time, I tell my grandcheelrin to get in anozer line from me. I know zee immeegrashun vill stop me since my passport includes stamps from Eerahn and Pakeestan and Eyerak and Afghaneestan.”

What followed was one of the most interesting half-hour conversations I’ve had. Born into an intellectual family in Romania, Dr. Rita had tried to hide her background when the Nazis invaded. A friend who owned a foundry rubbed her hands with salt to try to roughen them enough to persuade the Nazi colonel that she was a worker there. But when confronting her, the colonel made an offhand remark that was part of a quotation from Goethe, and without thinking, Dr. Rita finished it. That little slip sent her to a concentration camp from 1941 to 1945. Later, she’d come to the United States and was now a psychiatrist specializing in the psychoses of nations. She told me that she believed the many generations of Shiite victim-hood augured a rocky future for Iraq, and that the ancient pride of the Persians would make it very difficult for Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. What a truly fascinating person she was, and what a relief from Margot and Diane and their spat about the limes!

As the cruise continued, my days settled into a routine. I got up early to photograph the sunrise, sneaking out of the stateroom in the dark so I wouldn’t wake Heinz. (The forced intimacy of our roommate situation had not made us bosom buddies, to say the least. I got along with him only by being obsequious, not exactly natural to my post-managerial personality.) Then, I’d stop by the computer center to check my e-mail and enter the previous day’s experiences in my blog before the buffet opened at 7:30.

After breakfast, I was free until 9, when I returned to the Veranda to host the Solo breakfast table, engaging with Solos over their own bacon and eggs. During days at sea, at 10:45 and again at 1:45, I assisted with the dance lesson for the day— salsa, quick step, merengue, slow waltz— perhaps grabbing a little sun and a welcome, solitary lunch in between. Following the dance lesson in the afternoon, I usually retreated to the shady side of Deck 5 and slouched in a deck chair with a book, hiding behind my sunglasses and my baseball cap.

On days in port, I was free, like any regular guest, to join a shore excursion. Or, if the buses were full, I might act as host, counting heads and carrying a first-aid kit for possible emergencies. I took the cable car up Table Mountain in Cape Town, photographed the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and visited a rum plantation built in 1643 on Barbados. I’ll never forget the extravagant, lavender agapanthus in the lush gardens at Longwood House on St. Helena.

Each evening at 6:30, it was back to the lounge for cocktails and more smiling, and for strategically creating the table arrangements for dinner, struggling to incorporate the whims of the 15 to 20 Solos: “I don’t want to sit next to her;” “Don’t put me at a table of more than six;” “Not that table— we sat there last night.” After dinner, I’d escort a Solo lady to the evening show that might feature a pianist, juggler, magician or singer— often someone young on the way up in their career, or someone older, on the way down— before returning to the lounge for that final hour of dancing, spreading myself equally around among Shirley, Marlene, Marissa, Mariella or one or both of the Claudines.

Each night, I fell into bed exhausted, not so much from physical activity as from the mental and psychological gymnastics devoted to keeping the Solos happy.

To my surprise, as the days passed I grew to feel a little sorry for many of the Solos, so snugly wrapped in their affluence,  ego and status. There were various reward levels— bronze, silver, gold, platinum and titanium— earned by accumulated lifetime nights aboard the cruise line’s ships. These levels were attached to certain perks: free laundry, free computer time, free phone calls, a daily copy of The Wall Street Journal, priority in reservations at the two upgrade restaurants on board, discounts on future travel. Although most guests claimed these perks meant little, they spoke of them often. “On my next cruise, I’ll become a Gold and get the paper.” Or, “I can’t wait until my laundry’s free.”

Even toward the Solos who annoyed me, I began to feel some sympathy. Or perhaps it was pity. Some were really sad: Patrick, after too much wine at dinner, disturbing other guests seated around him by snoring through the evening’s show; lonely Rosalie, who already had five cruises booked for 2010 with nothing better to do than work on her itinerary for 2011; and even Margot, her underlying anger preventing her from establishing any genuine intimacy with her fellow passengers.

Near the end of the cruise, I was offered another hosting gig on the same ship for the first few legs of a world cruise, 47 nights from San Diego to Singapore. The invitation prompted me to evaluate my experience even before I’d returned to Baltimore, unpacked and caught my breath. I had found the sea travel calm and soothing, and I thoroughly enjoyed visiting South Africa, St. Helena and Brazil. I’d grown very fond of some of the guests: Libby, the talent manager with the infectious laugh who was my best audience; Lise, from Montreal, who happily anticipated her next cruise with her 5-year-old granddaughter; and the fun-loving Millers from London, who surprisingly knew the entrepreneur there to whom I sold the company from which I retired.

But I didn’t always enjoy the forced intimacy with the many shallow and uninteresting characters so invested in their status. And I certainly didn’t like rooming with Heinz, who had already accepted a host position on the San Diego to Singapore run. So, I graciously declined the offer. Anyway, I needed at least a short break from the always-smiling intensity of the role of companion-tour-guide-raconteur-diplomat- manager-dance partner necessary to being a gentleman host.

Good and bad, I had definitely found the challenge I’d been seeking. As Arthur Murray once said, “To put spice in your life, try dancing.” Samba, anyone?

Now open in Little Italy: Milan. The upscale lounge and restaurant features a menu that blends modern Italian cuisine with Mediterranean flavors. (1000 Eastern Ave., 410-685-6111)  ... >>Poe Boys in Fells Point has replaced Miss Irene’s. Expect a more casual and price-friendly menu, a game room with billiards and 18 beers on tap. (1738 Thames St., 410-558-0033)... >>In Harbor East, Elevation Burger has closed. Other area closings include Cosmopolitan in Canton, Three in Patterson Park and DuClaw Brewing Co. in Fells Point. ... >>Noodles & Company has announced it’ll be opening in the Light Street Pavilion at Harborplace this spring.

In the space of 13 years, Dan Proctor, principal/owner of Kirk Designs, and his life partner, Jeffrey Hess, have designed the interior of the three homes they have owned. Their first house was in Guilford, their second house in Roland Park, and now they’ve landed in a 1927 white stucco and stone house in Homeland. From the outside, the home appears small next to some of the larger homes in the neighborhood. “It might look like a miniature cottage, but as soon as you open the door, it looks like Mame built it— like something from Paris in the ’20s or ’30s exploded inside,” says Proctor.

The 12-by-24-foot foyer, with its black slate and white ceramic diamond-pattern tiles, sets the mood for a “little bit of Paris in Homeland,” says Proctor. A long, mirror-topped table by David Weisand stands between two doors that were added after Proctor and Hess bought the house. “There used to be one door where the table was, but we wanted to use the space better and we wanted balance,” says Hess, who also works in the design world. To the right of the entry table is a Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann-inspired Art Deco burgundy velvet boudoir chair set next to a sweeping staircase, surrounded by walls painted “Jackie O blue,” says Proctor, before adding that it’s officially Benjamin Moore No. 703.

The hallway features two closets, one used for coats, as might be expected, and the other to house the stereo system and mammoth collection of CDs. Where are the speakers? Nowhere in sight, given Proctor’s pet peeve about visible speakers and wires. “We have a cool stereo system that has allowed us to bury the speakers in the ceilings under the plaster throughout the house,” he says. “Essentially, you have no idea where the sound comes from, and it keeps the ceiling clean.”

Between the window seat and the table is what was originally a breakfast room, then a laundry room, and now a powder room reminiscent of something aboard a vintage luxury liner. Paneled mahogany walls provide a handsome backdrop for two wall-sized antiqued mirrors that complement a vintage Venetian octagonal mirror. “That mirror inspired the way we did this room,” says Hess, pointing to the legs of the sink and other octagonal-shaped touches. The black marble sink complements the St. Laurent black marble and herringbone tiles, with ivory-accented trim on the floor.

Across the hall, the dining room is painted a very dark, steel-charcoal and features step-up moulding designed by Hess. “Imagine a very dark Chanel suit with white cuffs. That’s what we wanted to achieve,” says Proctor. Framing the windows are ivory and black double-weave, striped floral draperies, that look, says Proctor, “like a divine hostess gown, perhaps like something Gloria Vanderbilt might wear at the Biltmore.”

While moving the door to the other side of the room to accommodate the view of the stairs and to keep the balance, Proctor and Hess also decided to lay down new floors of herringbone oak. In the middle of the room is a round, burled walnut table by Mitchell Yanosky, a mimic of an Albert Hadley design that Proctor had seen in an old black-and-white photo. The table is surrounded by ivory and charcoal shantung silk-fabric chairs. Along the walls, in keeping with the Chanel/Parisian feel, are Roman leaf and feather-motif crystal sconces. The large abstract prints are by Robert Motherwell.

Across the hall, on the other side of the staircase, is the living room, brilliant with ivories, touches of golds and an abundance of sunlight. Says Hess: “One of the main reasons we purchased this house was because of all the natural light that comes in.” The light plays off the Italian silk drapes, and striped French silk Louis Seize chairs, and brings out the texture of the sisal rug. To impart a sense of the exotic to the room, Proctor and Hess added a zebra rug under a copy of a red-topped antique English club table.

“I love a little bit of red in any room— red is one of those ‘everything’ colors,” says Proctor. “There are a lot of different reds. They’re welcoming. They make people smile a little bit. They make me happy.” What didn’t make Proctor happy, but what Hess loves (and Proctor has come to like), is the antique chest of drawers with the marquetry inlaid Asian scene.

At the top of the curved banister— which has been tongue-oiled, because, says Hess, “We wanted to keep the feeling of years of people having touched this”— is the first piece of art that Proctor and Hess bought together. It was purchased in New Orleans some 13 years ago when “we didn’t have two nickels to rub together,” says Hess. It’s by an unknown Welsh painter, and its title is “A Rather ’20s Woman Dancing.”

“We couldn’t afford it,” says Proctor, “so when I got home, I called the gallery and asked them if I could buy it in payments.”  Now it resides above their favorite piece of furniture in the entire house, a French chest of drawers. “It’s nothing important, but to us it means a lot.” And that’s a theme Proctor communicates to his clients all the time. “Expensive things might be important, but self-expression and your personality and what you like are more important than anything when it comes to designing your home.”

Off to one side of the stairs is the master bedroom, where the palette is quieter. After designing all day, says Proctor, “we wanted a respite from color. In my work, a lot of clients ask for that respite.” The room is painted “Millet”— a warm off-white— and it blends into a ceiling that was raised by a foot.  Says Hess: “The builder said they could move it a foot only, and the old wood, the old collar ties, had to be used to suspend it, because new wood wouldn’t hold.”  Once the new ceiling was finished, Proctor and Hess had custom tongue-and-groove paneling installed.

A wing-back, textured-weave headboard frames the king-sized bed. There was no bed wall, so the couple created one by putting a solid-panel wool gabardine drapery by Bergamo over the window. The vintage bedside tables from Ezra Black are mid-century modern and fairly scream “Mad Men,” which is appropriate, as that’s the DVD that resides on the chest of drawers in front of the bed.  The English-made, striated wool wall-to-wall carpet is thick and lush, and leads into what used to be a master bath, but which Proctor and Hess turned into an alcove.

The master bath now occupies what used to be another bedroom. The same charcoal paint (called “Dragon’s Breath”) used in the dining room is used here, contrasting with the striking marble tiled floor by New Ravenna. The tiles are a combination of a Napoleon dark tile, a beige Crema Marfil tile and a white Calcutta gold tile, all put together in ovals and mosaics to look as if a rug were spread out. The two went so far as to make sure the tiles didn’t border the vanity, but instead, the marble vanity rests on top of where a rug might be.  “We wanted the oval borders to impose a rug on the viewer,” says Hess.

When asked how long it took to design the house, Hess says, “After we put a contract on the house, we were immediately flying to California. We sat on the plane, and on a cocktail napkin, we sketched up exactly how we wanted to do it and it hasn’t varied at all.” Says Proctor: “We took a house we found and… came in and dressed it up, so you would not know it had been manipulated with a new design. You’d think it had always looked this way.”

RESOURCES
Woodwork TCS Woodworking, 2730 Loch Raven Road, 410-662-5959, http://www.tcswoodworking.com

Ornamental plasterwork Hayles & Howe, 2700 Sisson St., 410-462-0986, http://www.haylesandhowe.com

Framing The Beveled Edge, 2010 Clipper Park Road, 410-366-6711, http://www.bevelededge.net

Floors Master Care Flooring, 4000 Coolidge Ave., 410-242-6401, http://www.mastercarefloors.com

Art Renaissance Fine Arts, 1848 Reisterstown Road, 410-484-8900, http://www.renaissancefinearts.com

This recipe is from Food and Wine, which dubbed it “Holiday Pork Posole.” But it’s a great dish for any chilly day. Note that you’ll want to cook the pork shoulder the day before you make the soup.

4 medium onions, divided
7 tablespoons canola oil or vegetable oil, divided
4 tablespoons ancho chile powder, divided
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons dried oregano (preferably Mexican), divided
1 6- to 6 1/2-pound bone-in pork shoulder (Boston butt), cut into 4- to 5-inch pieces, some meat left on bone
5 cups (or more) low-salt chicken broth
4 7-ounce cans diced green chiles, drained
5 large garlic cloves, minced
4 teaspoons ground cumin
4 15-ounce cans golden or white hominy, drained
4 limes, each cut into 4 wedges
Thinly sliced green onion
Chopped fresh cilantro

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Thinly slice 2 onions. Heat 4 tablespoons oil in heavy large ovenproof pot over medium-high heat. Add sliced onions to pot and sauté until onions begin to soften, about 3 minutes. Add 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon ancho chile powder and 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon oregano; stir to coat. Sprinkle pork with salt and add to pot. Add 5 cups broth. Bring to boil. Cover and transfer to oven.

Braise pork until tender enough to shred easily, about 2 hours. Using slotted spoon, transfer pork to large bowl. Pour juices into another large bowl. Refrigerate separately uncovered until cool, then cover and keep chilled overnight.

Discard fat from top of chilled juices; reserve juices. Chop pork into 1/2-inch cubes, discarding excess fat. Thinly slice remaining 2 onions. Heat remaining 3 tablespoons oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Add onions; sauté until soft, stirring often, about 7 minutes. Add remaining 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons ancho chile powder, remaining 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon oregano, diced chiles, garlic, and cumin; stir 30 seconds. Add pork, reserved juices, and hominy. Bring to boil; reduce heat to low. Cover with lid slightly ajar and simmer 30 minutes to allow flavors to blend, adding more broth to thin, if desired.

Ladle posole into bowls. Garnish with lime wedges, green onion and cilantro.  Serves 9.

Lake Packing Co., Inc. publishes a small pamphlet of recipes using Mrs. Manning’s Hominy, including this old-fashioned combination of hominy, oysters and sausage.

1 20-ounce can Manning’s Hominy
1 pound sausage, formed into 6 patties
1 quart oysters
¼ cup milk
1 tablespoon butter
Salt and pepper, to taste

Fry sausage. Set aside, reserving part of the drippings. Stew oysters (extra water may be added if not enough oyster liquor). Add sausage to stewed oysters and season with reserved drippings. Combine hominy, milk, butter, salt and pepper in pan. Simmer on low heat until warm. Serve with sausage and stewed oysters. Makes 6 to 8 servings.

Serves 6-8

1 head minced garlic
2 cups diced onion
2 cups shredded carrot
5 pounds ground meats in this ratio: 50 percent beef, 25 percent veal, 25 percent pork
3 egg yolks and 3 whole free range eggs
1 cup grated Romano cheese
1 cup bread crumbs
1/2 cup freshly chopped flat leaf Italian parsley
1/2 cup fresh chopped oregano

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix vigorously for 10 minutes using your hands until the meat is sticking to your fingers. Roll the meat into whatever
size balls you want and bake on an aluminum foil-covered sheet tray for 10 to 15 minutes. You know they are done when they are firm to the touch and begin to ooze their juices on the sheet pan. Serve with sweet basil tomato sauce and your favorite pasta.

Sweet Basil Tomato Sauce

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup diced yellow onions
4 cloves minced garlic
2 28-ounce cans of San Marzano tomatoes
1/2 cup packed shredded fresh sweet Italian basil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat olive oil in heavy bottom saucepan, and sweat onions and garlic until translucent. Add tomatoes, season with salt and pepper, and gently simmer for 45 minutes. Let cool for 20 minutes before adding the sweet basil to finish the sauce.

Serves 8-10

3 stalks celery washed and cut into small dice
2 large carrots peeled and cut into small dice  
4 cloves fresh garlic peeled and chopped finely
2 parsnips peeled and cut into small dice
1 large leek split, washed, and cut into small dice
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 16-ounce can San Marzano diced tomatoes
4 quarts chicken stock
1 cup dried orzo pasta
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup of freshly chopped flat leaf Italian parsley
1 tablespoon fresh picked thyme
1/4 cup freshly chopped marjoram

In a large heavy bottom pot over medium heat add olive oil, celery, onion, carrot, garlic, parsnips, and leek. Season with salt and pepper and sweat until vegetables are either translucent or release their aroma. Add the chicken stock, tomatoes, and pasta. Gently simmer for half an hour or so until the vegetables are soft. Adjust seasoning and let cool. Add the herbs to finish. When serving, you can add fresh olive oil and Parmesan cheese.

Serves 6-8

2 boxes of large pasta shells, cooked
3 pounds whole milk ricotta
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup grated Romano cheese
1/4 cup chopped fresh sweet Italian basil
1/4 cup chopped fresh oregano
1/4 cup chopped fresh flat leaf Italian parsley
1/4 cup fresh marjoram
2 cups chopped fresh mozzarella cheese
1 cup sweet basil tomato sauce
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl mix all ingredients until well blended and season with salt and pepper. Fill cooked shells with cheese filling and place in a large baking dish. Cover the shells with prepared sweet basil tomato sauce (see following recipe) and sprinkle with mozzarella. Bake in a preheated 350-degree oven for 25 minutes or until shells are warmed through.

Serves 8-10

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 yellow onion chopped into small dice
1 stalk celery washed and chopped into small dice
1 carrot peeled and grated
3 ounces sliced prosciutto, chopped thinly
11/2 pounds ground beef
1/2 cup white wine
1 cup milk
1 cup chicken stock
1 28-ounce can San Marzano tomatoes
1 pound cooked or fresh lasagna pasta sheets
3 pounds fresh whole milk ricotta
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup grated Romano cheese
2 whole free range eggs
2 cups grated fresh mozzarella cheese
Sweet basil tomato sauce (you may not use all of it)

In a large heavy bottom pot over medium heat add olive oil, celery, onion, carrot, beef, and prosciutto. Season with salt and pepper and sweat until vegetables are translucent and the meat is browned. Add the white wine and cook until the wine has all but evaporated. Add the milk and let it evaporate as well. Repeat the process with the chicken stock. Add the tomatoes and simmer gently for 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside. Combine the ricotta, eggs, and Romano and Parmesan cheeses in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.

In a large baking pan, spoon in a layer of tomato sauce just enough to cover the bottom of the pan. Cover with sheets of pasta, then spoon half of the meat mixture on the pasta; cover the meat with another pasta layer. Spread half of the ricotta mixture on top, then cover with a layer of pasta sheets. Repeat with layers of meat sauce, pasta, ricotta, and a final sheet of pasta. Cover the top sheet with a layer of tomato sauce and sprinkle with mozzarella cheese. Bake lasagna in a preheated 350-degree oven for 45 minutes or until hot in the center. Serve on a pool of sweet basil tomato sauce.

I spent my summers as a kid on the steamy streets of New York City. Dive-bombing the unsuspecting below with seltzer water from our 6th-floor apartment. Eating what was then considered exotic Chinese food and daring my dad to try the sea cucumber. Taking in pizza off a Broadway street curb, followed by Italian ices off Columbus Avenue then jumping in the water blasting out from the fire hydrant to cool off.

There were also the more elegant times, when Dad took me to F.A.O. Schwarz to pick out a new toy; to drink tea at The Plaza Hotel, then head over to The Pierre to watch the debutantes parade in; to Café Carlyle to check out Bobby Short checking himself out in the mirror while he sang Cole Porter and Jerome Kern songs; to the Kennedy Center, Broadway, the Met. Those were my New York days so many years ago. And it’s that combination of new and old that I’m trying to get back each time I return.

So when I heard that The Pierre Hotel had reopened after closing its doors for a $122 million renovation, and that Tim and Kit Kemp, the sui generis hot new hoteliers of London, had opened their first American property, the Crosby Street Hotel in SoHo, I knew I had to return.

I decided to stay first at The Pierre, the neo-Renaissance hotel built in 1928 by celebrated architects Schulze & Weaver that stands on Fifth Avenue and the southern tip of Central Park. One of four crown jewels of the luxurious Roaring ’20s (the other three being the Waldorf-Astoria, the Sherry-Netherland and the now-defunct Savoy), it went bankrupt during the Depression, but was saved by J. Paul Getty when he added apartments into the mix. For many years thereafter, it was the spot for famous celebrations, weddings, etc. In December 2007 the hotel closed for renovation, and reopened in June 2009. Now, once again, guests can sleep in the same rooms and suites that once hosted the likes of Howard Hughes, Coco Chanel, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, Elton John, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Queen Elizabeth II.

The renovation— a tour de force by three of Manhattan’s big leaguers: Alexandra Champalimaud & Associates, Brennan, Beer, Gorman & Associates and James Park & Associates— has transformed the hotel entrance into that of a NYC apartment building, where guests are invited to feel as if they’re entering their place of residence, taking the elevator with their favorite lift attendant, on their way to their own private pied-à-terre on the Upper East Side. The hotel has succeeded in this mission. The understated, elegant Manhattan hotel that’s about old money and good manners— a tradition that, in the last 20 years, has fast been pushed aside for the more robust new Wall Street money—stands firm with The Pierre.

Of the 140 guest rooms, 38 suites and 11 grand suites, I’m awarded the Presidential Suite. The designer touches begin at the door, but are immediately set aside for the enormous views of Central Park. There’s The Dakota, where John Lennon was shot. There’s the Wollman skating rink below. A bit ahead, I can spot the Jackie Onassis Reservoir, and right below me, almost touchable, is Hermès— ooh la la! Through another window, the horse-drawn carriages line up with the yellow cabs along Central Park South. These are to-die-for views out of windows that actually open.

But back to the designer touches. Agra wall-to-wall sculpted wool carpet in whites, beiges and golden hues meet large, twin tufted sofas and matching coffee tables. A Louis XV desk and a pair of demi-lune rose-colored Italian marble tables stand under 14-foot ceilings. I have two bedrooms from which to choose: one with twin beds fit for royal children, and a master suite with the loveliness of white-on-white arabesque cloth on the walls, and, really, the best view from any bed in the city.

I do what any breathless guest does. I order room service— cappuccino and a pastry— and enjoy it while I relax in the luxury bathroom, with its built-in TV above a roomy tub that rises up on a platform, with a huge picture window in front. The walk-in shower— large enough for four people— has a rain shower head built in the ceiling. Between the shower and the bath, it’s hard to stay dry in my room. But I must towel off, because I have a reservation at Manhattan’s newest, hottest restaurant, Le Caprice.

To get there, I walk through the famous Rotunda on the first floor of The Pierre — a domed room with a trompe l’œil mural climbing up the walls to the ceiling, where 3-D clouds float. The art is just this side of kitschy— with Erik Estrada and Jackie O painted in togas— but somehow, because it’s The Pierre, it’s also very “Jean-Honoré Fragonard” artsy.

Walking into 70-seat Le Caprice is almost culture shock after the Rotunda. Inside, the restaurant looks like a Chanel compact, with everything black and white and shiny. It’s a Richard Caring creation (the genius behind some of London’s most successful restaurants like The Ivy, Sheekey, Daphne’s, Bam-Bou and Urban Caprice), and his first foray in the Colonies. He doesn’t let down. I order the lobster salad, with shaved fennel and asparagus, and a wild mushroom risotto; then I have the Thai-baked sea bass and coriander-infused rice with a Gewurztraminer Domaine Paul Blanck wine. I have a happy palate, but still have to try the Scandinavian iced berries with hot white chocolate sauce. And voila, the final analysis: the experience of eating at Le Caprice starts with the look and ends with the good spirits in the stomach.

The best way to end the evening is at Two E, the bar/lounge with Jesse Torres, the head bartender, at the helm. “We’re going back to the 18th and early 19th centuries with our drinks,” he tells me. He’s studied under Dale DeGroff, the man who invented the term “mixology,” and does indeed bring a new twist to the older drinks. His Manhattans are made with Punt e Mes Italian vermouth instead of the typical sweet vermouth. His PierreTini uses Captain Morgan’s rum mixed in with the gin. And the Gin Gin— designed for fashion week and worth a trip by itself— is made with Domaine de Conter, Fever-Tree ginger ale, Hendrick’s cucumber-infused gin, fresh mint, fresh lime juice and fresh cucumber juice. It’s become a universal hit, and it was born right here at The Pierre.

I picture myself a young Audrey Hepburn, getting ready to hit Barneys, Bergdorfs, Bloomingdales and Bendels, because I’m smack in the heart of it here. But three and a half miles south, I get my Edie Sedgwick on in SoHo at the spanking new, gorgeously imaginative Crosby Street Hotel. Coming here is a lot like heading to the Museum of Modern Art — I almost forget there’s a room waiting for me. The first thing I notice in the lobby is the South American sculptor Jaume Plensa’s 10-foot-tall head made up of white, metal letters — seemingly the alphabet floating into the shape of a man’s head. It looks as if a kid can climb over and inside of it. Two life-size papier-mâché dog sculptures made from Beano magazines (an English cartoon from the 1940s) by Justine Smith are seemingly at the ready to jump up happily to greet me. In the drawing room, just next to the lobby, is an enormous dog painting by Francois Bard, picking up on the theme of being eagerly welcomed by a best friend. And hello to the Andy Warhol take on four Queen Elizabeths in different colored hats. My favorite sculpture is the grouping of 12 old, black, rotary-dial phones, mounted to the wall, with their cords and receivers shooting out at different angles, impatient to be answered. Kit Kemp must do eclectic-meets-art better than anyone else on the planet. Wherever you go, you’re met head-on with a creative take on something.

It takes me a while to get to my room, because there is just so much to see. I have to shimmy past the 99-seat cinema, with its bright orange leather seats and purple felt walls. There’s a multi-purpose to this club. Guests get to bring friends, and people get to come in off the street (for the price of a standard movie ticket) and talk about the new to-do in Manhattan. And this is a space dynamic enough to talk about, too.

My lodging for the night is a one-bedroom suite, an edgy study in black and white. The 10-foot-high, floor-to-ceiling window looks out toward Broadway and over the skyline. There’s a terrarium on the corner table and a fireplace in the living area. There are sculptures and paintings of cats, cows and horses throughout. The bed is a Frette-sheeted wonder, and the black and white dotted fabric headboard against the bold black wall complements the fabric on the dressmaker’s mannequin stationed next to the nightstand. On my desk is a mini-dressmaker’s mannequin light that, when illuminated, is blue.

The other rooms in the hotel are different in color (some are brilliantly flashy) and accessories (one comes with a giant silver penguin statue and matching penguin mirrors, another with a whitewashed ironwork chandelier paired with corresponding delicate candelabras), yet all have the same component found in all the Firmdale hotels: the dressmaker’s mannequin. It’s Kit Kemp’s signature— her first hotel, the Covent Garden, is a center for fashion and design companies; and it works especially well in the fashionable SoHo neighborhood, of which the hotel has become an extension. In keeping with the hip, the hotel has earned the first LEED gold certification for a designer hotel in America, by installing energy-efficient lighting, using low VOC finishes and FSC certified wood, and by recycling the refuse from the former building and parking lot that used to stand in the same spot.

The Crosby Bar offers some of the best food I’ve ever had in N.Y.C., which is odd, as the hotel does not claim to have a restaurant, per se. But executive head chef Robin Read oversees the most amazing scallop sliders, au goût fish and chips with minted pea puree and a gourmet free range chicken breast with braised savoy cabbage and bacon. And good luck deciding between the passion fruit crème brûlée, pear and poppyseed crisp with crème fraîche sorbet or the fig tart with fig ice cream and whipped vanilla mascarpone.

Sure, my weekend trip to Manhattan has been a step above the blasting fire hydrants and jaunts to F.A.O. Schwarz during my Upper West Side days. But spending time at The Pierre and The Crosby gives me exactly what I wanted: a return to my favorite memories of Manhattan and a chance to make new ones.

The Pierre Hotel
2 E. 61st St. at 5th Avenue, 212-838-8000, http://www.lhw.com

The Crosby Street Hotel
79 Crosby St., 212-226-6400, http://www.firmdale.com

PLAY
> Winter Antiques Show, 337 Alexander Ave., Bronx, 718-292-7392, http://www.winterantiquesshow.com; Jan. 22-31, 2010. A major antique happening. Find the most beautiful antiques, jewelry, paintings, rugs, chandeliers, furniture and silver one can imagine. This is where the hoi polloi and designers mingle.

> Shen Yun Performing Arts at Radio City Music Hall, 1260 6th Ave., 212-465-6115, http://www.radiocity.com; Feb 13-21. Controversial, yet exciting classical Chinese story-based dance.

> Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark at the Hilton Theatre, 214 W. 42nd St., 212-556-4750; http://www.hiltontheatre.com. The Edge and Bono come together to create what director Julie Taymor calls her “circus rock ’n’ roll drama.”

>Brooklyn Kitchen Labs, 100 Frost St., Brooklyn, 718-349-5033; http://www.thebrooklynkitchen.com. 7,000 square feet of cooking school-meets-butcher shop-meets brewing and winemaking.

>Le Caprice, 795 Fifth Ave. at 61st Street, 212-940-8195

The outside of the Ednor Gardens rowhome owned by Ed Istwan and Kim Domanski is as quiet and idyllic as its neighbors, on a narrow street sheltered by mature trees on the cusp of Baltimore City’s urban core. Inside, though, the house is a riot of color and style, an homage to all things artistic, free-spirited and joyful.

“We’re both happy people who love to laugh. I like to smile when I walk through the door,” says Domanski, when asked to describe their design style. “And everything here has a story.”

Istwan, 38, and Domanski, 37, met in 1994 when they were pursuing their master’s degrees at the Maryland Institute College of Art. They’ve been roommates ever since. Istwan is now a visual merchandiser at IKEA’s headquarters in Philadelphia and Domanski works for the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts. Both are deeply entrenched in the local art scene and fill their home with pieces that reflect their creative eye. “If there’s one thing I know, it’s that everything we have in our house we love,” says Istwan.

When the pair purchased the circa-1929 rowhouse in 2000, they restored the home to its original bone structure, replacing windows, for example, and removing a pass-through from the kitchen to the dining room that broke up the small space and detracted from its functionality. When it came time to decorate, it was all about color. The entryway and stairs are a bright yellow-green, the bedrooms are Kelly green and a deep pink-red while the bathroom is turquoise.

“The color scheme is inspired by a TV test pattern,” Istwan explains. “They are bright colors that pop, but aren’t overwhelming or Crayola-esque, like something you’d see in a kid’s room.”

The home’s eclectic furnishings and artwork are the result of years of collecting. Istwan and Domanski haunt thrift shops, consignment stores, estate sales and auctions in search of treasures for their home. Although Istwan says their style is “not modern with a capital M,” the pair do like the clean lines and organic shapes epitomized by mid-century modern design, visible in their choice of a dining room set created by Warren Platner, a Baltimore native who worked for Knoll Products. The set was the pair’s first major furniture investment, bought on eBay.

“We couldn’t find a pendent light to go with the dining room,” says Domanski. “Everything was a stereotype, like flying saucer in shape.” Instead, Istwan made one by weaving together electrical zip ties. Despite this very modern sensibility, there are surprises in this home, too, like a collection of needlepoint pillows and an Americana circus sign.

Istwan confesses to a love of all things modular. The house has a modular sofa. There are modular bookshelves that practically glow when their collection of Swedish glass lamps are switched on. There are even modular candlesticks from the 1960s on the dining room table that are so intricate they resemble a piece of sculpture.

Istwan formerly worked for the American Visionary Art Museum, and both he and Domanski have a passion for “outsider” art. Istwan’s bedroom wall currently exhibits a series by Jenny Holzer (known for her large-scale projections) called “Truisms;” Domanski has a to-scale Christmas tree at the foot of her bed by Gary Kachadourian. And because the pair is always on the hunt for new pieces, the house is constantly changing and evolving. A Robert Longo print a guest recalls from the dining room might be in the bedroom on the next visit, or a chair could be whisked off to the basement and replaced by an 18th-century wardrobe.

“We call the basement ‘the stockroom,’ and we borrow from it heavily,” Istwan quips. For example, for years the pair had a basement full of the 125 black picture frames that Istwan bought at an outlet for a dollar apiece. When they bought a salesman’s display book for Kosta Boda glass from the 1920s at auction, the frames fulfilled their destiny, creating a beautiful black and white series on the home’s stairway.

Not surprisingly, Istwan and Domanski utilize IKEA designs in the décor.
“We love IKEA textiles,” Domanski explains, pointing in particular to the many rugs in the home, the bright, graphic Marimekko fabric window treatments and throw pillows. In the living room they used IKEA fabric laminated onto plastic panels to create an accent wall and matching IKEA ceiling fixtures hang over their beds. “I love the big graphic prints. They just make you smile,” says Istwan.

“I think IKEA is a great resource for functional solutions,” he continues. The home features an IKEA kitchen and Istwan and Domanski share a built-in wardrobe made by the company as well. By sharing the storage space for their clothes and stashing it in Istwan’s office, they free themselves of the need for bureaus in their bedrooms. This, they say, is a key to maintaining order in a small house that could easily be overwhelmed with art and collectibles.

“We rotate our things often to keep clutter and mess down and we have hard-working spaces, like the wall of clothing in the office and having all our books on one wall,” Istwan explains.

If there is one thing in the house that is what Istwan calls “design with a capital D,” it is the deck, created with the help of friend Andrew Yff, a custom welder and artist, and Janet Bardzic, a neighbor. Istwan wanted to channel the Herman Miller-designed Nelson Platform bench (introduced in 1946 and a staple of contemporary design ever since) in deck form. The new deck embraces that same slatted style and multiplies the duo’s living and entertaining space.

Istwan and Domanski find it impossible to think of their home as complete. There’s a dishwasher to install, artwork to shuffle around, and perhaps one day they’ll tear out that old fireplace. And there’s always something new and tempting on eBay. “When you talk about ‘interior design,’ it usually sounds like there should be a period at the end of the sentence and it’s over. For us, design is a rolling thing,” says Istwan. “I love that we’ve made it so personal,” adds Domanski. “You can look at shelter magazines and never see that people live there. I hope people sense that we enjoy living here.”

When Courtney Pivec went to M&T bank in March 2007, she had no idea that she was about to meet the man of her dreams. Brian Stamp, who worked as a financial adviser, recognized Courtney’s last name while he was closing her account, and realized they shared a mutual friend.

Unfortunately for Brian, Courtney was already in a relationship. Still, he wrote her a note saying how great it was to meet her. After that, the pair found themselves constantly running into one another at social events. A year later, Courtney had broken up with her boyfriend and Brian was ready to make a move. They have been together ever since.

When the wedding day arrived, roughly 135 family and friends gathered at the Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church in Bolton Hill. Because the church is already ornately appointed, with Victorian Gothic stained-glass windows, intricately sculpted marble pillars and walls ornamented with mosaics, the couple decorated the interior with only two large altar arrangements of roses, hyacinths and peonies in shades of coral and cream.

The bride walked down the aisle wearing a strapless white gown from Priscilla of Boston. “I knew it was the one because I felt very pretty and it gave me a lot of freedom to move around,” says Courtney, a media assistant at Pivec Advertising, owned by her father. Her bridesmaids chose different styles of black dresses from the Simple Silhouettes line at Garnish Boutique.

After the Mass, the guests adjourned to the Walters Art Museum, where they were served pink champagne and a variety of hors d’ oeuvres, including shrimp ceviche in a tortilla cup and lobster tempura dipped in a honey butter sauce, Courtney’s favorite. An hour later, the group moved to the museum’s sculpture court for dinner and dancing.

After the guests were seated, all eyes moved toward the long stairwell to watch Brian and Courtney make their entrance. The couple then joined together for their first dance as husband and wife as “Everything” by Michael Bublé played. Soon after, toasts were made while guests enjoyed a warm salad of slow-roasted tomatoes and house-made mozzarella followed by a duet entree of sliced sirloin steak and lobster vol au vent.

Appetites sated, the guests joined the bride and groom in dancing the night away. A brief interruption was made to observe the ceremonial cutting of the wedding cakes. The bride’s cake was a towering white ensemble decorated with a delicate floral design with flavors of toasted coconut and raspberry and amaretto. The groom’s cake was similar to a black forest cake, with chocolate and cherry filling. A native of Buffalo and ardent hockey fan, Brian had his cake ornamented with the Buffalo Sabres’ design, which incorporated a buffalo and a pair of crossed sabres.

“My favorite moment was when my husband got up on stage to sing, ‘That’s Amore!’ to me,” Courtney gushes. A rich ending for a chance meeting in a bank.

Resources
Locations Walters Art Museum, 410-547-9000, http://www.thewalters.org; Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church, 410-523-4161, http://www.corpuschristibaltimore.org
Photography David Mielcarek, 908-247-5322, http://www.cinematicbydavidm.com
Flowers Romance of Flowers, 410-526-7252, http://www.romanceofflowers.com
Gown Priscilla of Boston, http://www.priscillaofboston.com
Bridemaids’ Gowns Garnish Boutique, 410-464-0601, http://www.garnishhboutique.com
Catering Linwoods, 410-356-3030, http://www.linwoods.com

It was five years ago that fine-dining duo Tony Foreman and Cindy Wolf unveiled Pazo, their Mediterranean-themed lounge and restaurant in Fells Point. So they decided to throw a party to mark the occasion, and some 360 invited guests and regulars showed up to help them celebrate.

Partygoers were greeted at the door with glasses of sparkling Cava, then had their choice of four specialty cocktails that were paired with matching-color CoverGirl lip glosses for guests to take home. Menu items from the kitchen of chef Michael Costa included bruschetta, croquetas, calamari, pizza Christina, butifarra and empanadas. And for dessert, Charm City Cakes chef Duff Goldman created a towering eight-tier chocolate espresso cake.

Non-stop entertainment included roaming jugglers and other circus-themed performers, performances by a troupe of hip-hop dancers and music provided by house DJ Ryan Patrick. Artists were on hand to create Super Art Fight, a live art-generating performance, creating a piece of wall art during the course of the party. Later, there was a live auction of the work, with proceeds going to the House of Ruth.

Love was in the air at Federal Hill’s Little Havana when the owner of the popular waterfront restaurant and bar, Chris Whisted, met his soon-to-be wife, Melissa Lembo. They immediately hit it off. Although Whisted knew after their first date at Corvino (then-called Junior’s) that Lembo was “the one,” he waited a year to pop the question. He took the opportunity to propose on a rainy day just outside of Fenway Park during a trip to Lembo’s Boston College reunion. With the damp ring glistening on her finger, she said, “Yes.”

When planning their wedding, there was no Bridezilla in sight, as Lembo “refused to conform to the wedding madness,” she says. Her goal during the six-week engagement was to remain focused on spending the rest of her life with Whisted. “The planning process was very simple. We’d have it no other way,” says Lembo.

On July 17, 2009, the couple’s immediate families gathered at Holy Cross Church in Baltimore for a Catholic Mass and intimate ceremony with Lembo’s cousin Father Frank Tumino and family friend, Father Vito Buonano as the priests. The wedding party, consisting of the couple’s nieces, bride’s nephew and groom’s brother, stood at the altar with Whisted, as both of the bride’s parents escorted Lembo down the aisle.

With Whisted in a pale pink sport coat and bow tie and Lembo in a simple, elegant Nicole Miller gown, they recited their vows and listened to Father Tumino’s personal homily about a couple who was “patient to wait for the perfect person.” Says Lembo, “The best part of the ceremony was that it was intimate and we were surrounded by the people who are our support system in our lives. It really made it special that it wasn’t a big show.”

With a small ceremony and a big party, they had the best of both worlds. The next day, more than 150 guests celebrated on Little Havana’s sunny deck for an island-themed cocktail party. When guests arrived, they were greeted with a celebratory mojito, then mingled and enjoyed live music performed by two of the newlyweds’ close friends. Other drink offerings included a homemade Limoncello made by the groom himself, as well as a raw bar, an assortment of made-to-order sandwiches and dessert and fruit from Vaccaro’s Italian bakery.

During the four-hour reception, a handful of guests and friends took turns toasting the happy couple. “The atmosphere at our party at Little Havana was unique, and it’s still providing us with stories from our guests about what a good time they had,” says Whisted.

Resources
Locations Holy Cross Church, 108 E. West St., 410-752-8498; Little Havana, 410-837-9903, http://www.littlehavanas.com
Photography The Annapolis Photographer, 410-224-0088, http://www.theannapolisphotographer.com
Flowers Earl F. Jackson Flowers, Cross Street Market, 410-539-7077 
Gown Nicole Miller, Nordstrom, Annapolis, 410-573-1121

When I was a child, I was taken to the petting zoo, a seedy animal park where the beasts looked traumatized and sad— a real horror show. Patrons, though warned not to do so, fed the unfortunate inmates Humpty Dumpty potato chips, Eskimo pies and something called a Charleston Chew, which is the consistency of Silly Putty. These were part of diets not readily available in the wild, or at least not the wild that these unfortunate creatures hailed from. The zookeepers looked like old carnies or recently released jailbirds. They carried clubs. It made for a fun day. My parents probably did not know any better.

Naturally, when my daughter was young, I took her to the zoo. I did not know any better, either. The animals looked traumatized and sad. Sometimes they stared and rocked back and forth. I’m no Steve “Crocodile Hunter” Irwin but they did not look happy. And yet when guests visited us, we took them and their small children to the zoo. Going to the zoo was a regular event.

On a recent Sunday I went up to the Baltimore Zoo (now called The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore) and sure enough there were thousands of people there with small children. One does not go to the zoo without small children; it’s a ritual of parenthood. Let’s take the kiddies up to the zoo and let them see the wild things.

The Baltimore Zoo is not, blessedly, the medieval house of horrors that it once was, and is actually a pleasant stroll on a nice day. The zookeepers are all well-scrubbed, looking like the cast of “Up With People” or Latter-Day Saints. No clubs espied. The zoo now has make-believe African watering holes and faux bits of the Serengeti. Still, a zoo is a zoo and I’m not sure about keeping animals in them. I’m no vegan but somewhere along the line I began to wonder if zoos were a good idea.

Hardly a day passes that there is not a story in which someone gets badly hurt or even killed messing about with God’s wild creatures. The San Francisco Zoo is ripe with tales of misadventures. A recent chuckle involved a gentleman described as a mental patient who decided to get closer to the bears. He’s going to live. Not so lucky was the guy two years ago who decided it might be fun to tease a Siberian tiger. After the tiger killed the fun-seeker (tigers are faster than morons), the cops shot it. Most zoo stories end like that. And then an “expert” sagely notes that they just can’t understand what the heck got into Simba. He always seemed so happy in his spacious railroad-car-sized cage.

I read these stories in lieu of the sports pages, finding them instructive. They convey a kind of karmic revenge. You put wild creatures in captivity and once in a while they show you how they feel about it.

This is how I feel about it: I think we ought to shut all the zoos. They are primitive places that speak to an earlier time. They do not, I believe, advance our knowledge of the wild kingdom one iota. You don’t have to be Desmond Morris to realize that an adult elephant or big cats may go insane when confined, or that when animals pace furiously in their tiny cages, they are frantic. In the wild, animals roam over vast expanses; at the zoo they often squat in a box the size of an executive suite in a Hilton Garden Inn.

Taking children to see the wild things confined in unnaturally small spaces and living desperate lives is a bad idea. Why not take them to a public execution? A hanging? A crucifixion? Plainly the time has come to abolish such divertissements. We don’t burn witches. We don’t stone the woman taken in adultery, except in some of the more enlightened oil-producing kingdoms. We don’t flog.

Today, CNN reported from Moscow that a bear on ice skates— now that sounds like something you’d see in the wild— attacked two people during rehearsals at a circus, killing one of them. Maybe he didn’t want to ice skate? Anyone ever wonder about that? Maybe he didn’t want to go to medical school? Maybe he just wanted to be a bear. I am not sure what that involves, but I know that bears in the wild do not skate. Or ride little bicycles. Or wear funny hats. Or play toy musical instruments. Ditto lions and tigers.

But at the dawn of the 21st century we still allow barbarous practices that should shame a decent person. Just the other day, a 25-year-old polar bear named Mercedes was sprung from the Edinburgh Zoo after having spent most of her life (she’d been born in the wild in Canada) living in grim captivity.  Mercedes, the last polar bear living in captivity in the United Kingdom, was taken to a rural game preserve. It is not exactly the arctic wild, but it sure beats life behind bars.

With wedding season coming up, it’s possible that you’ll be planning a shower soon. Instead of having the same old “traditional” shower, with games and hours of “oohing” and “aahing” over “traditional” gifts, consider a wine theme! You and your guests will have a delightful (and educational) wine-tasting and the lucky couple will receive a wine collection.

> The Basics First, decide if it will be ladies only or co-ed. I suggest co-ed because it’s an excellent icebreaker for the entire bridal party, close friends and family. Depending on the number of guests and your budget, choose to either hold the event at a restaurant or in a private home. If the latter, rent glassware from a party supply store to make it easier on yourself. Also, hire helpers to pour wine and clean up.

> The Theme Ideally, the wedding party will purchase a wine fridge for the lucky couple that can be filled up by the shower guests. Use the invitation to let guests know about the wine theme and to ask them to bring a bottle of their favorite wine. Include a 4-by-6-inch index card for listing their name and why the wine is special to them. Then, as guests arrive at the shower, take a picture of each with their special bottle. The picture, along with the notecard, will go into an album for the couple to refer to as they savor the wines they received.

> The Wines Find out what wines the bride and groom like to drink (are they Syrah fanatics?). Or, if their honeymoon destination is, for example, Italy, use that for inspiration. Then work with the restaurant’s sommelier or a sales associate at your wine store to select a variety of wines for the shower. The tasting should start with the sparkling wine, then move from lightest to fullest. After the bubbly, I suggest tasting a few whites and then a few reds. Finish with a dessert wine or port. Assuming a 2- to 3-ounce tasting portion of each wine, order at least one bottle of each wine for every 10 people. Create a menu for each guest listing all the wines served and leave room for notes. Most wineries have online tasting notes that you can include on the menu. If you want to make the tasting a bit more educational and entertaining, hire a wine educator or sommelier to lead the group.

> The Food You can either hire a caterer or ask each person in the bridal party to bring a dish.  It’s good to have a display of cheese, meats and olives at the start. This assures that guests have food before the tasting gets under way. These also go well with the lighter wines you’ll be serving first. Have heartier courses for the red wines and, of course, don’t forget dessert. The wine-themed shower will allow everyone to taste six new wines while getting to know each other. The bride and groom will end up with a well-stocked wine collection to begin their marriage and, at the wedding, everyone will feel like old friends.

Want to learn more about the factors used to determine wine style? Visit Laurie’s blog at thewinecoach.com.

Laurie Forster, The Wine Coach®, is a wine educator who creates corporate events, group tastings and team-building seminars. She is the author of “The Sipping Point: A Crash Course in Wine,” and can be heard each week on WBAL 1090 AM.

Yes, they have tacos, burritos and quesadillas at Diablita, but we’re talking chile-peanut molé chicken tacos, short rib burritos and braised bison quesadillas— not your usual beef, bean and cheese triad. And in the chip-and-dip department, we’re talking not nuclear-orange nacho cheese but tequila-infused queso fundido— a fondue of three different cheeses, peppers and tequila that will leave you wanting to lick the bowl. Even with brick walls and an open warehouse plan, noise levels permit chatting, so ask for one of the roomy booths that line the windows and settle in. Free parking. Open 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 11:30 a.m. to 12 midnight Friday-Saturday; and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday. 1300 Bank St., 410-522-0012

Tucked away in an otherwise pedestrian Columbia strip mall, Azul 17 brings some upscale Mexican flavor (and a long list of tequilas) to Howard County. More than 100 tequilas and 17 signature margaritas are on hand, and the menu offers three types of guacamoles— traditional, rojo and Chesapeake— all prepared tableside, as well as ceviches, small plates, eight delicious takes on mini tacos and five types of enchiladas. Signature dishes like Tarahumara steak, chicken in molé sauce and Acapulco-style red snapper fill out the choices. All served in a high-style, mod atmosphere. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Columbia Market Place, 9400 Snowden River Parkway, 410-309-9717

When their paths crossed at the Harford County Farm Fair, 13-year-old Kristen Grimmel had no idea her teenage crush on Jake Deford would turn into 11 years of infrequent run-ins. “When Jake was single, I was dating. When I was single, Jake was dating,” says Grimmel. Learning of each other’s availability through a mutual friend, the long-aborning relationship finally formed, and Jake proposed 13 months later on Valentine’s Day with a beautiful family heirloom ring.

Forgoing the traditional church setting, the couple opted for a vintage-themed wedding at the Grimmels’ fourth-generation farm and the Deford family-owned Boordy Vineyards.

“For quite some time, I knew this would one day be the site of our wedding ceremony,” Grimmel says. “To us, there was no place as beautiful or special, and it was important to have our families’ heritages honored.”

On May 23, 2009, more than 300 guests made their way to the 250-acre farm in Jarrettsville. Greeted by an old-fashioned lemonade stand, accented by a wooden picket fence, family and friends entered the rustic barn. The aisle, marked by an antique iron archway and covered in hydrangeas, led to the altar’s tall willow candelabras and orchid blossom display. Kristen, in her hand-beaded, strapless Casablanca gown (which arrived just four nail-biting days before the wedding after being re-sent to China for additional alterations), was at ease as she walked to the sounds of the string quartet.

Bridesmaids in raisin-colored tea-length dresses, including Kristen’s best friend who flew in at the last minute from Korea, and groomsmen in midnight blue suits, watched as a longtime family friend performed the short civil ceremony.

Afterward, guests were routed to Boordy Vineyards’ upper barn, where they feasted on warm crab and cheddar fondue, herb-encrusted tenderloin and Bourbon Street shrimp before being led down a lantern-lit path to a magnificent white tent.

“The rain was my biggest worry throughout the entire wedding planning process. I found a 15-day weather forecast a few weeks before the wedding. The forecast changed every day. It drove me [and my mother] crazy!” says Grimmel with a laugh. “To relax me, our friend Patrick would send me texts from random phone numbers about how beautiful the weather was going to be, signing them ‘From Mother Nature.’”

Clear skies prevailed, and the tent glowed as the newlywed couple showed off their footwork to Clint Black’s and Lisa Hartman Black’s, “When I Said I Do.” With the sounds of Sinatra echoing in the background, lump crabmeat atop Chesapeake chicken was served next to a wide selection of Boordy’s finest. As guests dined, they raved about the flip-flop-filled wine barrel with the request to “Kick off your heels and stay a while” and the extravagant cake buffet created by chef Michael Markwitz.

“Having everyone we love in one place for our one big day was an indescribable emotion,” says Grimmel. “It’s a day we will cherish forever.”

Resources
Catering Simply Elegant Catering, Pikesville, 410-484-4554, http://www.simplyelegantcatering.com
Cake Michael Markwitz, Artistic Desserts, Westminster, 410-871-9610, http://www.artisticdesserts.com  
Flowers Romance of Flowers, Reisterstown, 410-526-7252, http://www.romanceofflowers.com
Photography Kimberly Brook Photography, Westminster, 443-398-5294, http://www.kimberlybrooke.com
Tenting & Rentals ACE Rentals, 410-574-7577, http://www.acerentals.net
Staging & Lighting Perkins Productions, 410-285-6191, http://www.perkinseventlighting.com
Invitations The Pleasure of Your Company, Lutherville, 410-821-6369, http://www.thepleasure-ofyourcompany.com
String Quartet Tim Anderson, Concord Ensemble, Stevenson, 410-580-0074

For an 80-year-old lady, the Lord Baltimore Hotel looks pretty good.  Sure, she’s had a little work done.  A few lifts and tweaks. A lobby bar put where her front desk was. Meeting rooms where the hair salons and haberdashers that once graced her mezzanine level had been.

But in the Versailles ballroom off the main lobby (once the hotel’s formal dining room), arching mirrored glass windows still reflect the dazzle of white marble, crystal chandeliers and wedding gowns. The Coffee House, though stripped of its Danish modern furniture, still welcomes visitors, now as a coffee bar featuring Starbucks. Upstairs in the main ballroom, Mabel and John Giorgi’s 1940s murals of historic Baltimore and its founders decorate the walls. And, if you look closely in the historic lobby, you’ll find vestiges of the bombshell beauty of a hotel the Lord Baltimore once was in the marble that fans out above the elevators, the brass rails and original mail chute, and in the spectacularly lovely ceiling, a meadow of original carved flowers on a green lawn.

Now officially known as the Radisson Plaza Lord Baltimore, the hotel was the brainchild of Kent County native and former Caswell Hotel manager Harry Busick, whose goal in 1928 was “to build in the most central spot in fast-developing Baltimore a ‘super hotel’ which would provide adequate facilities for the city’s expanding activities.” The Lord Baltimore was a fast development itself; the 22-story, 700-room, Art Deco testament of brick and stone was built in less than seven months, opening its doors at 20 W. Baltimore St. on Dec. 29, 1928. An early brochure boasts amenities including “circulating ice water” and radios in rooms, and notes that rates begin at $3 a night for a single with bath and go to $13 and $17 for suites. As late as 1972, its brochure touted it as “Maryland’s largest hotel.”

Busick’s three sons took over the hotel after their father’s death, but by 1960, they’d sold it for $7 million to New Yorker H.R. Weissberg, who undertook a considerable renovation. Under Weissberg’s ownership, tall black columns, candy-apple red leather armchairs and small white tables filled the Normandy lounge portion of the lobby; bedrooms and suites were decked out in mint green walls and drapes; and the carpet in the now defunct Diamondback Lounge became a sea of red emblazoned with terrapins. Weissberg filed for bankruptcy in 1967 and the hotel went up for auction in 1969.

Another costly renovation began in 1970, shrinking the number of rooms, which were now dressed in shag carpeting, electric yellow bedspreads and television sets (“most of them color,” a hotel brochure assured), to fewer than 600. One of the most touted additions of the early ’70s renovation was the Grogshop, described in The Sun in 1972 as a “$400,000 restaurant lounge that will feature hot sandwiches, beer, cocktails and a band from 5 p.m. to closing. Waitresses will be uniformed in micro-mini skirts and low-cut blouses.”

But in addition to this “swinging modern version of an old-style pub” (as one hotel brochure put it), the Lord Baltimore also hosted high tea. That’s when Marguarite Eberwein-Budacz, a corporate executive assistant and 20-year employee of the Lord Baltimore, fell in love with the hotel.  “My grandparents would bring me down,” she remembers. “We would get all dressed up in our Sunday best clothes and wear our white gloves just like the movie stars. And I always dreamed about working here as the concierge.”

During Eberwein-Budacz’s tenure, which began in 1989 and continues today, the hotel has hosted luminaries like Chris Rock and Snoop Dogg, author Joel Osteen and comedian George Burns, as well as, briefly, the Orlando Peabody Ducks, who lodged in the bathtub of one of the Parlor Suites, making a daily trip down in the elevator to the lobby, where they waddled across the red carpet and jumped into the fountain to do a little performance for the guests, recalls Eberwein-Budacz.  (The tradition started at the Peabody’s sister hotel in Memphis).

If the walls could talk, we could hear the details of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s visit, or Carol Channing requesting a gas mask from Mayor Schaefer’s office during a five-alarm blaze that struck the hotel in 1978 while she was appearing in “Hello, Dolly!” at the Morris Mechanic Theatre across the street. We would get to the bottom of the ghostly sightings that have taken place on the hotel’s 19th floor, where men jumped from the terrace to their deaths during the Great Depression. And we would finally know the identity of the elegant woman who, in 1931, abandoned a 2-year-old child in one of the hotel’s rooms. According to a 1971 article in The Sun, a judge gave the child the surname “Lord,” before sending him to the Nursery and Children’s Hospital.

The Lord Baltimore was entered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, cementing its future in the landscape (a fate denied other grand downtown hotels like the Southern and the Emerson). She has appeared in movies (parts of Renee Zellweger’s recent film “My One and Only” were shot on site, as were scenes from “Guarding Tess” (1994) with Nicolas Cage and Shirley MacLaine), and Pasadena, Md., physician and novelist Joan Lehmann set “Heaven Below,” her Depression-era story of a coal miner who finds work as a hotel bellhop, at the Lord Baltimore. As she says, the hotel was “an absolutely glorious gem of the era.”

At 80-plus, the Lord Baltimore is older and her wrinkles are preserved under heavy layers of makeup. She has lost her uniformed elevator operators and her movie theater (now a lecture room for convention meetings). But she has been, and always will be, royalty. Happy birthday, lady. Eighty is the new 40.

It’s hard to imagine a restaurant that would be a better fit for the American Visionary Art Museum than Mr. Rain’s Fun House. Like the museum itself, it’s eclectic in the best sense of the word— mosaicist Bob Benson’s flashies dangle from the ceiling, a pink and orange wall features a campy portrait of the owners (three of whom ran the beloved restaurant Sputnik in Crownsville) and the waitstaff wears Western shirts and homespun aprons. On the menu is everything from purple yam soup to lumpia, made by co-owner Maria Buszinski’s mother, to East African-spiced chicken to a Kobe beef hot dog. Between the food and the fun, you’ll forget there’s no view of the harbor anymore. Open for lunch and dinner Tuesday-Friday, and for brunch on weekends. 800 Key Highway, 443-524-7379

When Rebekah Brown first had the idea to hold a surprise wedding shower for her sister, Sarah Stevens nee Brown, at the Café  Nordstrom in Towson, she called café manager Stephen Arnold, and he told her that nothing like that had ever been done there. But Rebekah persisted— after all, since Sarah’s middle school days, Nordstrom had been her favorite place to shop, and its café her favorite place to eat. Luckily, Arnold got permission from the higher-ups, and the superior customer service Nordstrom offers shoppers soon translated into party-planning assistance for Sarah’s shower.

From her dorm room at Ohio State University, Rebekah relied on the help of Sarah’s now sister-in-law, Rebecca Teaff, creative director of Baltimore-based design firm RedStart Creative, and store and café managers to plan the shower for 60 guests— all the arrangements were done via e-mail and telephone. On the Sunday evening before Memorial Day, guests gathered in the store café in Towson Town Center for the surprise. In the meantime, the bride-to-be had been sent on a scavenger hunt whose last clue was, “We’re not worried about your finding it, you certainly know your WAY. Now head on down to Towson, to your favorite store’s CAFÉ!” When Sarah arrived, she found friends and family to greet her, and the café transformed by vases of bright pink and lime green Gerber daisies, centerpieces made from Nordstrom shopping bags stuffed with pink and green tissue, and a bubble-gum pink leather loveseat brought in from the Brass Plum fashion department. A self-professed “shoe-aholic,” Sarah’s shoes were also scattered around the café (Rebekah had stolen them out of her closet). As a special gift, Rebekah gave Sarah a new pair of green Tory Burch sandals, which she slipped on at the shower, and later wore at her reception.

Guests chose soups, salads and sandwiches from the traditional café menu (which includes Sarah’s personal favorites: the grilled cheese sandwich and Roma tomato basil soup). There was a chocolate fountain, along with wedding shower games including a “Price is Right”-inspired game and “If the Shoe fits,” in which Sarah and her fiancé, Dave, tested their knowledge about each other. The bride’s mother, Jackie Brown, couldn’t have been happier with how the shower turned out. “The invitations, decorations, flowers, food and games, the dear friends who hosted and the Nordstrom Café staff captured all of Sarah’s favorite things just beautifully,” she says. “The whole effect was adorable… so Sarah, and so Nordstrom.”

In July, when Sarah walked down the aisle, she wore two items bought from her favorite store: a pair of Nina high-heeled sandals and a Lilly Pulitzer sash.

Resources
Café Nordstrom Towson Town Center, 410-296-2111

In his recent book, “The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today,” Johns Hopkins University sociologist Andrew Cherlin argues that it’s the high turnover rate of our relationships— as opposed to simply the divorce rate— that contributes to instability in American families. Style talked with him about his findings and his ultimate message, which is to urge Americans to “slow down” how quickly they divorce, re-marry and cohabitate.

Why are Americans unique among Western countries in the high turnover of our intimate partnerships?

Alone among Western countries, we place a high value both on marriage and on individualism and personal choice. You can find some countries that value marriage highly like Italy, and others like Sweden that value personal choice, but none like ours that values both. We’re the only country in the world that’s spending money on marriage promotion— $100 million a year since 2007.

One of these promotional campaigns you discuss is the ‘Marriage Works’ billboards we’ve seen all around Baltimore.

The hope is that these ads will make marriage more attractive to poor teenagers in Baltimore. But I think they already know that ‘marriage works’— they just can’t find a way to get there. Some have very few role models of successful marriage in their neighborhoods. I think the billboards are harmless but not very effective. I’d like to see efforts that help young adults to marry rather than efforts to exhort them to.

In your book, you discuss covenant marriage, a stricter form of marriage offered by several states earlier in the decade. You predicted a substantial number of couples would go for it. But that didn’t happen.

It turns out almost no one went for the covenant marriage. I think it’s because young adults don’t want to close the exit door too tightly. I think what most Americans would like is for everyone else to have a covenant marriage, i.e., ‘If you get a divorce, it’s a tragedy. If I do, it’s an unavoidable consequence.’

Perhaps one of the most surprising things your work reveals is that it’s stability— rather than a two-parent household per se— that is most important in the raising of children.

Studies are now suggesting a home with lots of partners coming in and out is difficult for a child to adjust to, maybe more difficult than a stable single-parent home. A stable good marriage is the best arrangement for children, but a stable single-parent household might be second-best, compared to lots of turnover and churning.

Could you see a billboard campaign that says ‘Slow Down’ instead of ‘Marriage Works’?

A ‘Slow Down’ billboard campaign might reduce traffic accidents, but I don’t think it would change much else.

If you’re serious about clothes (and I don’t mean you have serious money to spend or seriously love to buy, buy, buy— I mean serious), walking into Couture Closet may bring you to fashion tears. Couture Closet is the brainchild of the darling Jessica Atkin. Back in the late ’90s, she was stuck at a desk job, cruising the couture chat rooms to pass the time, and noticed people dying to buy European designers unavailable in the States. Before long, she was taking orders and jetting to London on buying sprees. “In the beginning, it was incredibly seedy,” Jessica says. “I was exchanging bags of cash for bags of designer clothes in London’s back alleys.” Eventually, vendors started sending her things. The stylists and collectors came quickly after. Now, Jessica has brought her collection to Federal Hill— lucky us! What will you find? Designer clothing from the late ’90s to today, from commercial to the avant-garde, and everything discounted about 85 percent off retail. Everywhere you look, it’s the best of D&G, Carolina Herrera, Michael Kors, Stella McCartney, Valentino and Prada. Savvy’s personal moment of fashion nirvana came when she saw the Spring 2003 leather pirate pants from Alexander McQueen. Couture Closet is like walking into a room and seeing every boy you ever had a crush on. Except this time, the boy can come home with you. Don’t Miss: The classic pieces with vintage detailing from local designer (and former Remember When boutique owner) Carrie Mitchum. 1003 Light St., 714-878-8718

The Old Sun Building was the newspaper’s middle child. Not as intricately beautiful or beloved as the Iron Building that perished in the Great Fire, or as modern and streamlined as the Calvert Street building that became the paper’s home in 1950, the Old Sun Building, as it is inevitably referred to, nonetheless has a place in The Sun’s history.

At the time it was built, it was predicted that it would “for all time… meet the requirements of the company,” and at its dedication in 1906, Cardinal James Gibbons waxed poetic and punning when he declared, “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious by this Sun of Abell.” It was where The Evening Sun was born and where Sun luminaries H.L. Mencken and A. Aubrey Bodine practiced their craft. Soon its location, at the southwest corner of Baltimore and Charles streets— smack dab in the center of the city— became known as Sun Square.
 
It was there that Baltimoreans would gather to read headlines pronouncing history-making news like the end of Prohibition and both World Wars as they appeared in lights on the Trans-Lux board that wrapped around the building “just like in Times Square,” according to former Sun photographer Walter McCardell. And in the 1920s and ’30s, sports fans experienced pre-television era World Series on The Sun’s baseball board, a 10-foot-high replica of a baseball diamond mounted on the building’s second floor, complete with a ball moved by staffers according to the “play by play” coming in via telegraph.

Designed by Baltimore architects E. Francis Baldwin and Josias Pennington and built at a cost of $289,206 (with the cost of the land and equipment, the total price tag was $600,000), the Old Sun Building stood four imposing stories high. Two giant clock faces crowned each corner of the building just above the 24 limestone columns that spanned the second and third floors. In “The Baltimore Sun 1837-1987,” Harold A. Williams identifies the building’s style as French Renaissance; Carleton Jones, author of “Lost Baltimore: A Portfolio of Vanished Buildings,” writes that it “evoked the sort of international or Edwardian Fleet Street tone then being passionately sought by the proprietors.”

A 1950 Sun article, apparently untroubled by the appearance of bias, claimed it was “by common consent the most beautiful building of original architectural design in Baltimore.” Certainly there was grandness in the marble staircase that curved upward to the mezzanine level, and the cut-glass sunflower-shaped lamp in the first-floor business office that created a dazzling sun effect with its light patterns. But McCardell, who worked for The Sun for 44 years beginning in the late 1940s, recalls it as “dingy.”

By the time of his employment, McCardell remembers, the Old Sun Building had become a “conglomeration of four different structures,” the result of the company purchasing nearby buildings and melding them into one building with ramps scattered throughout because the floor levels were uneven. The building, which was open 24 hours (prompting a committee from the business office to toss the key to the front door into the Jones Falls on the first night of business after making the rounds of a few pubs), maintained an editorial room, a mail room and a cafeteria on the third floor that sold Crab Imperial for 75 cents, as well as a photo-engraving room, a composing room filled with linotype machines worked by men in shirtsleeves, and a “monkey” room with monotype machines to run advertisements.

“There was no passenger elevator,” Williams writes in his history of The Sun. “The editorial staff on the second floor had no hot water… Sometimes the pressroom caught fire.”

The combination of high summer temperatures and the glare reflected off the marble of the nearby Savings Bank of Baltimore, he notes, often forced the company to bring giant blocks of ice and fans into the newsroom. Even so, some male reporters stripped down to their trousers once any female staff had vacated the premises. And yet from those frantic, messy rooms, editorials were written, cartoons were created, news was reported, Pulitzer Prizes were won.

In 1948, Sun officials announced the paper’s move to a location on Calvert Street, citing downtown traffic and the need for modern-day equipment and presses. The building was vacated on Christmas Eve 1950. According to Williams, Sun employees grabbed bits of the building as memorabilia (Bodine, he says, took the plate marked “Press” off the restroom door) and one intrepid photographer gathered up several of the building’s cockroaches in a cigar box in order to accommodate their move into the new building.

The Sun business office and the early WMAR-TV studios remained in the building, which was eventually razed in 1964 as part of the Charles Center clearance. The Morris Mechanic Theatre, another building whose existence seems perpetually threatened, has stood on the former Old Sun Building site since 1967.

Quick! Without thinking, answer the following question: Are you a pie person or a cake person? No prevaricating allowed. No “I like both” (most of us do). No “well it depends on if it’s my mother’s red velvet cake or my aunt’s blueberry pie.” Just go with your sweet-loving gut.

There. That didn’t take long, did it?

I ask because the question has been nagging at me since it was raised at my dad’s birthday dinner recently. As I was pushing candles into Dad’s birthday cheesecake, my sister suddenly asked where Dad’s favorite coconut layer cake was. “I made cheesecake instead,” I explained, since my mom, the coconut cake baker, had made the dinner. A birthday isn’t a birthday without an iced layer cake, someone ventured. “Sure it is,” I said. “Mom makes me a chocolate meringue birthday pie every year because I’d much rather eat pie than cake.”

And thus the discussion began (and ended) the way “discussions” always do at our table, with all of us yelling out our opinions.

“Cake,” opined my sister, “because of the frosting.” 

“Cake is more celebratory,” said my husband, “and it has the greater ability to impress.”

“Cake or pie?” I demanded of my father as he worked on his cheesecake. “I’ve always loved cake,” he said between mouthfuls.

“Well, I like pie,” said my mother, waving her spatula to make a point as she listed pie’s many assets: the variety of possible fillings, the ability to be sweet or savory, the pleasure of a flaky crust. “There are just not as many options with cakes,” she pointed out.

Up until this point, my brother-in-law, who doesn’t care much for sweets, stayed silent. But when pressed, he asked, “How can you improve on a banana cream pie?” Before I could say “leave out the bananas,” he added, “My uncle said he loved five kinds of pie: hot pie, cold pie, open face pie, closed pie and criss-cross.” I’m with that uncle.

Although I know my mother loves pie (I make a lemon meringue pie for her birthday every year), I was surprised at the passionate feelings the pie vs. cake question raised at our table, and how no one hesitated at all in answering: it was as if the answer was obvious to each and every one of us. I also thought it odd that in each of the three couples at the table, one partner was a pie and the other was cake. And I was taken aback that my husband, with whom I share many food passions, prefers cake. After years enjoying pecan pies and apple tarts together, I just never would have guessed.

For several weeks thereafter, I accosted folks with the pie/cake question. Without shame (or tact), I hit up friends, neighbors, fellow parishioners at church, folks on an Internet music discussion board I frequent— even a few strangers. And save for a few who “like everything” or “would rather have a beer,” most people, like my family, gave their answer in a matter of seconds.

More than one cake aficionado agreed with my sister that frosting gives cake a huge edge over pie, but there were just as many pie lovers who cited bad frosting as a deal breaker. Pie, too,  has its own challenges, of course.  “With pie,” said one woman, a cake lover, “so much depends on the crust.”

Some people cited family associations in making their choice— a mother’s coconut cream pie and a grandmother’s devil’s food cake with seven-minute frosting yielded a pie and cake vote, respectively. Raina, a critical care nurse at Johns Hopkins, recalls the time her grandmother carried a homemade cherry pie in a backpack all the way from San Francisco to Guatemala, where she was living at the time. Jeanne, a native Baltimorean now living in New Jersey, remembers the carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and “lots of walnuts” her family presents her with each year for her birthday. (“No fluorescent frosting carrots on top, please,” she adds.)

What some folks praised about pie or cake, other people disparaged. Raina loves fruit pies because she feels no guilt about eating them for breakfast. My friend Julie, however, wants her dessert to be decadent. “I prefer my desserts to have very little in the way of healthfulness, and pies are just too full of fruit and such,” she says. Julie’s husband, Jeff, who makes killer fruit pies, loves pie’s texture (“the crunch of crust and the warm squishy feel of the fruit,” he puts it), while a gentleman from church dismisses pie for being messy. “It runs all over the plate,” he said with a grimace.

Several people’s pie/cake preference seemed connected to their professions. It wasn’t much of a surprise when a graphic designer friend ’fessed up to liking cake because “it’s just so pretty,” but I was surprised to hear Joe, an engineer, wax poetic about the cosmic symbolism of pie. “It is a perfect circle,” he said. “You know, pi.”

Some of my favorite responses sounded like sage aphorisms to live by. “Pie is what you eat when there’s no cake,” said Pat, her nose wrinkling at the prospect. “It takes a spectacular cake to compete with a run-of-the-mill pie,” wrote Michael from Kansas City. My dear friend Louise took the occasion to challenge Milton’s tale of creation when she wrote:  “Pie.  First made by God’s most blessed angels.  Cake was invented by the less-blessed when they couldn’t turn butter and flour and a little water into felicity.  Eventually these ‘cake’ angels formed the league of the Fallen and caught up with Eve in the Garden.” I like that in this story both pie and cake are acknowledged as blessing and temptation. Because, of course, they are.

All in all I polled approximately 55 people, and pie lovers edged out cake lovers, but not by much. Like my family, of the 10 other couples I spoke to, nine included a pie and a cake (the 10th was made up of two cake lovers), prompting me to wonder if online daters should mention a dessert preference in their ads, as well as a sense of humor and a fondness for long walks on the beach.

Aside from that, however, I can’t discern any other distinct patterns or trends, possibly because both pies and cakes are such an intrinsic part of our greater dessert culture (along with the success of Duff Goldman’s Charm City Cakes and Rodney Henry’s Dangerously Delicious Pies, our local dessert landscape). Pie and cake make their presence felt in holidays, sayings, songs. We can’t imagine Thanksgiving without pumpkin (or apple) pie. We praise our friends for “taking the cake” and thrill to hear Kelli O’Hara as Nellie Forbush sing that she’s as corny as Kansas in August and as normal as blueberry pie. Cake and pie are as yin and yang as vanilla and chocolate, peas and carrots, peanut butter and jelly— and perhaps men and women.

Try your own survey and let me know what happens. I’ll be the one at the table eating chocolate meringue pie.

Creamy Coconut Cake and No-Cook Fluffy Frosting
Chocolate Meringue Birthday Pie

If you love Pandora jewelry— those customizable charm bracelets, stacking rings, mix ‘n’ match earrings, the curiously named LovePods collection and, um, 14-carat gold toe rings— rejoice because Towson Town Center now has its very own Pandora store. For the rest of us, perhaps we just needed our very own Pandora store to finally inspire us to document our lives in 600 charms or less. Towson Town Center, 410-821-1211

The Kali’s Restaurant Group (Kali’s Court, Mezze, Meli) continues its domination of lower Fells Point with the opening of Tapas Adela. With a compact menu consisting of authentic Spanish-style small plates, prices on individual tapas range from $4 to $8. Beyond those, there are paellas prepared for two ($20) and charcuterie and queso ($6-$12). Interiors were designed by Rita St. Clair Associates, and feature bold, decorative graphic patterns on the walls in the cozy dining rooms and hanging wrought-iron light fixtures overhead. The barroom boasts vibrant deep-red walls, decorative tiles on the main bar and a white marble communal gathering table in the center for socializing. The wine front offers a smallish list of Spanish bottles, along with cava sangria, as well as the more traditional red sangria. 814 S. Broadway, 410-534-6262

Body worship
Located in the lake region of the Poconos, The Lodge at Woodloch is a luxury resort for adults, resting on the shores of Lake Teedyuskung. Owned by John and Ginny Lopis, famed designers of such spas as The Cloister at Sea Island, Sandy Lane in Barbados and the Borgata in Atlantic City, expect nothing more than the exquisite here. A two-story-high beech wood sculpture of a climbing Morning Glory vine by artist Jonathan Clowes sets the tone for an out-of-body experience. Says Ginny: “This is a spa for the future. It’s about helping people to return to their joy in life— the sensory joy of rediscovering what your body needs.” And Sheree Becker is the quintes-sential massage therapist— she takes cues from her clients as to whether to talk or not, and her hands deliver the magic. The products used are by Kerstin Florian and Astara. Opt for the Lodge’s signature Swedish massage with lavender oil and you’ll walk out of the room so relaxed that your feet won’t feel as if they touch the ground as you make your way to the Whisper Room. There, you can relax some more, taking in views of the lake and sipping cucumber water or organic teas. If you’ve been afraid to try tofu, this is the restaurant for you— everything healthy is cooked here the way you want healthy to be. And the rooms? Zen squared. 109 River Birch Lane, Hawley, Pa., 866-953-8500, http://www.thelodgeatwoodloch.com.

Museums
“Mastering the Art of Chinese Painting: Xie Zhiliu (1910-1997)” opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Feb. 6 (through July 25). China’s leading modern artists have been strongly influenced by Zhiliu, who, through his work as a connoisseur of ancient paint-ings, has encouraged artsts to look to history as well as to nature for their muse. The name Zhiliu might not exactly trip off the tongue as easily, as say, Monet, but his paintings and calligraphy are as recog-nizable. Expect a selection of some 100 works drawn from a recent gift of more than 200 paintings, sketches and studies, poetry manuscripts and artist’s seals done by or for Xie Zhiliu. 1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd Street, New York, 212-535-7710, http://www.metmuseum.org.

The Palate
With spacious, beautifully decorated rooms and a perch directly on the Potomac, with close views of the Capitol, the Mandarin Oriental is the place to be in D.C. for sleeping.But forget about sleep, because there’s food to be had here. One of the newest James Beard award-winning “Best Chefs in the Mid-Atlantic,” Eric Ziebold, whips it up at the hotel’s café, CityZen, with his signature Mille Feuille of prime Midwestern beef, with bone marrow bread pudding, scorzo-nera butter, sautéed moulard duck foie gras and béarnaise gastrique. Follow that with the CityZen Bar— a Valrhona chocolate brownie cake with soft peanut caramel milk chocolate malt and port wine syrup— and you’ll be inventing some new “Om” chants. 1330 Maryland Ave. S.W., Washington, D.C., 202-787-6006, mandarinoriental.com/washington/dining/cityzen.

Music
The shakuhachi is a Japanese flute made of bamboo, used by monks for the practice of “blowing meditation” in Zen Buddhism. The songs, called honkyoku, are about as far from honky-tonk as one can get. Instead of jangling rhythms, the music is in the simplicity of one-noted sounds. If this all seems vaguely unfamiliar, consider that the instrument was used in such famous flicks as “Braveheart,” “Memoirs of a Geisha,” “Legends of the Fall” and even “Jurassic Park.” It also can be found in the popular music of Michael Bolton and Linkin Park. On Feb. 20, the Annual Winter NYC Beginners Honkyoku Intensive Classes (no experience necessary) will be offered by Grand Master Ronnie Nyogetsu Reishin Seldin at the Ki Sui An Shakuhachi Dojo Center (120 Riverside Dr., #3W, New York). For those who want to just enjoy the sounds, Seldin will present a concert, “Voyage of Life,” featuring a four-movement solo composition, played on four Shakuhachi of different lengths, at the Tenri Cultural Institute (43A W. 13th St.). 917-207-6724, http://www.nyogetsu.com.

For every girl who has ever dreamed of one day wearing the perfect wedding dress, meet Jill Andrews. Jill, a master draper at CenterStage, has spent more than 20 years designing for everyone from British royalty to soap opera characters. Working with Jill is like having a best friend who just happens to also be a fabulous couturier with the most dreamy new Hampden atelier. And while she is best known for her beautiful wedding gowns with exceptional fabrics and details, Jill also does Big Night dresses, evening jackets and corsetry. Don’t Miss: Complete your look with a hat by Wil Crowther and jewelry by Sloane Brown. Consultations by appointment. 3355 Keswick Road, 410-338-2525

Miss Irene’s in Fells Point and Robert Oliver Seafood restaurant near the symphony hall have closed. ... >>In Harbor East, Bagby Pizza Co. has opened in the Bagby Building, offering dine-in, carryout and delivery. (1006 Fleet St., 410-605-0444) ... >>The Spy Club, the defunct, Russian-themed space upstairs from the Midtown Yacht Club, is being converted to a dance lounge called the Midtown Lounge, due to open in early 2010. ... >>Crossroads Restaurant in the Radisson Hotel at Cross Keys has launched their new farm-to-table menu. They’ve also just begun “Wine Wednesdays,” on select Wednesdays, teaming with local Maryland vineyards for wine tastlings in the lounge. (100 Village Square, 410-435-0101)

A few years ago, this replaced German Chocolate Cake as my birthday dessert. While I liked the cake, the pie is just more my style and the meringue makes it look spectacular. Put together from several recipes from the 1979 paperback “Cocoa Cookbook” published by Hershey’s.

1 3/4 cups sugar
1/3 cup cocoa
1/3 cup cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 cups milk (for a richer custard, use half and half)
3 egg yolks beaten (egg whites will be used for meringue)
2 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 9-inch baked pie shell

Combine all dry ingredients in a 2-quart saucepan. Add milk. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until mixture comes to a boil. Boil and stir 1 minute. Remove from heat. Gradually stir about half the mixture into egg yolks; return to the saucepan. Stir and heat just until boiling. Remove from heat; blend in butter and vanilla. Pour into pie shell.

Meringue

3 egg whites
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
6 tablespoons sugar

Beat egg whites with cream of tartar until foamy. Gradually add 6 tablespoons of sugar; beat until stiff peaks form. Spread meringue onto hot pie filling, carefully sealing to edge of crust. Bake at 350 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool to room temperature before serving. Pie can also be served chilled. Serves 6 to 8.

My mother found this recipe in an issue of Southern Living and it has become her go-to coconut layer cake because, she says, it’s very moist and stays fresh for several days. The icing also never gets hard or sugary, like some confectioners’ sugar-based frostings do.

1 cup butter, softened
2 cups sugar
5 eggs, separated
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in 1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon coconut extract
2/3 cup flaked coconut
Pinch of cream of tartar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease the bottom of 2 9-inch round pans. Line with wax or parchment paper and grease paper. Cream butter until light and fluffy. Gradually add sugar; then add egg yolks. Beat until well mixed. Mix dry ingredients together and add alternately with buttermilk to butter mixture. Stir in flavorings. In a clean dry bowl with clean beaters, beat egg whites until frothy. Add cream of tartar and continue beating egg whites until stiff, but not dry. Gently fold egg whites into batter. Turn batter into prepared pans. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 30 minutes. Let cakes rest in pans for approximately 10 minutes before turning out on to racks to cool. Spread approximately ½ cup of frosting (below) on 1 cake layer (you may also sprinkle frosted cake layer with additional coconut). Top with second cake layer and frost top and sides of cake, sprinkling top of cake with additional coconut if you like.

No-Cook Fluffy Frosting

1/3 cup soft butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 unbeaten egg whites
1 1-pound box confectioners’ sugar

Beat butter, vanilla and salt until fluffy. Add egg whites and sugar alternately. Beat until well mixed and fluffy.

In the dark, a man paces. He gazes out over the city, but a gray mist obscures all landmarks. Suddenly, a specter appears. “Like a broken-stringed bow upon a throbbing fiddle— I see the real horror develop over the roof-tops, and in the strident horns of night-owl taxis and the shrill monody of revelers’ arrival over the way. Horror and waste. Waste and horror— what I might have been and done that is lost, spent and gone, dissipated, unrecapturable.”

Asked which writer penned these despairing words in Baltimore, most would probably guess Edgar Allan Poe. But the ghostly echoes of pleasure-seeking gone sour point to the true author: F. Scott Fitzgerald. The laureate of the Jazz Age was only 36 when he came to Baltimore in 1932. But like the country, he had crashed. His wife and muse, Zelda, was mentally ill. He was drinking heavily. His income had plummeted. He hadn’t published a novel since “The Great Gatsby” in 1925, and he was struggling to finish “Tender is the Night,” a book he hoped would pull him out of debt and re-establish his reputation as the greatest writer of his generation. As it happened, neither of the tenuous hopes Fitzgerald nurtured on his arrival in Baltimore— that Zelda would be cured, that his new book would be a critical and commercial triumph— would be fulfilled.

Even so, Baltimore gave the peripatetic Fitzgerald family something they’d never really had before: a home. The nearly five years that Scott, Zelda and their daughter, Scottie, lived in Baltimore was the biggest chunk of time the family ever spent together in one location, says University of Maryland professor emeritus Jackson Bryer. “Five years in one place is a pretty long time for them,” he points out. Though Zelda was a patient at the Henry Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins and the Sheppard-Pratt Hospital for much of that time (with a short stint at Craig House outside New York City in between), “they had a stable life here,” says Bryer. “And the relative stability of Baltimore and having his family all in one place may have given Fitzgerald what he needed to finish ‘Tender is the Night.’”

Fitzgerald’s Maryland roots go deeper than those of most writers who have spent time in Baltimore. Though born and (mostly) raised in St. Paul, Minn., Fitzgerald was descended on his father’s side from a number of pre-Revolutionary Maryland families— Francis Scott Key was his second cousin, twice-removed. The Sage of Baltimore, H.L. Mencken, was Fitzgerald’s first editor, publishing his story, “Babes in the Woods,” in 1919. Soon afterward, Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre, the Alabama teenager who would, for better or worse, change his life. For 10 years following their 1920 marriage, Scott and Zelda were A-list celebrities, behaving much like today’s young stars who are blessed with fame and money but lack the maturity to handle either.

Both Scott and Zelda were genetically primed for terrible diseases— in his case, alcoholism, and in her case, schizophrenia. Their riotous Roaring ’20s lifestyle— constant drinking, drama and departures— catalyzed those illnesses. “Nothing could have survived our life,” Fitzgerald once wrote to Zelda.

By 1930, Scott was an alcoholic and Zelda had suffered the first of her multiple breakdowns, fighting her way back to sanity over 15 months in a Swiss clinic. After Zelda’s release in September 1931, the couple and Scottie, then 10, returned to the United States, but five months later, Zelda fell apart again. When Fitzgerald wrote to Mencken for advice, the latter suggested the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins, at that time the nation’s premier institution for the treatment of the mentally ill. Phipps director Adolf Meyer advocated a scientific approach to psychiatry but believed that psychogenetic factors, not physical disease, caused most mental illness. He thought that people became mentally ill “by actually living in ways that put their mind and entire organism and its activity in jeopardy.” The Fitzgeralds— whose marriage Meyer diagnosed as a “folie a deux”— seemed a living embodiment of his theories, which perhaps explains why they both detested him.

Zelda was admitted to Phipps in February 1932 and that spring, Fitzgerald rented a rambling Victorian cottage called La Paix from Baltimore architect Bayard Turnbull on the grounds of what is now St. Joseph’s Hospital in Towson. “We have a soft shady place here that’s like a paintless playhouse abandoned when the family grew up,” Zelda wrote to a friend. “It is surrounded by apologetic trees and warning meadows and creaking insects.”

When Fitzgerald’s Baltimore secretary, Isabel Owens, was interviewed in later years about her memories of the author at La Paix, she describes him “nervously pacing up and down in his study, scribbling words at a stand-up bookkeeper’s desk on large, yellow paper, and throwing the pages on the floor, or piling them up neatly for typing.” When he was sober, Mrs. Owens said, “his handwriting was neat and contained. If drinking, he scrawled.” In addition to her secretarial duties, Mrs. Owens acted as a foster mother to Scottie and companion to Zelda, who spent afternoons at La Paix with her family while a patient at Phipps. “Another one of my jobs was keeping the bill collectors happy,” Mrs. Owens reported. “I had to pay a little here and there so they wouldn’t bother Scott.”

By 1932, Fitzgerald’s income was half of what it had been two years earlier— $15,832 vs. his 1930 earnings of $37,599— and though he continued to churn out the short stories that had been his bread and butter for years, “some of those stories were terrible,” Owens told Zelda’s biographer, Nancy Milford. “We all knew it. He was convinced he was dead and buried.” In a March 1933 essay for The Saturday Evening Post called “One Hundred False Starts,” Fitzgerald describes “facing my sharpened pencils and block of legal-sized paper” with “a feeling of utter helplessness.” Nonetheless, he soldiered on. While living at La Paix, Fitzgerald began his Notebooks, in which he recorded ideas and observations for stories and banked story fragments for later use.

Zelda, too, wrote in Baltimore. In her first two months at Phipps she finished an autobiographical novel, “Save Me the Waltz,” which led to a marital crisis. Fitzgerald felt “personally betrayed and attacked” by the book, pointed out Baltimore-based novelist and Goucher College professor Madison Smartt Bell at the 10th International F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference, held in Baltimore in early October. But Fitzgerald was also worried about “the dilution of his brand,” said Bell, and he accused Zelda of poaching on his material. Though he approved the publication of a revised version of the novel, Fitzgerald was adamantly opposed to Zelda continuing to write fiction, and the couple continued to argue over who had the greater right to use the raw material of their lives. A two-hour session at La Paix with Phipps psychiatrist Thomas Rennie, in which the couple aired their grievances, was “the Armageddon of marital fights,” Bell said, and ended with both of them threatening to “go to law” (end the marriage). Soon afterward, Zelda switched to drama, writing a play called “Scandalabra,” which was produced by Baltimore’s Vagabond Junior Players in the summer of 1933.

Though most biographical accounts of Fitzgerald’s life treat the Baltimore years as unremittingly bleak, literary scholar Joan Hellman, an organizer of the conference who has long researched the author’s life in Baltimore, says that the Fitzgeralds “had a normal family life here for a while, until Zelda’s second breakdown.” Hellman, now retired from the Community College of Baltimore County, first became interested in Fitzgerald as a graduate student. “I never stopped reading about him and when I came to Baltimore in 1977, it hit me that La Paix was here,” she says. She went looking for the house, only to learn it had been torn down in 1961. As the centennial of Fitzgerald’s birth approached in 1996, Hellman sought out people who had known Fitzgerald during his Baltimore years, interviewing them and collecting photos. “People on the whole had funny stories to tell,” she says. “Everybody had a drinking story, which is sad.”

While the family was living at La Paix, from May 1932 to November 1933, they “went to parties and movies,” Hellman says, and were listed in the Baltimore Blue Book as “at home for visitors.” Related to the Ridgely family, Fitzgerald was invited to dine at Hampton Mansion in Baltimore County. Eleanor Turnbull, 9 years old when the Fitzgeralds arrived at La Paix, “and very taken with Fitzgerald,” says Hellman, recalled him taking Scottie and her and her siblings to the movies in Towson Town, a short walk down the lane, and swimming at Meadowbrook. Fitzgerald car-pooled with the Turnbulls— Scottie attended first the Calvert School and then Bryn Mawr— and later wrote a story for The Saturday Evening Post called “The Family Bus” about the experience. “He wrote little plays for the children to perform and he’d put the kids in the car and go around the countryside,” says Hellman. Not that Fitzgerald was terribly skilled behind the wheel. In a 1960 interview, his chauffeur, Towson resident Aquilla Keating, told a Baltimore Sun reporter, “I remember that Mr. Fitzgerald was one real bad driver.” In his diary, H.L. Mencken describes Fitzgerald’s driving as “fearful and wonderful.”

In another diary entry from April 1932, Mencken describes the Fitzgeralds as they appeared shortly after their arrival in Baltimore. “F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife were here to lunch yesterday. Mrs. Fitzgerald is a patient at the Phipps Clinic. The poor girl went insane in Paris a year or so ago, and is still plainly more or less off her base. She managed to get through lunch quietly enough, but there was a wild look in her eye, and now and then she showed plain signs of her mental distress.” Fitzgerald, he added, “is a charming fellow, and when sober makes an excellent companion. Unfortunately, liquor sets him wild and he is apt, when drunk, to knock over a dinner table, or run his automobile into a bank building.”

Mencken’s wife, Sara Haardt, was a childhood friend of Zelda, and the two couples socialized during the Baltimore years. In 1933, the Menckens went to a dinner at La Paix where the only other guests were three of Zelda’s doctors from the Phipps Clinic. Calling it a “somewhat weird evening,” Mencken described the “spookiness” of the house that is “not diminished by the fact that Zelda is palpably only half sane.” Apparently, the Menckens were shown some of Zelda’s paintings, which were, he said, “full of grotesque exaggerations and fantastic ideas.” Fitzgerald, himself, said Mencken, “also begins to show signs of a disordered mind. Some time ago he had what he now calls a nervous breakdown, and was in the hands of the psychiatrists for a couple of months.” In fact, Fitzgerald was hospitalized at Johns Hopkins nine times during the Baltimore years. Some of those visits were for “drying out” purposes. In June 1934, Mencken noted that “the case of F. Scott Fitzgerald has become distressing. He is a boozing in a wild manner and has become a nuisance.”

It’s not surprising that Fitzgerald’s alcoholism had reached an acute stage in the summer of 1934. He was under enormous emotional and financial stress. A June 1933 fire at La Paix— caused by Zelda setting fire to some papers in an unused fireplace on the second floor of the house— led to Bayard Turnbull canceling their lease. Fitzgerald begged to be allowed to stay in the fire-damaged house until he finished his book and Turnbull agreed. Two months later, the family moved to a townhouse at 1307 Park Ave. At first, Zelda could come home to the Park Avenue house on the weekends with a nurse and she took painting classes at the Maryland Institute College of Art, says Hellman. Scottie’s best friend from Bryn Mawr, Peaches Finney, told Hellman about play dates with Scottie on Park Avenue, where “Zelda would fix snacks for them.” But soon after the move, Zelda got sicker and Fitzgerald paid for a stay at Craig House, an expensive sanitarium outside New York City. By May 1924, she was back in Baltimore at Sheppard Pratt Hospital, in worse shape than ever. Then, “Tender Is the Night” was published in April 1934, only to sell 13,000 copies and garner mixed reviews. The son of Fitzgerald’s landlord told a Baltimore Sun reporter that Fitzgerald was financially stressed and that his father “often had to ask Scottie to speak to Scott about the rent.”

The author’s life was crumbling and he responded by drinking heavily throughout the spring and summer, according to his biographer Matthew Bruccoli. In November 1934, Fitzgerald wrote his editor Maxwell Perkins, “I have drunk too much and that is certainly slowing me up. On the other hand, without drink I do not know whether I could have survived this time.” In his essay “Sleeping and Waking,” published in December 1934, he describes his struggles with insomnia. “All is prepared, the books, the glass of water, the extra pajamas in case I wake in rivulets of sweat, the luminal pills in the little round tube…” Fitzgerald needed luminal (phenobarbital) to sleep and its use may have inspired the kind of night terrors described in the essay. “What if this night prefigured the night after death— what if all thereafter was an eternal quivering on the edge of an abyss, with everything base and vicious in oneself urging one forward and the baseness and viciousness of the world just ahead. No choice, no road, no hope— only the endless repetition of the sordid and the semi-tragic.”

In October 1935, Fitzgerald gave up the Park Avenue house and moved to the Cambridge Arms Apartments just opposite Johns Hopkins University with Scottie, by then a teenager. “By the time Fitzgerald moved to the Cambridge Arms, Zelda is at Sheppard Pratt and there was probably no chance that she would recover,” says Hellman. Fitzgerald’s despair was nakedly revealed in a three-part essay he published in Esquire the next spring, “The Crack-Up.” In the essays Fitzgerald drops the mask of fiction to tell his story raw, sparing neither himself nor the reader certain brutal truths: that “I had only been a mediocre caretaker of most of the things left in my hands, including my own talent”; that he would always “cherish an abiding distrust, an animosity, toward the leisure class— not the conviction of a revolutionary, but the smoldering hatred of the peasant”; that “my political conscience had scarcely existed for 10 years save as an element of irony in my stuff.” He linked his own crash to the Depression, noting that “my recent experience parallels the wave of despair that swept the nation when the Boom was over.” Concluding that “life will never be very pleasant again,” Fitzgerald ended the series with a savage promise: “if you throw me a bone with enough meat on it I may even lick your hand.”

Most of Fitzgerald’s supporters and friends— including his editor and agent— thought he’d killed his career by publishing “The Crack-Up.” Perhaps he did. But in hindsight it seems as though he anticipated by about 30 years the corrosive commentary of his great admirer Hunter S. Thompson and other viciously insightful critics of the American dream. Throughout his career, Fitzgerald was exquisitely sensitive to the emotional tenor of the places he lived, whether Princeton, Long Island, the French Riviera— or Baltimore during The Great Depression. A little-noted fact about Fitzgerald is that he underwent a political awakening of sorts while living in Baltimore, reading Marx and frequently entertaining a man that Zelda acidly referred to as “the community communist,” identified by literary scholar Scott Donaldson as V.F. Calverton (George Goetz), a Marxist literary critic who lived on Pratt Street and whom Fitzgerald befriended in 1934. Though Fitzgerald had always called himself a liberal, Donaldson says, while in Baltimore “he turned way left and stayed there the rest of his life. He turned against the plutocrats.”

Fitzgerald’s La Paix landlords, Bayard and Margaret Turnbull, were quite conservative, as were most wealthy Baltimoreans of the time, but Eleanor Turnbull told Hellman that Fitzgerald “turned her mother’s life around,” Hellman says, “speaking often about a freer world.” Fitzgerald and Mrs. Turnbull were very close, but the author made many other friends in Baltimore and was far from being a recluse even in his darkest days. He drank at the Owl Bar with Baltimore newspaperman Louis Azrael— who later tried to help him curb his drinking— and befriended the group of young actors who put on Zelda’s play “Scandalabra.” He kept in touch with Princeton classmates living in the city like Edgar Allan Poe Jr. He wrote an introduction to “Historic and Colonial Homes of Maryland” for his friends Don and Rita Swann, whose son, Francis, he met at the Vagabond Players. Early in his Baltimore residence, he even attended a frat party at Hopkins, according to former Baltimore Sun reporter Carl Schoettler. And at one party in Homeland given by a host with the surname of Diver, Hellman says, Fitzgerald may have picked up the name of his tragic hero in “Tender is the Night.” A parade of famous friends also visited the Fitzgeralds in Baltimore, including John Dos Passos, Gertrude Stein, Thomas Wolfe, Edmund Wilson and Malcolm Cowley.

In April 1936, Fitzgerald transferred Zelda to Highland Hospital in Asheville, N.C., and once again behind in his rent, he gave up the Cambridge Arms apartment that summer. Scottie, who was still at Bryn Mawr, lived alternately with the family of her friend Peaches and Mrs. Owens. In August Fitzgerald published a slightly happier story in Esquire, “Afternoon of an Author,” describing a bus ride from his Cambridge Arms apartment to the barbershop. “When he woke up he felt better than he had for many weeks, a fact that became plain to him negatively— he did not feel ill,” the nameless narrator of the story notes. Still, he takes the precaution of including “a small phial of luminal” in his pocket for the ride. “The perfect neurotic,” the narrator mutters while contemplating his image in a mirror.

In December, while staying at the Stafford Hotel in Mount Vernon, Fitzgerald got blazing drunk at a formal party at The Belvedere he was hosting for Scottie and her friends. That debacle led to a binge, which led to another drying out at Hopkins. He left the city shortly afterward, never to return, though Scottie long considered Baltimore her hometown and married a Baltimore man, Jack Lanahan, after her graduation from Vassar. “We used to come here for all the holidays,” Scottie’s daughter, Cecilia Ross, said at the Fitzgerald conference in October 2009. “My sister did the whole Cotillion thing here.” Cecilia attended the Oldfields School and her sister, Eleanor, graduated from St. Timothy’s.

On Dec. 21, 1940, Fitzgerald died of a heart attack in Hollywood at the age of 44. Zelda held on for a few more years, dying in a fire at Highland Hospital in March 1948. An enduring myth suggests that Zelda set the fire; she did not. It started in the kitchen while Zelda slept in her room on the top floor. Nine women unable to escape their locked rooms died in the fire. The details of treatments for schizophrenia that Zelda endured at clinics in Europe and the U.S. in that pre-pharmacological age are horrible to contemplate. “Don’t ever fall into the hands of brain and nerve specialists unless you are feeling very Faustian,” Zelda once wrote to a friend.

Like many alcoholics, Fitzgerald was often consumed by self-loathing and regret, much of it well-earned. Yet, till the end of his life he worked hard to finance Zelda’s very expensive psychiatric care and to provide Scottie with an excellent education. Zelda often thanked him for his enduring loyalty and devotion, as in a letter dated July 1939— “Nobody is better aware than I am, and I believe, so is Scottie, of your generosity, and the seriousness of your constant struggle to provide the best for us. I am most deeply grateful to you for the sustained and tragic effort that you have made to keep us going.”

The Fitzgeralds— Scott, Zelda and Scottie— are buried at St. Mary’s Church in Rockville, close by Scott’s parents and other Maryland relations. Before her own death in 1986, Scottie fought to have her parents re-interred at St. Mary’s; initially they were buried at Union Cemetery in Rockville when the Catholic Church refused permission for Fitzgerald to be buried at St. Mary’s because he was not a practicing Catholic at the time of his death. Scottie felt that her father would have wanted to be buried with his ancestors, though Fitzgerald once expressed a different wish in a letter on Stafford Hotel stationery he wrote to his North Carolina secretary in 1936.

“I love Baltimore more than I thought— it is so rich with memories— it is nice to look up the street and see the statue of my great uncle & to know that Poe is buried here and that many ancestors have walked in the old town by the bay. I belong here, where everything is civilized and gay and rotted and polite. And I wouldn’t mind a bit if in a few years Zelda & I could snuggle up together under a stone in some old graveyard here. That is really a happy thought and not melancholy at all.”

It’s imperative that the chile powder is 100% ground dried New Mexico chiles…NOT the mix of spices sold as chile powder that you find in grocery stores here.

This is the type my dad, a Santa Fe native, was raised on, as were all of us kids. It’s a stack of fried corn tortillas, cheddar, chopped onions and a really rustic chile gravy. And it’s all topped off with a fried egg. It is my all-time favorite comfort food. The chile powder you find around here is almost always a blend of spices. That’s an absolute no-no in my family. We use pure ground New Mexican chilies. So, I order the chile powder online - at http://www.buenofoods.com, (specifically - http://www.giftbasketsjust4u.com/pubs-us-bin/giftbasketsjustforyou/GBJstore.cgi?user_action=list&category=Traditional) It’s the Special Reserve chile powder - and have it shipped from New Mexico.

My dad’s family has been in New Mexico for centuries, literally. We’re all proud of our heritage, and our food. In fact, my aunt Eloisa Bergère Brown - who’s also my madrina (godmother) - published a special family cookbook that we all have. It’s loaded with great traditional recipes and humor, which includes the name, “Our Kind Of Food For Our Kind Of People.” That’s where I get my recipe for the chile gravy. 

Sloane Brown’s Enchilada recipe

Chile gravy (from “Our Kind of Food For Our Kind of People by Eloisa Bergère Brown)
3 tablespoons red chile powder
1 heaping tablespoon flour
3 tablespoons oil (or fat if you need comforting)
1 large clove garlic - chopped
1 cube chicken boullion (optional but good!)
Enough water to make a gravy-like mixture, maybe 2 cups

In a medium hot pan, brown flour in oil, add chopped garlic. Stir in powdered chile and brown for ONE minute…no more. (It’s bad, really bad, to burn chile. If you do, you and every else has to leave the house.) Add water, as you would to make gravy, a little at a time, then stir. Add optional boullion cube. Keep stirring a while longer. Then let simmer for at least 15 minutes on low, low burner. I find the longer you cook red chile, the tamer it gets. Just the opposite with green chile.

Enchilada’s
3 Corn (NOT flour!) tortillas
Lots of corn oil
3/4 cups grated extra sharp cheddar cheese
1/4 cup chopped raw onion (this can be a sweet onion if you want)
1 egg
A cup of chile gravy

Fry the tortillas in medium hot corn oil to your preference - soft or crispy. Drain on paper towels. Put one tortilla on a plate, sprinkle 1/4 cup grated cheese, and 1/3 the onions over it. Ladle some gravy over that. Put another tortilla on top of that and repeat. Add a third layer the same way. Fry the egg, leaving the yolk runny, and place on the top. Break the yoke before eating, so it drizzles over the whole thing and creates a gooey, glorious mess. Enjoy!

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While the holiday season is a time of joy, unfortunately, it can also be a time of stress. Searching for the perfect gift for a long list of family, friends and co-workers is enough to send even the most seasoned of shoppers into a retail spin.

This year the Alter Communications editors at STYLE and Chesapeake Life have once again embarked on our collaborative effort, the sole purpose being the alleviation of pre-holiday shopping angst. Pooling our fashion and design savvy, we’ve compiled a holiday gift wish list of all the objects that make our hearts go aflutter. Wish List is sure to give you loads of fantastic gift ideas and inspirations for your holiday shopping and, you might even find something to put on your own holiday wish list!

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Chocolate banana. Bloody Mary. Cinnamon raisin. Maryland crab. Raspberry cheesecake. Sushi.

These are among the improbable— and improbably delicious— hummus flavors created by Blake Wollman, owner, chef and pastry chef of Desert Café Mediterranean restaurant in Mount Washington. Since he began experimenting with hummus seven years ago, he’s strolled grocery store aisles to come up with new ingredients to mix with his chickpea, tahini and garlic base. “I love the combination of sweet and salty,” says Wollman, a self-taught chef. “And I love coming up with new flavors. Every weekend I do three hummus flavors: a savory, a sweet and a traditional.” Blueberry. Peanut butter and jelly. Hot cherry pepper— the possibilities are endless. And since hummus is both healthy and tasty, Wollman thinks it has mass market possibilities a la frozen yogurt or burritos.

You can call him to find out the flavors for the weekend, order catering or pick up a container to go. Party Cake hummus— which, surprisingly, has the same amount of garlic as the Kung Pao hummus— would surely be a great conversation piece for a holiday gathering. Definitely not the same old chip and dip. 1605 Sulgrave Ave., 410-367-5808, http://www.thedesertcafe.com

Oscar Wilde once said that “when good Americans die they go to Paris.” I used to think the same until I came to the Taj Hotel in Boston and sat in the Club Room overlooking the Public Garden. Now I’m fairly sure this is exactly where good Americans go— during life and after death.

The hotel stands on the corner of Newbury and Arlington streets, where “location, location, location” meets early American history, luxury shopping, dashing parks and more. The temptation to go out and explore is matched only by the desire to stay inside and soak in all the exquisite goodies this 273-room hotel offers.

As of two years ago, the building was “the mother ship for all Ritz-Carltons,” says Patrick Blangy, Taj’s director of sales and marketing, “setting the benchmark for all luxury hotels by becoming the first ‘chandelier luxury’ hotel in America. They coined the term, which meant, essentially, a hotel that went all-out with their grand decorations.”

But the Ritz-Carlton Group was purchased by Marriott International in 2000, and took up residence across the park, where they proceeded to set up placards asking guests to request if they wanted their sheets to be changed. That same year, the Tata Group (owners of Tetley Tea, Jaguar, Land Rover, approximately 50 percent of the world’s undersea cable and 80 of its hotels, including Rambagh Palace in Jaipur, the Umaid Bhawan Palace in Jodhpur and the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower in Mumbai) took up residence at the former Ritz, and left the sheet-changing decision-making to the staff. Which is to say: if you need something done here, it will happen about five minutes before you think to ask. “We’ve taken over a traditional building, this historical flagship Ritz-Carlton building, with its traditional services,” says David Gibbons, general manager of the Taj. “We wanted to be the stewards of this great property. To keep with the heritage.”

The Taj’s efforts in Boston have earned it a spot in Travel and Leisure’s “500 Best Hotels” issue two years running; one of Conde Nast Traveler’s Gold List and Reader’s Choice Awards; as well as the Mobil 4-Star and AAA Four-Diamond Lodging Award. As one couple in the elevator kept saying to each other, “It’s just like the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris!” That’s some heavy-duty, spot-on praise.

The views from the Taj are second to none. “It’s very dramatic to see the uniform color of the Boston Commons in the background, serving as a sort of frame for the Public Garden’s variety of trees,” says Blangy. “It’s a nice fall foliage, even now in December, a rainbow of foreground colors.”

The best panoramas are to be found from the 8th floor on up, because they’re unencumbered, with no buildings getting in the way of the picturesque fauna during the day, and the swags of holiday lights over the park at night. All the rooms are little gems, but the Luxury Park Suites are virtually peerless when it comes to, well, everything: a bed that seemingly goes on forever, dressed in high-count cotton sheets, Frette linens and an array of different pillows in the room from which to choose (down alternative microfiber, anti-snoring, different densities, etc.); a turn-down service presented on a tray spread with future-needs-fulfilled (a linen laundry bag, a full breakfast menu, Taj chocolate squares and a weekly weather forecast); floor-to-ceiling windows that look down on Newbury Street, with its high-end shops in their full holiday regalia.

Go from the bedroom to the parlor and the entrance to the Public Garden beckons below, while inside a butler dressed in near-tuxedo garb lights a fire using wood selected from the Firewood Menu (cherry and oak are offered, but the most popular with guests are the birch and maple). I go for cherry.

The scene is set for au goût in-room dining: seared bay scallops served with a brown butter truffle hollandaise, smashed potatoes and asparagus on the side— with, perhaps, a Louis Jadot 2005 Pouilly-Fuissé Burgundy— followed by a hedonistic take on the traditional Boston cream pie; and then, a glass or two of Remy Martin Louis XIII. Segue to the bath, after you’ve put in a request from the Bath Menu. A “Simply Romantic,” with scented bubbles, rose petals, champagne and strawberries, is icing on the romance cake. The “Make Way for Ducklings” comes with a steaming mug of hot chocolate sitting beside a bath full of bubbles and rubber duckies. The lavender-tea “Boston Tea Party” bath is an outer-body sodium pentothal experience. Total complacency kicks in. I’m ready to give up all my secrets to the butler who drew the bath. Life can’t get much better than this.

While I soak, I think of Boston, where I spent the first two years of my life. I know virtually nothing of this place, but soon find out why it has the reputation of being considered the “Capital of New England.” Being in this city is a bit like being in Oxford or Edinburgh (I fully expect to see one of those iconic black cabs toodling along whenever I looked out the window). Boston is much smaller than one might think, which is why it’s also called a walking city. Author Bill Bryson says, “Boston’s freeway system is insane. It was clearly designed by a person who had spent his childhood crashing toy trains.” In other words, do what I did— get a good night’s rest, take in a breakfast of fresh berries and orange French toast, then head outside to explore on foot.

The Taj stands at the front door of the Public Garden, which begins Boston’s famed Emerald Necklace— a chain of parks that wrap around the city’s thoroughfares, built by Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner, Calvert Vaux, the fathers of American landscape architecture and the designers of Central Park. The Public Garden cuffs off the Back Bay area (once a tidal estuary— the Science Museum also serves as a dam) through Boston Commons, then on to other parks (Jamaicaway, with its stunning Jamaica Pond, Fenway Park, Common-wealth Avenue, etc.), finally ending at the rural Franklin Park, a woodland preserve.

Boston is one of those rare cities— like Paris— where getting lost brings the really good finds. I stumbled upon the Old Granary Burying Ground at Bromfield and Tremont streets, with row upon row of blackened tombstones, where John Hancock, Samuel Adams and Paul Revere R.I.P., and where one can find the obelisk monument erected by Benjamin Franklin to his humble parents.

I strolled into Copley Square and found the Romanesque Trinity Episcopal Church (built in 1887 and listed on the American Institute of Architects’ Ten Most Significant Buildings in the U.S.), where candlelight carol services are a tradition and an absolute must-do for those with a waning holiday spirit. I happened upon ice skaters at the Frog Pond in the Boston Commons; discovered the three-mile Freedom Trail that leads to Paul Revere’s teeny, warping house, the chock-full-of-tourists Quincy Market and the amazingly historical Faneuil Hall; delighted in the Bunker Hill monument where Col. William Prescott shouted out his famous command “don’t fire til you see the whites of their eyes,” to save gunpowder needed to defeat the British during the revolution.

I did all of that, with the harbor winds fairly whipping my hair in every direction, finally ending up at the seaport, following a group of tourists to I-didn’t-know-where. Sometimes it’s good to follow a throng of tourists. I had the unexpected pleasure of happening upon the U.S.S. Constitution, the oldest commissioned ship in the world (211 years old), with real active-duty naval officers on board. It was first built to attack pirates, then used against the British (instead of blowing up, their cannonballs merely stuck inside the white oak boards of the ship, giving the ship its nickname “Old Ironsides”). It’s a cold tour for December, but the real chill— the important chill— comes from the history, which makes the getting out and seeing so important.

There’s such a sense of history here, in fact, that the Taj doesn’t want to be derivative in the way it decorates the hotel. The idea is to keep the traditional, yes, but to leave the “Currier and Ives outside, and bring in a fresh take,” says Gibbons. When Gibbons first met French designer Francoise Semeria, the decorator they specifically use just for Christmas (Fleur Magenta Tel, her company in Nice, is a celebrated holiday-themed design firm in France), he says, “I walked in the room and saw this small woman talking, and thought, ‘What is this?’ but within minutes I knew I was in the presence of someone who really, really knew what they were talking about.’”

Now, every summer, Semeria flies over from Nice to conspire with him to make a lush, modern, traditional, European Christmas scene. Last year the hotel was dressed up in a “confectioner’s pink,” says Gibbons, where instead of silver, things were silver with a pink blush. This year, the Taj is dressed like a white, chic winter wonderland.

For families, December brings the Teddy Bear Tea, where PB&J, chocolate-covered strawberries, assorted Christmas cookies and hot chocolate await eager little guests in the Grand Ballroom. Everything is decorated in candy-cane stripes, and teddy bears hang on the walls (the teddies are brought in by children for tea, and then donated to the Children’s Hospital Boston). As a nod to the Indian proprietors of the Taj, a huge gingerbread house is baked to look like the Raj Palace.

For Christmas dinner, executive chef, Franck Steigerwald— who is almost certainly fated for some Michelin stars— cooks up a feast with oysters, champagne and caviar, followed by a roulade of turkey breast with mushroom and foie gras and traditional accompaniments. Then Christmas dessert arrives— exquisite little individual bûche de Noëls in white chocolate, raspberry or hazelnut pralines. For a final touch, guests have stockings filled with chocolates and cookies hanging from their doorknobs. 

The Cafe, the name of the restaurant, is achingly pretty for lunch the day after Christmas, with its cream-caramel colored walls and floral designs: textured sage-colored fabric with red cherries, white and yellow roses, and gray vines that cover the booths and chairs; taupe and celadon needlework pillows that bear hydrangeas, irises and pansies, while one yellow rose floats inside a slender minimalist vase on each table. It’s all very Silk Road. Photos of the rich and famous— Elizabeth Taylor, Winston Churchill, Shirley Temple, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and the scandalous: Edward III, The Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson— line the back wall, which makes me feel rather important and a little insignificant at the same time.

Since the waitstaff are knowledgeable and good conversationalists, I knock back three of the best cappuccinos I’ve ever had in my life while waiter Gianfranco Verri, who comes from a small town near Turin called Giardino, encourages me to let him choose my meal for the evening. It is a good move: tomato mozzarella with arugula and fennel salad, roasted duck breast with sweet potato mash and Madeira cranberry sauce (accompanied by a Chateauneuf du Pape, 2005, La Bernardine, M. Capoutier) and dessert— a vanilla crème brûlée with fresh berries and an apricot pane de gene. 

Still, I must confess that the Club Room is my favorite place at the Taj. Every morning and afternoon, members (pay the extra bit at check-in, it’s worth the price) have private access to a special room with enormous, sweeping park views, a high-end bar, a well-dressed butler, a gourmet buffet of oh-so-many international amuse-bouches-cum-tapas: lobster profiteroles, tuna tartar, fresh sushi, foie gras with toast points and thinly slivered grapes— the cast of epicurean characters are enough to bring me to my knees. (For those who decide not to partake in the services of the Club, weekend afternoon teas in the Cafe afford some of the same, adding on currant and orange scones served up with Devonshire cream and lemon curd, Opera cakes, teas, champagne and more.) But this spot— here in the Club— this is my final resting spot at the Taj now, and hopefully during my second life.

The Taj Boston Hotel
15 Arlington St., 617-536-5700, tajhotels.com/Boston Fastest Route: JetBlue from BWI to Logan International; fares starting at $40 one-way. Most Scenic Route: Amtrak Acela from Penn Station to South Station; fares starting at $150 one-way.

STAY
> The Eliot Hotel, 370 Commonwealth Ave., 617-267-1607, eliothotel.com. 95 rooms, of which 79 are suites, this eco-friendly hotel is handsomely decorated and situated on a beautiful boulevard; comes with one of the coolest in-room computer systems for guests ever.

> The Back Bay Hotel, 350 Stuart St., 617-266 7200, doylecollection.com/locations/boston_hotels/the_back_bay_hotel.aspx. Trendy luxury in the former Boston Police headquarters, near Copley Square.

> The Millennium Bostonian Hotel, 26 North St., 617-523-3600, millenniumhotels.com/millenniumboston/index.html. Newly renovated with designer Jinnie Kim’s Asia-meets-Boston, offers upscale sleeping at inexpensive rates. Directly across from Faneuil Hall.

PLAY
> The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 280 The Fenway, 617-566-1401, gardnermuseum.org. A little Louvre in America. Stay late for some of the after-hour concerts in the cloisters.

> USS Constitution and Museum, Charlestown Navy Yard, 617-426-1812, ussconstitutionmuseum.org. The oldest active naval ship. Served during the Revolutionary War and now a wow-tourist stop with exceptionally humorous and knowledgeable tour guides.

> Walking Tours of Historic Boston, 221 Massachusetts Ave., 617-670-1888, walkingboston.com. Follow the red brick road of the Freedom Trail for three hours, with clever, revolutionary-outfitted guides who hit all the important historical markers.

> Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford St., Cambridge, 617-495-3045, hmnh.harvard.edu. One fascinating scientific research museum, housing three sub-categories worth visiting: the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the Harvard University Herbaria, and the Mineralogical and Geological Museum.

EAT
> Sportello, 348 Congress St, 617-737-1234, sportelloboston.com. James Beard awarded Barbara Lynch (Boston’s answer to Baltimore’s Cindy Wolf), debuts her newest, innovative, prix fixe restaurant this month.

> North 26, 26 North St., 617-557-3640, millenniumhotels.com/millenniumboston/restaurant/index.html. Executive chef Brian Flagg makes the best New England clam chowder in the city— hands down— and the rest of his menu is as playful as his cooking, too.

> L’Espalier, 774 Boylston St, 617-262-3023, lespalier.com. New England meets French seasonal degustation at this Boston favorite.

Over the years we’ve seen a parade of bistros rotate through this charming waterside space inside the Pier 5 Hotel— too many to mention. We hope the latest tenant, Pizzazz Tuscan Grille, stays there for a while. The attractive interiors feature vibrant red walls, black and white tiled floors and dark woods. As expected, the menu offers tons of Italian comfort classics: Fettuccini Primavera with Seasonal Vegetables, Lasagna Rollitini and Chicken Parmesan, as well as pizzas and calzones. What’s unexpected is the concentration on heallthy dining choices— they are cooking with fresh local produce whenever possible and using organic ingredients, as well as free-range eggs, grass-fed beef, all organic dairy products and imported fair trade coffees and teas. And those with dietary restrictions can find plenty to love here as well: there are lots of choices for vegetarians, vegans, those who are gluten sensitive and even raw food aficionados. Mangia! Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. (711 Eastern Ave., 410-528-7772)

Since 1991, it has been a tradition of the Women’s Civic League to host an annual Guilford holiday party, filled with food, drinks and entertainment. More than mere holiday fun, the proceeds from the cocktail party support Sherwood Gardens, where more than 80,000 tulips are planted every spring. So it was fitting that this party was hosted at the Mediterranean-style home of Lindsay and Bruce Fleming, with its rear terrace overlooking Sherwood Gardens.

Festive white lights were festooned around the wrought-iron gates of the gray stucco residence, and wreaths adorned the doors and windows. Indoors, the home, with its lush Oriental carpets, traditional furniture and striking white marble kitchen counters, captured the spirit of the holidays. It was the perfect backdrop for the 200 guests to mingle in their dazzling red and green festive wear.

In the family room, Ravens fans gathered around the cozy fireplace where a large plasma TV screen hung overhead. With a mix of live holiday music from the grand piano player, cheers from the game and a buzz of chatter among guests, the atmosphere was lively and dynamic. Guests gathered around the long dining room table decorated with a centerpiece of stargazer lilies and carnations, to select from a spread of hors d’oeuvres, all contributed by guests. Popular on the menu? Crab dip, of course!

Not only did the party mark the holiday season, but a sense of community as well, as friends and neighbors celebrated long into the December night.

“A Yankee Swap is like Machiavelli meets Christmas.”

I wish I’d coined this phrase myself, but alas it was uttered by everyone’s favorite cubicle philosopher, Dwight K. Schrute on “The Office,” during a Dunder Mifflin holiday party. The main event of the party was a Secret Santa gift exchange in which each person brought in a gift for another person in the office. Then, halfway through the party, Michael Scott decides to convert the Secret Santa into a Yankee Swap. Suddenly, nobody has to make do with the gift intended for him or her. Everyone can vie for any present in the pile.

In short, all hell breaks out, as the characters brawl over the iPod Michael bought in blatant violation of the $20 spending limit. The party is ruined; all good cheer evaporates. Desperate to salvage the celebration, Michael dashes out for a case of vodka and everyone is happy for a while until they pass out.

Yes, this is extreme. But I guarantee that during this holiday season various versions of this debacle will play out in office parks, senior citizen residences and private homes over Baltimore and the world. Because, as Dwight says, “A Yankee Swap is like Machiavelli meets Christmas.” Or, as I say, “A Yankee Swap is like ‘Animal Planet’ but with humans instead of lions, and a 12-cup food processor getting attacked instead of a baby wildebeest.”

For those of you who’ve made it to adulthood without attending a Yankee Swap, God bless you, and here’s a quick summary of the rules. On the appointed day, each person brings in a wrapped gift and deposits it with the other gifts, all of which bear no marking to indicate what they are or who gave them. Then, everyone picks a number out of a hat, and the person with No. 1 selects a gift from the pile. He unwraps it and claps his hands in delight— it’s a bamboo back-scratcher!— or groans in dismay— it’s the rubber stopper that fits on the end of a crutch (true story). There’s no time to dwell because next up is No. 2, and she has options: she can select a gift from the pile or “steal” the gift from No. 1. If she steals No. 1’s gift, he goes back to the pile and chooses again. At each successive round the player faces a metaphorical fork in the road: take the worn path and steal a Magic 8-ball, a scented candle, a CD of John Denver’s greatest hits (all actual Yankee Swap gifts), or take the road less traveled and pick from the pile.

As the game proceeds, one thing occurs almost immediately: the birth of the “it” gift, the one item that everyone covets and thus gets stolen again and again. Depending on the type of folks involved in the swap, the “it” gift may be a viking hat complete with horns and hair, a DVD of “Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas,” Trivial Pursuit Genus Edition, a bottle of Old Spice or a set of kitchen towels (all actual Yankee Swap items).

But one thing holds constant: given the choice of stealing the “it” gift or going to the pile, people most often steal. Perhaps because stealing is so taboo in regular life it’s tempting to indulge in it. Or perhaps we are all just sick and tired of being nice and charitable and sharing, sharing, sharing. Whatever the case, fleeting is the joy of the Yankee Swapper who gets her grubby hands on “it”— with every new turn, she risks loss and disappointment. There are no friends in Yankee Swap; there are only people with the gift that ought to be yours.

As my mother, a veteran of many such gift exchanges, says, “If your number is in the middle and you get a nice gift, someone will take it from you.” (Some Yankee Swap organizers put a limit on the number of times a gift can be stolen, but that seems to spoil the… er… fun.) So one would think people would come to a Yankee Swap knowing not to get attached to, say, a lacy lingerie outfit that has no tags (ewwww, used!), as a woman at one office party did (true story). But when it was stolen by a male co-worker, she nearly cried. At another Yankee Swap, a mother gleefully opened an Elmo doll declaring, “This is perfect for my kids.” A few rounds later, when it was stolen by someone who said she wanted it for her niece, dirty looks ensued. You could almost hear the mother saying, “I’m a mother. You’re just an aunt. Back the hell off my Elmo doll.” Indeed, observe a Yankee Swap for any amount of time and you will witness heartache, disappointment, anger and, yes, grief. You will witness grown people acting like children. One desperate woman refused to loosen her hold on a Jesus tote bag even as it was pried from her hands. Her eyes said, “Mine!”

Several years ago at a holiday office party at a company that publishes the premier lifestyle publication in its mid-size mid-Atlantic city, the “it” gift was a life-size chocolate leg. All seemed right with the world when the gal who bakes cookies, cakes and brownies for the entire office staff several times a week took possession of the leg. She would make baked goods with it; all would benefit. But then someone stole it from her! Someone who doesn’t even bake… someone who was just interested in the life-size chocolate leg for its novelty. It would be as if Tiny Tim were happily stroking the new prosthetic leg he was lucky enough to open, the one that would allow him finally to run free instead of just limping along… and then his office mate steals it from him, saying, “This will make the perfect plant stand!”

Had the baker been more strategic, she might have done what others have done— and will continue to do— in swaps all over this land: hide the gift. One woman (who, like many interviewed for this article, didn’t want her name used) was at a swap in which someone scored a bottle of mediocre wine early in the game and hid it under his chair, hoping no one would see it and thus steal it. (His strategy backfired; another man took it from him mostly because he’d tried to hide it.) At a holiday party for a group of office workers held in a restaurant, some people hid their gifts under the table to avoid them being pilfered. But the boldest strategy is one witnessed at yet another holiday party held at the offices of a company that publishes the premier lifestyle publication in its mid-size mid-Atlantic city: when someone got a gift she liked, she ducked out of the party with it and went home— even though the game wasn’t over!

The baker practiced none of this trickery to protect her chocolate leg. But the leg-stealer got his comeuppance. He was so shamed after the party that he carried the leg over to the baker’s cubicle and laid it to rest on her desk. “I cut off the kneecap and thigh and gave it to him,” she says. “And I used the rest in brownies.”

As common in Yankee Swaps as disappointment and deceit is disgust, which occurs when some members of the swap bring or buy gifts that they think are actually worthwhile, and get angry when they end up with other people’s junk. This reveals an underlying conflict concerning the nature of the Yankee Swap: Some people see it as an opportunity to unload the crap they’ve accumulated through the ages, while others see it as a legitimate gift exchange. (The labeling varies from region to region and group to group, but it appears that “gift swaps” and “present exchanges” often feature a preponderance of legitimate goods while Yankee Swaps, White Elephant exchanges and Chinese auctions are a bit dodgier.)

Nina Knoche, director of project management at Broadridge Financial Solutions in Owings Mills, is a proud member of the “crap swap” group: she has a “re-gifting” closet in which she stows ugly, awful and variously undesirable items to unload on her staff during her office’s yearly holiday party. “The first year I had this heinous metallic sled that I brought to the swap. It got passed around and came back the next year,” she says. “The next year I’d been given a set of snowball candles by a friend. She had lit one and blown it out a second later. I thought, ‘I’m going to re-gift these.’ I got ridiculed because they’d been used. They also came back the next year.”

After a few years, Knoche’s staff said to her, “You can’t re-gift. You have to bring something new. Your stuff totally sucks.” The sled and the snowball candles— along with a much-maligned spice set that someone else brought in— now sit atop the team’s cubicles, out of commission for future Yankee Swaps.

But, even after being issued the ultimatum, Knoche stands by her strategy. “It’s better to come with a piece of crap because even if you come back with something mediocre you’ve done well,” she says. (One time she got a standing wine bottle opener that she loves.) “I’m getting rid of stuff I don’t want. I’m making no guarantees anyone else wants it.”

This year, Knoche’s house is being remodeled and many of her possessions, including those in her re-gifting closet, are in storage. Not to worry, though. She’s going to ask her dad to give her something he doesn’t want, and she’ll wrap that up.

After many years of being a participant-observer at Yankee Swaps, I’ve developed several theories about the phenomenon. The first is that Yankee Swaps cause many otherwise sane people to go a bit batty. When you give a gift under normal circumstances, you show thought and care because the gift is a token from you to someone you care for— it’s personal and intimate. A Yankee Swap does not encourage that kind of considerate thinking because you have no idea who will end up with your gift— it could be someone you like or someone you don’t. Instead, it invites calculated strategizing along the lines of, “I bought a nice set of lavender soaps so I better get something comparable in return,” or “I brought in an old dog collar, and I at least want something better than that.” Without the human emotions attached to gift-giving, the act is reduced to pure mercantile exchange, a caricature of itself. This is why greed, pouting and all manner of misbehaviors are so often in evidence during Yankee Swaps.

Is the answer, then, to dispense with the whole gnarly tradition once and for all? I don’t think so. Instead, we need a radical rethinking in which Yankee Swaps would be viewed as opportunities for good theater, not good gifts. The best Yankee Swaps would feature a random collection of strange items that aren’t purely junk— i.e., the stopper from the end of a crutch— but aren’t things you’d normally give as gifts. The goal would be not to get a set of dish towels or a bottle of wine, but to get a good laugh.

A shining example of this model is the New Year’s Eve Yankee Swap that Catonsville residents Mary and Joe Lochary have attended at a friend’s house for 15 years. “The premise is you can’t buy your gift. It has to be one you’ve received,” says Mary, an administrative assistant at the College of Notre Dame. Over the years, the Locharys have witnessed a bejeweled dusting mitt, a set of tapes called “learning Swedish in Two Days,” a tape of Charles and Di’s wedding on Betamax, a pair of Coca-Cola tube socks and a fiber-optic singing poinsettia change hands. (The last two items they brought themselves.)

A similar genre of items finds its way to the yearly Yankee Swap held by the Baltimore Improv Group (BIG), which usually occurs in January. Every year I’ve attended, I’ve had the pleasure of watching people alternately employ the used-car-salesman hard sell— “Look at this lovely unicorn hat that makes music when you move your head” or “With this 6-gallon can of tuna, you know you won’t go hungry during the Apocalypse”— and reverse psychology— “I love this textbook about insurance law. I don’t want anyone to steal it from me.” Shakespeare couldn’t script this stuff— and it’s mine to enjoy for the cost of a contraption used to cut your seatbelt and break the glass in a window if you get trapped in your car underwater. (My father-in-law, God bless him, gave both my husband and me one for Christmas— and we figured we needed only one.)

One of BIG’s longtime members, Heather Moyer, loves the wonderful warm feeling that fills her heart when her offering becomes the “it” gift. Over the years, she’s brought to the swap “a scarily realistic monkey head puppet; an 18-inch sitting baby elephant statue; one of those backlit moving picture things of an ocean scene, clearly from the ’70s or ’80s, as it was bulky plastic and very gaudy; and a dancing iguana figure.” In return, she’s received “a crappy Eagles CD; Transformers stickers; a plastic banana carrying case (seriously, I use this a lot because it’s perfect for a long commute!); and glow-in-the-dark Halloween underwear.”

I was the recipient of Moyer’s baby elephant statue and the dancing lizard figure, both of which occupy places of honor in my toddler’s room. The other day I pulled the lizard out and pretended to attack my daughter with it. She was unimpressed. Then I pressed a button on its tiny rubbery hand and waited to hear, “Take me to the river,” the song it’s supposed to play. Alas, the batteries were failing, so there was no singing— only moaning, as if the poor lizard were caught in a trap. For two long minutes before the batteries died completely, the lizard moaned and moaned and moaned. As I sat there listening to it, I thought, “I know, lizard. That’s the way I feel about Yankee Swaps, too.”

While Champagne, France, might be the birthplace of sparkling wine, it by no means has a monopoly on it. If you’re looking for some fine bubbly to serve at your holiday gatherings, you needn’t search that far from home.

An important point to remember: Only wines that originate from Champagne, France, can officially use the term “Champagne.” All other wines with bubbles are simply called “sparkling wines.” The three grapes that are used to make Champagne are Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. Most American sparklers concentrate on making still wines from the first two, which are blended to take advantage of each grape’s varietal character. Then a secondary fermentation is induced by the addition of sugar and yeast to create the bubbles that make these wines so special.

In the 18th century, pioneers of Champagne production like Dom Pérignon and Madame Clicquot created a process for crafting sparkling wine that is still used today. You can identify New World sparklers that use this Champagne method by looking for the term méthode champenoise or méthode traditionnelle on the bottle. One of the hallmarks of the Champagne method is that the bubbles are created in each bottle, not in a tank, which results in finer bubbles and more complexity.

If you are looking to taste some “Made in the USA” sparklers that use the traditional Champagne method, here are two to try:

> Schramsberg Vineyards Blanc de Blancs 2006 (retails around $40) Schramsberg Vineyards has made quality sparkling wines in Napa Valley since 1965. They are credited with being the first American winery to make a Chardonnay-based sparkling wine and also the first American sparkler to be served at the White House. Sparklers that bear the term Blanc de Blancs (translated “white from whites”) are made entirely from the Chardonnay grape. The Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs has flavors of green apple, pineapple and pear with a finish of crisp acidity. Elegant and dry, it is a perfect pairing for all things seafood, triple-cream cheeses and its classic partner— oysters.

> Gruet Winery Blanc de Noirs NV (retails under $20) This winery was started by the Gruet family from Champagne, France. They toured the world looking for a place where they could make wines that rivaled those of Champagne and found the perfect spot near Albuquerque, N.M. Since 1983, Gruet has been crafting affordable sparklers that have the finesse of their French counterparts but at a fraction of the price. Their Blanc de Noirs (translated “white from reds”) is made primarily from Pinot Noir, which gives the wine flavors of red berries and the power to stand up to heartier fare like salmon and poultry. The NV stands for Non Vintage and means the wine is a blend of various harvests and intended to be an expression of the winery’s style, not the vintage.

Want to learn more about the factors used to determine wine style? Visit Laurie’s blog at thewinecoach.com.

Laurie Forster, The Wine Coach®, is a wine educator who creates corporate events, group tastings and team-building seminars. She is the author of “The Sipping Point: A Crash Course in Wine,” and can be heard each week on WBAL 1090 AM.

The downtown lounge/dance scene had gotten a little stale of late, but clubgoers now have a new venue to see and be seen: Mist. Style rules here, with a spacious, gleaming hardwood dance floor and swanky lounge areas with low-slung couches and cocktail tables around the perimeter. Bottle service is available at the tables, and two full-size bars complete the 12,00-square-foot space. To create atmosphere, a state-of-the-art sound system and 27-foot projection screens behind the bars offer an ever-changing visual experience. A combo of guest and house DJs provide the sonics. 124 Market Place

Diece owner Shabdiece Esfahani has scoured the region to find the best local designers and artists, but to say that the store is simply a collection of homespun talent would be an undersell. Diece succeeds because everything stocked is sustainable, personal, well-crafted and incredibly chic. Savvy picked up a Motorphoria dress from Sally Balestrieri (who gets her inspiration from her hobby of racing Mini Coopers in rallies across Europe) and a wool and metal necklace from Irie Designs. Hipster boys will dig the tees from Rational Act, and granola girls will look cute hiking in socks made with wool from a local alpaca farm. Buy your artsy-craftsy friends Skiff Cove pottery bowls or the clean, minimal jewelry from Leah Staley. And everyone will love the 100 percent soy grapefruit and ginger candles from Cul-de-Sac. Diece is the Woodberry Kitchen of retail— local, fabulous and highly satisfying. Don’t miss: The pillows, chairs and bag from designer Lauren Hinds. 1211 S. Charles St., 410-244-6554

“The Silver Palate Cookbook” looked different when it arrived on the cookbook scene in 1979. There were no step-by-step glossy photos a la “McCall’s Cooking School.” It wasn’t textbook style, like “The Joy of Cooking,” hausfrau-ish like “The Fannie Farmer Cookbook” or a paean to hippiedom and vegetarianism like “The Moosewood Cookbook.” Instead, inside the red-and-white checked cover (featuring the cookbook’s lone photo, which is of the gourmet food shop for which the book was named), hand-drawn pictures of lamb chops, mustard pots, shrimp— and even a few bunnies—  accompanied by tiny hearts or stars, decorated the pages. The table of contents was divided into 10 chapters with titles such as “To Begin a Great Evening” and subtitles like “Dazzlers” and “Chicken Every Way” and “Mousse Magic” that suggested something slightly sexy, maybe even naughty, and hinted of a glamorous life of cocktail parties and brunches that might be attained simply by attempting recipes for caviar éclairs or lemon chicken. When Sheila Lukins and her co-author, Julee Rosso, placed Brillat-Savarin’s quote, “The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of mankind than the discovery of a star” in the book’s preface, you believed that there could be nothing more exciting.

I broke out my three, well-used Lukins and Rosso cookbooks (“The Silver Palate Cookbook,” “The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook,” and “The New Basics Cookbook”) after reading of Sheila Lukins’ death, of brain cancer, at age 66, on Aug. 30. At the time of her death, she had been the food editor of Parade magazine for more than 30 years, introducing Sunday readers to accessible, gourmet recipes for ginger spiced cranberry sauce or white chicken chili. Other generations of cooks may have learned from Julia or Jacques, but I realized as I leafed through the cookbooks’ pages stained with brownish smears and droplets that, as much as anyone else, my mentor was Sheila.

Under her tutelage, I started cooking with ingredients such as hazelnuts and fennel, discovered fiddlehead ferns and Arborio rice. I added white wine to my yellow cake batter, and learned to make vinaigrette. My main course repertoire expanded from pasta and hamburgers to chicken (every way) and salmon. “The New Basics’” endless explanatory charts taught me to pair tarragon with carrots and prompted me to buy a bottle of Meursault to serve with salmon long before I knew what white burgundy was.

The funny quotes about food and friendship pulled from song lyrics and literature inspired me to scrawl my own discoveries taken from newspapers and daily conversations into the margins of the cookbook (I can never decide which of my found quotations is my favorite. It’s either “There are hidden depths to chickens” or “Some of my best friends are cows.”). And while I never set a table with an antique quilt, created an all-asparagus dinner or hosted a clambake on a local beach, as Lukins suggested, I credit her for letting me know that it would be fabulous to do so.

Lukins’ cooking personality seemed as exuberant as her frizzy, long brown hair, which she wore caught up in a towering brioche-like topknot. She was no Martha fussing with perfection. Nor was she Julia touting technique, though she didn’t stint on butter and was prone to hyperbole a la Ms. Child. Ellen’s Apple Tart was “the best apple tart we have ever eaten,” Lukins declares. Julee Rosso’s family recipe for Butterball cookies was “the best we know,” and Chocolate Hazelnut Cake was “the best chocolate cake in the universe.”

I know for sure that Lukins was right about the Chocolate Hazelnut Cake, which was the first “complicated” cake I ever made. Published in “The Silver Palate Cookbook” (not to be confused with the chocolate hazelnut cake, “the ultimate cake for any chocolate lover’s occasion,” in “The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook”),  the cake features a hazelnut butter cream made with toasted hazelnuts ground to a paste mixed with corn syrup, brandy and butter. The butter cream filling is sandwiched between the nutty chocolate cake and a sheen of dark chocolate glaze, yielding chocolate-sweet-salty-nutty in each bite, a caked-up version of a peanut butter cup, only with hazelnuts. Each time I bake it, I wonder why I don’t make it more often.

That said, so many of Lukins’ recipes have worked their way into my repertoire. If there is leftover chicken, I make Cozy Turkey (Chicken) Hash with potatoes, mushrooms and a little curry powder. No summer is complete without a version of her Tart Nicoise or the lemon peel spiked marinade for London broil in the Grilled Mixed Grill. I make Roquefort Meatloaf and Potatoes Fontecchio. And like thousands of hostesses, I’ve often made Chicken Marbella, Lukins’ classic dinner party dish of chicken marinated with olives, prunes, capers and generous amounts of garlic.

Chicken Marbella had its 15 minutes of fame and then was promptly forgotten like other 1980s food fads (I’m looking at you raspberry vinegar), but I brought it out not long ago when I was wracking my brain for something simple to serve friends for dinner. It was as I remembered it— the chicken tender and redolent of garlic, the prunes melting into the wine-based drippings, the capers and green olives giving the dish a savory punch. When my friend asked for the recipe and I told her what it was, she laughed. “I knew this was familiar,” she said. “My mom used to make this all the time for parties.” I have a feeling that for Lukins, this would have been the highest compliment.

Chicken Marbella
Chocolate Hazelnut Cake

This midtown stretch of Charles Street has taken some hits recently, with some high-profile closings such as The Brass Elephant and IXIA. Maisy’s occupies the site of what had been Copra, a beautifully designed restaurant with interesting food that never quite caught on. The attractive, Arts & Crafts-style interiors are still intact, but the new owners are concentrating on a “Baltimore-centric” menu and more moderate price points. As expected, you’ll find a Maryland crab cake on the menu, as well as comfort dishes like center-cut pork loin chops and Black Angus N.Y. strip steak. There’s also a rich, creamy macaroni and cheese with scallops, as well as a menu of brick oven, wood-grilled pizzas, perfect for cold-weather dining. And, of course, if you’re just looking for a nice bar experience on Charles Street, they’ve got that covered, too. Open daily for lunch and dinner. 313 N. Charles St., 443-220-0150

Chocolate is easy to love but can be tricky to work with. Chefs study and work with it for years and still do not get it right. Luckily, these recipes bypass some of the more complicated techniques to minimize your frustration and time.

Before you start, there are some basics you should know: Store chocolate in an airtight container at 60 to 70 degrees. (If you store it in a place that’s too warm, the cocoa butter rises to the surface and gives the chocolate a gray haze; too damp, and the chocolate forms gray sugar crystals on the surface.) If, when melting chocolate, it gets lumpy and hardens, add some vegetable oil and stir the chocolate until smooth.

Bittersweet, semisweet, sweet, milk, and white all refer to chocolate’s makeup. The higher the percentage of cocoa mass, the more intense the chocolate flavor and the least amount of added sugar.

Let’s start with a good old standby recipe that anyone can tackle—chocolate truffles, an after-dinner treat that will even impress the mother-in-law. The little white chocolate tarts with candied lemon rinds are super easy and elegant. The layered mousse cake can be made large or as individual servings for dinner parties. The self-saucing puddings are great because the batter can be made in advance then simply baked for 15 minutes.

So gather up all the bowl- and spoon-licking volunteers you can find. It’ll make cleanup that much easier.

Recipes:

• Self-Saucing Chocolate Pudding with Double Devon Cream
• Layered Chocolate Mousse Cake with Chocolate Sauce and Crème Chantilly
• Chocolate Truffles
• White Chocolate and Lemon Cheese Cake with Candied Lemon Rind

Andrew Evans is the chef at Easton’s Thai Ki.

In Savvy’s imaginary world, she envisions herself as 20 pounds thinner, with the abs of a swimsuit model and the bust line of Jamie Lee Curtis, circa-“Trading Places” (heck, even “True Lies”). In her lingerie drawer in that imaginary world? Everything from Art de Femme. She’d have an endless collection of bras, panties, camisoles and bustiers from edgy Marlies/Dekkers, embroidered Lise Charmel, sensual Aubade and stunning La Perla. Of course, in her imaginary world, when she wasn’t practicing the art of seduction, she’d be headed to the beach in St. Barts for lunch at the Lafayette Club in one of Art de Femme’s bikinis from Aqua di Lara or Poko Pano with one of the amazing La Perla cover-ups chicly thrown over it. Sadly for Savvy, she lives in the real world, but putting on beautiful lingerie from Art de Femme makes her feel just as fabulous as she looks in her imaginary one. Don’t miss: The right-now tights and stockings from Franzoni and Bellissima. 94 Village of Cross Keys, 410-433-1818

The holidays are upon us, and we’ve packed this issue with lots of cheery, festive stories that reflect the season. From the newest ornaments (page 28) to holiday-decked homes (page 74) to that office party bête noire, the dreaded Yankee Swap (page 118), we’ve got it covered. But to balance out all that seasonal cheer, we’re also including a piece on acclaimed author F. Scott Fitzgerald, who had many ties to Baltimore, including a five-year stretch as a city resident in the 1930s.

My first exposure to this quintessential American writer came, as I suppose it does to most, via a mandatory assignment in junior high school: reading his Jazz Age novel, “The Great Gatsby.” I recall not being all that impressed. The remote main character, Jay Gatsby, was an enigma to me. Why was he so unhappy? And the dithering, flirtatious Daisy was also a complete mystery. Frankly, to this day, I’m somewhat perplexed as to what children at such an immature age are to make of such a sophisticated and sad novel.

By the time I was just out of college I’d consumed “This Side of Paradise” and “The Beautiful and Damned.” I read them in a self-imposed period of playing “classics catch-up,” reading books (including most of Ernest Hemingway’s and Somerset Maugham’s works) that I’d avoided, up to that point. These two Fitzgerald books to this day remain my favorites of his, and are high on my list of all-time favorite books in general. I can’t say the same for “Tender Is the Night,” the one full-length novel that he completed while in Baltimore. I’ve owned it forever and have attempted to read it at least three times, giving up each time by page 150 or so. It’s a pretty bleak tale, and reflects Fitzgerald’s own turbulent mood at that point. Indeed, almost all of his writerly output in this period (including “The Crack-Up” and “Afternoon of an Author”) are dark and somber tales.

In this issue, writer Deborah Rudacille examines the years that Fitzgerald spent in Charm City, tracing his trail of residences, his travails in dealing with his wife’s increasing mental
illness and subsequent hospital and sanitarium stays, and the works that he produced while he was a resident here. (You may recall that a year ago, Deborah tracked the Baltimore years of another icon of 20th-century arts, Gertrude Stein.) For those unfamiliar with Fitzgerald’s time spent here, it’s an enlightening journey.

Today, you can retrace the steps of the writer all over town, from Bolton Hill to Charles Village to Johns Hopkins and Sheppard Pratt. But my favorite haunt to explore the Fitzgerald legacy is Mount Vernon. Even now, this aristocratic neighborhood appears mostly unchanged from what it would have been in the days of the 1930s. It’s easy to imagine the gay society parties, balls and cotillions that went on in the swank Stafford Hotel and the Belvedere, and the beery, boisterous nights spent drinking with the likes of H.L. Mencken in the Owl Bar, which to this day, remains pretty much unchanged. That’s reason enough to raise a glass!   
 
Brian Michael Lawrence
editor-in-chief
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http://www.baltimorestyle.com

Some 150-plus friends, clients, associates and well-wishers gathered on a warm October evening to join designer Rita St. Clair in celebrating 40 years in the interior design business. The venue for the party, the circa-1855 Octagon building in Mount Washington, held a special significance— Rita St. Clair Associates created the interiors when the building was initially renovated in the 1980s to become part of what is now the Mt. Washington Conference Center.

Guests mingled and chatted over hors d’oeuvres and Champagne while strolling through the beautifully restored structure, even spilling out onto the terraces outside. In addition, a full raw bar and a tempting dessert spread were created by caterer Aramark Harrison. The hostess spent the evening greeting guests and reminiscing about past projects, including the one hosting the party. Glancing around the glowing interiors of the Octagon, she remarked, “This design is 25 years old; it’s held up well. They’ve taken good care of it.”

Arturo Paz is the new executive chef at Phillips Seafood at Harborplace, the flagship restaurant for a family business that has been going strong in Baltimore (and throughout other locations in America) for more than 50 years.  Paz has been a chef at some notable restaurants in some decidely chic spots, including Baleen in Miami, Republic in Hollywood and The Clevelander in South Beach, serving up inventive cuisine to many, including some of today’s hottest celebrities.  Style sat down with Paz to ask him about what he plans to bring to Baltimore.

You’re the new executive chef at Phillips Seafood’s flagship location. How do you plan to mix change into the traditional?
The fresh seafood that Phillips has always had will now be enhanced by bringing a bit more of a flavor profile to the dishes, and complementing them with some new ingredients and local produce. With the crab cake— I’m really not going to deviate from its taste. But we can still complement what’s there with side dishes, and we can make the dishes look more interesting than the standard crab cake presentation.

How did the presentation of food become such a big source of passion for you?
I have a varied background. First, I went to architecture school, then dropped out to work at Commander’s Palace— the restaurant where Emeril and Paul Prudhomme and all those guys made their Creole/Cajun cuisine. I began to realize that some of the stuff I was learning in architecture school I could actually implement into the dishes. Textures, colors, elevation, flavor profiles. There was more instant gratification in cooking because I could see the creation instantly and get feedback from the guests. When I went to cooking school, I saw a lot of parallels. 
You’re from Puerto Rico. How did you develop a sense of cooking that enabled you to translate that to American kitchens?
Back in the early ’90s, when South Beach was starting to be developed, I was going down to Miami and checking out the new restaurant scene. There was a movement called New World cuisine—“Floribbean”— Floridian and Caribbean. There were all these flavors and all these products from Latin America, Central America, that were being introduced into mainstream U.S.A., and into Miami, which is a melting pot of culture. I used a lot of these items with my grandmother when she was teaching me to cook. But suddenly all of these products were being introduced and it became a large movement with chefs in Miami exploring this new fusion, mixing Latin ingredients with Cajun preparation and French techniques. It kind of defined what the Miami restaurant scene was. Then it slowly got transported to New York and L.A., and now we see it everywhere.

The Baltimorean palate— does it serve as a challenge to you?
You have to be receptive to surroundings. You can introduce somebody to items, but at the same time you have to be aware that for most people in this area in the mid-Atlantic, they are not very familiar with things from where I come from. I’ve learned a lot about the mid-Atlantic culture and eating habits from my three years at Phillips in Caesars Palace in Atlantic City. A chef is an educator, and I like teaching people and showing people new things. When I was younger and was being introduced to new restaurants and new scenes, I figured that the best way to gain knowledge was to move and see different places. West Coast, East Coast, and do a little bit of New York and Caribbean cooking. It’s helped me round out my pool of knowledge and that’s how I can come up with certain things that people like to try.

So what’s it like going from celebrity fame to Baltimore?
I did it, it was fun, I enjoyed it, I met new friends— Cameron Diaz, Kevin Bacon, Drew Barrymore. Drew loved my Crab Mac n’ Cheese Lollipops and my Lobster Corn Dogs. She’d come into Baleen and bring her friends and order six of each for everyone.  I loved making unique and whimsical things, but I can make them here now. This is a time of simplicity and people are looking for comfort food and they have a home-style mentality. And that’s good for me, because I have a new baby now. And my wife is a chef, too. She was trained in New York out of the Cordon Bleu and she comes up with things at home and I implement them here. I have like three items on the menu that she came up with.  It’s just being part of a family, because Baltimore is a family town.

Old age just creeps up on you. One minute life revolves around heavy metal and the next minute Metamucil.

Let’s face it: no one wants to get old. That’s why they have hair transplants and Botox and Grecian Formula 44. And little red sports cars and 20-year-old au pairs from Norway. There are whole industries aimed at fending off aging.

I look at myself in the mirror and I see a middle-aged man. Yikes. Who’s that? Where did that other chin come from? There seem to be lines where there were no lines before. I have begun to look like my father.

Old age brings me to Shriver Hall on a Sunday evening, because when I lope up those gentle, worn marble steps on the campus of Johns Hopkins University, I am young again. The Shriver Hall Concert Series is worth a deluxe membership at any health club (cheaper, too). Here is the fountain of youth.

You do not need to know anything about classical music. Midori does. So, too, do Hilary Hahn, Emanuel Ax, Trevor Pinnock, Garrick Ohlsson, Helene Grimaud, Radu Lupu, the Juilliard String Quartet. All you need to do is show up and listen. And if you are under 60 years of age you’ll feel like an adolescent. I do. The audience just gets older. Naturally, I don’t feel that I am aging at all. Sometimes my seatmates don’t come back when the new season begins. Extended care? Sent to live with the dreaded daughter-in-law in Kankakee? Death? Old age, as Marx reminds us, is not for sissies. (That’s Groucho not Karl.)

I feel the same way on Thursday evenings while attending the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. I get the same seats every year. I like that there are no surprises. You never need to worry if Janet Jackson’s breast might be revealed. Or if the musicians will be too drunk to play the second set, or if there will be a fight at the bar, or trouble in the mosh pit. Alas, the restroom lines move slowly and there may be a slight bit of aggressive driving exiting the parking garage, but then the hour is growing late and old people need to get home to bed.

I like to hear familiar strains— Mahler, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Bach, Brahms, Beethoven. That’s how I pick my tickets. They do some interesting and exciting and innovative things at the BSO— and I am careful not to buy tickets on the nights when that happens. I have to live in an interesting, exciting and innovative world 24/7. I want a night off.

I don’t want to hear a lady playing a Chock Full o’Nuts can full of roofing nails. Or a set of wire coat hangers. Or tin pie plates. The program note reading “American debut” makes me nervous. Let’s stick with the golden oldies.

I feel young again at Shriver Hall and the Meyerhoff. And yet I also feel we are like the last Yiddish speakers, a vanishing culture, the last generation of Americans who listen to classical music. But sitting there in the dark, listening to Dvorak’s “American Suite,” all is well despite the fact that soon many of my companions will be in the arms of Morpheus, snoring like Hessians.

Classical music, in general, has done me a world of good. WBJC-FM is permanently tuned into my car. It’s prevented uncountable instances of road rage and probably saved lives. Mine, at least. It’s hard to run amok with Monteverdi playing. People don’t want to bite the head off a live chicken when they are listening to Domenico Scarlatti. It’s impossible to be angry enjoying a Bach organ prelude and fugue in E minor. Tomaso Albinoni does not make a man want to go postal.

Perhaps we should experiment with playing cello suites in public places? A kind of musical therapy? Harpsichords in the prisons? String quartets in Congress? At the very least, the Federal Communications Commission should require talk radio stations to play a comparable number of hours of classical music as an antidote to the mischief they do. Two hours of Glenn Beck must be counteracted by two hours of J.S. Bach.

In my car, at intersections, I hear the angry throbbing from other vehicles. Apparently the drivers feel they must roll the windows down so that they cannot merely damage what remains of their own hearing but disrupt the general quietude. I hear them and wonder, will you be listening to this music in a century? Or even 20 years?

Most popular music is not for the ages. But Bach and Brahms and Beethoven are. Shriver Hall and the BSO remind us of what is timeless, while we still have time.

When Savvy moved into her house, she was thrilled to find vast gardens, which would all be lovingly designed, planted and maintained… by someone else. Savvy learned the hard way that her thumbs are less a shade of green and more a shade of gray (as in under-watered, over-fertilized, you-can’t-grow-that-here dead). While large gardens certainly have their challenges, so do small gardens, perhaps even more so (cue the horrid flashbacks of Savvy lugging 40-pound bags of soil to her rooftop in New York City). The team at Baltimore Contained understands. The entire shop and small nursery is devoted to gardening in city spaces (roofs, containers, boxes, you name it). Bring in your own container (they even have a communal potting bench and everything you need to create your own horticultural masterpiece) or let their experts do all the work by designing, planting, installing and maintaining your urban green space. Want to start small? The retail shop has charming plants, all ready to grab and go. Don’t miss: The lovely little lemon cypress, decorated for the holidays with smart, tiny black ornaments— a perfect hostess gift.  2400 Fleet St., 410-732-7717

Rita St. Clair is a rare breed of interior designer— a woman who possesses as much artistic sensitivity and business acumen as pride in the work of her team. Her obsession to bring together colors, lighting, textures, fabrics, shapes, movements, furniture— everything within walls— has placed her in Grande Dame status in the world of interior design; yet, as with all artists, she understands the importance of giving credit to others— and of listening. Her work graces homes, hotels, retirement communities and restaurants (walk into Petit Louis and see what real French bistro style is— one of the many stylistic interpretations compliments of Rita and her team). And the interiors of the fondly remembered Polo Grill were her creation, as well. Recently Style magazine had the pleasure of sitting down with Ms. St. Clair in her Tuscany/Canterbury home to talk with her about celebrating her 40th year in business.

> When I first came to Baltimore, I got off the train at the old Camden Station. It was a ruinous neighborhood at the time, and I asked the cabdriver to take me to downtown Baltimore. He replied, “Lady, you’re in it.” I nearly turned around. But I’m glad I didn’t. I took the job and worked in a store that specialized in modern interiors, my love at that time, and commuted for about four years and got to know Baltimore. I moved here and became madly in love with it. And I still love this town and would never live anywhere else.

> To be good at what you do, you have to be focused. And you have to have an understanding that the only people you’re going to change are those who are willing to be changed.

> If you know that you’re not the best— but you could be— then you’ll be hungry and you’ll strive for that, and you won’t want to be diverted by other nonsense. Like crying about things or putting people down.

> I wish there was more camaraderie in the local interior design and architectural establishment. There used to be more and I miss it.

> My first clients who came to me were people who were the up and coming— those who wanted to live in more impressive homes than they originally grew up in. I often had carte blanche because they did not have a clue as to what they could do with the new ranch home or cathedral-type ceilings of their new living rooms.

> There is an issue of people being afraid of going to an interior designer, because they think a designer will tell them what and how their home or office should look, and it is really a two-headed monster.  Believe it or not, some people insist on a designer doing just that.  But it’s really very difficult for the designer, because there’s no client input, and you have to guess what their needs and lifestyle is— or what will be in the new space.

> I believe that good and successful design is based on the designer listening to the client. The client’s input, and the designer’s interpretation of the client’s needs and the needs of the space— its beauty or its limitations— and the reality of the budget, is a necessity for a successful project.

> Today, people are much more knowledgeable and sensitive to their environment. But with all this information— and really bad stuff out there— if there has ever been a time that the services of a professional interior designer are a must, it’s now.

> I like people. You can’t expect people to embrace you, unless you have something to offer— even if it’s a bad joke or something.

> Some people think that when they get something for free they have to reciprocate. It burdens them, which I think is ridiculous. I never do anything that I don’t want to do.

> One thing that humans have that animals don’t have is a sense of humor (besides a bank account). Nobody can screw around with your sense of humor or mess with it. My sense of humor keeps me alive.

> Today our work is with a more sophisticated client. No more carte blanche, whether in a home or a condo or a restaurant, hotel or retirement community. And, frankly, it has many advantages. If you listen and know how to guide the process, you get a better project and a happier client.

> We don’t need to be superheroes ourselves. I give the individuals on my team total visibility. The client should know who is working on the project. It’s not just Rita St. Clair! I’ve had one designer who has been with me for 40 years— the whole time I’ve been working. Another one, 30 years, and some who have been here 25 and 20 years. So when I call them senior designers, it’s not because they’re old!

> It’s interesting that I don’t really like change in my environment, unless I go to another one.

What does Savvy consider a bright idea? Well-done lighting in every room of the house. Nothing makes her cringe more than a shadow-y bathroom, dark kitchen or bedroom lit solely overhead. Dorman’s Lighting has moved into a divine new space so now there’s no excuse for not upgrading that sad, old 60-watt sitting next to you. Step into their state-of-the art light lab (love all the LED, it saves you 66 percent on your bills while saving your back as you aren’t changing-out your recessed bulbs every five minutes) then peruse the expansive showroom to see great ideas like crystal from Schonbek, cutting-edge designs by Fine Art, traditional choices from Metropolitan and classic looks from Visual Comfort. What hasn’t changed at Dorman’s? Their outstanding customer service. Order your new lighting then have it held until your electrician is ready to install. Dorman’s arranges for delivery, handles any problems and makes sure everything ends up just where you envisioned it so you aren’t swinging from a chandelier ... in your laundry room. Don’t miss: Judy the lampshade specialist, who is in on Wednesdays and Saturdays. That leg lamp you inherited from Uncle Frank? There’s a shade for that. 1524 York Road, Lutherville, 410-252-6100

Before December 1978, the Mallonees were like many American families. Each holiday season, they hung Christmas decorations, entertained family and friends and bought a Christmas tree. Then Karen, the family matriarch and a physical education teacher at Garrison Forest School, considered how wasteful it seemed to purchase a Christmas tree only to put it out at the curb a few weeks later.

So, that year Karen and her husband, Lucky, a social studies teacher at The Park School, decided that every year they’d plant their Christmas tree in their half-acre lot in the Pimlico neighborhood after the festivities were over. “The two of us go out and dig the hole in the fall— or rather my husband does. I never dig the hole,” says Mallonee. “I tell him where to dig, and a trash can fills the hole until a few days after Christmas when we plant the tree.” More than 30 years— and some 30 trees— later, the majority of the evergreens still stand along the driveway. But as space got tight there, the Mallonees started planting in their backyard. “We are starting to run out of room,” says Mallonee. “It’s going to be an interesting puzzle to figure out where to put future trees.”

As the years went by, the couple had a daughter, Essie, and a son, Ace, who quickly became part of the custom. Essie, now a graduate student at Towson University and a teacher at Gilman School, rolls her eyes as she describes planting the trees. But it’s evident from the wide grin that spreads across her face that, if nothing else, she appreciates the sentimental value of the tradition.

The Mallonees generally buy their trees from Home Depot, but they have collected a fair number from Valley View Farms as well. So far, only three have perished due to harsh weather. The Douglas fir they planted last year now stands at about 5 feet tall. Meanwhile, the Douglas fir the Mallonees planted in 1978 towers at more than 50 feet. Although Karen and Lucky are both fond of the Douglas fir and white pines, their favorite is the Norway Spruce.

“I wish I had kept a map of which trees we planted which years. There is a definite attachment to them,” says Mallonee. Then she adds, laughing: “These trees are like my children. When we move, there may have to be a rider on the deed that states that only under penalty of death may the trees be cut down.”

... or maybe not so great. Style asked people to recall the most memorable or unusual gift they’ve given or gotten over the years. They range from the touching to the cringe-inducing.

Barbara Dale, illustrator
For over 40 years my brother, John, has been creating funny, bizarre Christmas stockings for his wife, Nancy. The first year was just a modest upgrade to pantyhose. But since then, there have been stockings made out of a sewn-up girdle, a loaf of Italian bread, a golf bag, a frying pan, a hollowed-out stuffed animal, huge, over-sized panties, a dog bed and 10 Barbie doll heads. Nancy’s stocking is always a great opening act to Christmas.

Scooter Holt, columnist for Baltimore Eats magazine
My aunt had given me a Visa gift card at some point. Later, for an office Christmas party, I regifted the card to the girl who drew my name. I figured she could buy whatever she wanted. I’m thinking I’m golden, completely in the clear. However, when my aunt had purchased the gift card, there was a scam going on at the store. The employees were taking the money, sticking it in their pockets, and giving these gift cards out with nothing on them. A couple days later, this girl from my office calls me up and says that she and her boyfriend went to the movies and the card didn’t work. “I’m sure you can call and get it fixed,” she says. So now I have to get on the phone with my aunt and tell her that I had tried to use the card. And my aunt is like, “Well, what’s the number on the card?” But I don’t have the number, so I have to call back Jenna and ask her, “Hey, what’s the number on the card?” And then my aunt is asking me these other things, like where was I using the card, etc. And it went back and forth for like three days, and finally I had to give it up. It eventually got straightened out, but I had to come clean with both of those folks. Don’t ever regift gift cards.

Daniel Szuba, radiology intern
When I was in elementary school, my uncle used to ask me and my brother what kind of Barbie stuff we wanted for Christmas just to get on our nerves. One Christmas day he came to my house with a humongous, heavy box. My brother and I were so excited. When it came time to open it, we found a huge box of firewood with a Barbie on top, and a note that said, “Sorry Suckers!” We were so dis-appointed, so my uncle told us to open the Barbie. When we did, she had a note in her pants. The note read, “Go look in the front seat of my car.” We ran outside and in the front seat was a PlayStation 2 with about eight new games. It was a pretty funny Christmas, but it didn’t end there. The next year we wanted to give him something “Barbie” back. So we took the original Barbie, pulled her apart, and made ornaments out of all her appendages. For instance, we made the leg into the lamp from the movie “A Christmas Story.” We took her head and put it onto a Santa Claus body, and each arm held a gift or a candy cane. Our family now shares the ornaments. 

William Price Fox, writer
Our daughter, who was 8 years old at the time, hadn’t seen her 8-year-old “best cousin” for almost a year. We went to visit them as a surprise for Christmas, but we were late and didn’t arrive until early Christmas morning. So for fun, we wrapped our kid in a huge box, put a bow on it and stuck it under the tree. That was the best present I’ve ever seen unwrapped. The look on those two little faces remains unmatched.

John Shields, owner and chef, Gertrude’s at the BMA
Last year I wanted to impress the in-laws so I decided to buy them Snuggies. So I went on the Snuggies Web site, which, by the way, was specifically designed to confuse the buyer. The more you click on one thing, the more Snuggies you get. So for the family, I’m trying to get four of them, right? By the time I was finished— well, you could get pockets or super deluxe ones that were thicker— I ended up getting two cases of Snuggies, worth about $300! (I wrote the Snuggies people and told them I was writing the attorney general, which I did.) Anyway, I thought I’d give them to the entire extended family, but there was actually a problem, because last Christmas the airport got closed down due to snow. So there we were, stuck with all those Snuggies. This past August, we finally took them to the family reunion, and we brought along Christmas music and handed out Snuggies to everybody. It was the strangest Christmas I’d ever done. Snuggies in August in Chicago. You should have seen all these people— and these aren’t people who you’d expect to be in Snuggies. People will dismiss you, but they love the Snuggies once they get one. You can’t get them off of people.

Kae Davis, Maserati of Baltimore
My husband gave me a GPS instead of jewelry. I was ready to kill him until he explained that since we were in a new city, he wanted me to feel safe to go out and explore on my own, but always be able to make it home safely to him.

Hannah Byron, Assistant Secretary for the Maryland Division of Tourism, Film & the Arts
My husband is not really known for giving the most creative or thoughtful presents, because he’s so busy and he travels all the time. But I have a champion Ginko tree in my yard. It’s the largest Ginko tree in the state of Maryland. In the fall, all the leaves change to yellow in one day, and they all fall off at the same time on another day. They make a blanket of yellow. So my husband had someone paint a picture of it for me. It was such a thoughtful gift.

Dorothy Fuchs, Purple Dot Public Relations
My sister Cindy and I attended Carney Elementary School, and every year there was a holiday bazaar that had a lot of homemade gifts from the different grade-level students (paper weights, hand-painted items, cotton ball wreaths, etc.) as well as trinkets and such. I think my sister Cindy was about 6 or 7 years old when she bought a really tacky, small ceramic apple. She bought it for 50 cents and wrapped it herself, paying for it with money she had earned doing chores at home. Believe it or not, I still have that tacky ceramic apple and I’m now 44 and she’s 42. It’s traveled with me to my apartment after college, it hung in my house when I was married, it hung in my kitchen when I got divorced and I have it now in my new kitchen and I’m trying to figure out where it will go. I smile when I see it, because my sister is one of my best friends, and her small gift to me when we were young said a lot about our friendship and love for each other. She can’t believe I still have it and often asks me to throw it away… never!

Catherinette Singleton, blogger
When I was 12, I used to volunteer in a kindergarten class at my local school. At the end of the year, one of the boys gave me a ring that he had made out of clay. He had painted it silver and he said, “I can’t afford to buy things, but I can make you things. We’re going to get married one day. This is your ring.” It’s been more than 20 years later and I still have that ring.

Cathy Byrd, executive director, Maryland Art Place
In my family, we began to exchange names as we grew into adults, so we didn’t have to try to figure out what to get everyone. One time, as a joke, my sister sent her name to everyone, so she’d be the one to get all the presents. Later, of course, she corrected her joke, but the rest of us decided to play along. On Christmas morning, all the presents under the tree looked like they were for her, even though they were labeled on the bottoms for the real recipients. It was funny.

Cathy Larkin, public relations, WebSavvyPR.com
My brother is a biologist. One Christmas my mom took the electron microscope image that was on the front cover of a journal that had published his first major paper, and turned it into a quilt. Mom said, “He’ll either think I’m crazy, or he’ll love it.” It’s been on the wall of every office he’s had since. It’s an ice-breaker and people can’t believe my mom made it. The electron microscope image is all spiky and geometrical— it’s the hair follicles of a mustard seed. Who knew mustard seeds had hair follicles? 

Natalie Goodmuth, student, Towson University
The best gift I’ve ever received was from an old boyfriend of mine a couple Christmases ago. All summer I had bugged him to take me on a picnic. Every week I’d bring it up, but he would either be busy or the weather would be bad or it would skip our minds until the last minute. When Christmas came, I went over to his house on Christmas Day and he gave me my present— a big old-fashioned suitcase with a bow on it. I couldn’t imagine what it was. When I opened it, on the half that lifted up there was a landscape scene of mountains, trees and flowers, taking up the whole inside of the suitcase. The bottom half of the suitcase was lined with fake grass and flowers, a plate, a cup, eating utensils and napkins. He then pulled out a suitcase of his own with the same setup and rolled out a red picnic tablecloth onto the floor. He told me since he wasn’t able to have a picnic with me over the summer, he made a picnic for me in the winter. It was the nicest, most creative and sweetest gift I’ve ever received.

Dara Bunjon, food writer and blogger
I’ll tell you about a gift I got that took my breath away. A friend of mine named Catherine Kleeman makes these beautiful art quilts (cathyquilts.com). She’s become a very renowned quilter, and she made one for me that had all types of food on it. It’s blue and green and has patches with carrots, some with onions, others with zucchini, tomatoes, celery, etc. It was a real labor of love, to address all the food and everything I’ve been involved with. The thought and time that went behind it just took my breath away.

Clarinda Harriss, professor of English, Towson University
My own favorite gifts were a pair of tiny ballet slippers that my mother lovingly painted gold (I had demanded golden ballet slippers, and they only came in black) and a carved riding crop from my father. Both connected with talents I hoped for, which never materialized. But the gift that still makes me sad, was a pair of stockings with embroidered, rhinestone-studded “clocks” up the side that my father gave me to wear to my first formal dance. I loved, loved, loved them, but my mother and grandmother thought they were too old for me and made my father return them to Hutzler’s. I was crushed.

Dulany Noble, owner, Gala Cloths
When I was a child, my parents started a tradition with my brother and me that I have now handed down to my family and close friends. There were always lots of presents at our house, but my brother and I each received only one really big gift, like a bike or riding boots or something like that. The gift card would read “from Mom and Dad.” The rest of our presents— mostly silly and fun or useful— came from the various pets— dogs, cats, horses, ponies, etc.— that we owned. So the warm gloves for riding came from Cream Puff the pony, the Slinky or puzzle came from George the cat, etc. It made for a hilarious morning of opening presents. I have continued that tradition with my family and they, in turn, give me presents from our collection of animals. My horse, Custer, is a wonderful shopper. I think he has an account at Maryland Saddlery, the Sporting Life and Yoicks! It is remarkable how all these animals get the shopping done and get everything wrapped!

Ella Pritsker, owner, Maryland Academy of Couture Arts
One day, years ago when the rotisserie toaster was extremely popular, my 10-year-old son and I were at Best Buy. He’s looking at all the cool things, like games, and I’m over there just staring at the toaster thing. I’m thinking of all the ways it can save me time making dinners. After a while, I really don’t know how long I was looking at it, but it was a long time— my son walks up and asks me, “Do you really want it?” And I said, “I think I do.” “Why don’t you get it then?” he asked. To which I replied, “Delayed gratification, honey, delayed gratification.”

At that point in my life, my boyfriend, Eric (now my husband), and I had broken up. That night, I was eating dinner with my son, and I started talking about the rotisserie toaster, and I said, “I wish I could get it, but I can’t afford it.” At that moment, Eric knocks on the door. He has a parting gift for me— that rotisserie toaster. I said, “How did you know?” And he said, “I don’t know, but at least now you get what you want.” It was meant to be a goodbye gift, but it turned out to be his first Christmas gift to me— the “set it and forget it” rotisserie.

Emily Devan, law student, University of Maryland
When I was living in Japan in a small town outside Osaka, I met a Japanese woman interested in arts and crafts. For some reason she had Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy dolls and an obsession of wooden toys. There is an annual festival in Japan called the Doll Festival, where Japanese families with daughters set up stands in the homes with dolls on them. The dolls are mostly handed down through generations and dressed in emperor and empress clothing. This woman dressed a Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy in royal clothing and made a stand out of wood and gave it to me. 

Amanda Austin, interior designer
I say that every day we can move a mountain, and we often forget the impact we have on the world. One morning I was walking in my neighborhood and said hello to three boys I passed. Two said hello back; the other swore and called me a name. I said, “Excuse me? What did you say?” He said it again and ran across the street. So I said, “I know you’re walking to school down the street and we’re going to talk. The words you just spoke can never be spoken in the presence of, let alone to, a lady. Every word you speak carries a great weight and they can change the world. And you know, you’re more than that person you were a moment ago.” And he said, “I’m sorry, I was just trying to have fun.” I told him it was OK, but that I lived right there on the corner, and we’re going to see each other every day on his way to school, so now we can say hello. A week later, they all knocked on my door and we called each other by name. Gandhi once said be the change you want to be. To me, taking the time to make the difference is the perfect Christmas gift to give. The greatest gift we can give doesn’t involve money, it involves time.

Laurie Przybylski, assistant manager at Greetings and readings
You know how Santa goes around the neighborhood in a firetruck? Well, on Christmas Eve one year, that firetruck pulled up into our driveway and Santa got out. He said, “Is Wendy here?” Wendy is my sister, and somehow her fiance managed to talk Santa into bringing her an engagement ring.

The Reserve is one of the newest pub/restaurants to open in South Baltimore. The space has housed various bars over the years, most recently Charlotte’s, which was also a music venue. The current owners have given the space a thorough redesign, creating a spacious bar area up front and a casual dining area and another bar at the rear. Indeed, the newly installed kitchen is turning out some ambitious dishes that place this a cut above most area pubs. On the menu, you’ll find items such as grilled cornmeal-crusted red grouper in a smoked salmon caper buerre blanc, sesame-seared blue fin tuna, pistachio-crusted rack of lamb and pan-roasted semi-boneless quail. Appetizers include a mini surf n’ turf consisting of a petit filet and a mini crab crab with béarnaise sauce ($15). So if you’re coming in to throw back a few beers, expect more than the standard burgers and wings. 1542 Light St., 410-605-0955

Patricia J. (PJ) Mitchell has loved Christmas for about as long as she can remember.  She recalls with enthusiasm how her family would revel in the seasonal decorating process. Her family would go from tree lot to tree lot, with PJ’s father holding up tree after tree, until her mom decided that one was perfect. “I inherited that perfect tree gene from my mother!” Mitchell says. The “perfect” tree would then be adorned with silver garland, multi-colored lights and handmade German ornaments, including colorful balls and small model birds. The German ornaments are particularly close to her heart because they were sent to the family from her godmother while she was living in Germany. As time went by and she entered adulthood, Mitchell’s passion for Christmas and making the most out of the joyous occasion only intensified. 

“A friend of mine had told me some time ago that my house is absolutely perfect for Christmas, almost as if it was designed for it,” says Mitchell, a Murray Hill resident who is a vice president for IBM global sales operations. The carpeting in her foyer and stairwell is a festive cherry red and the walls are painted a warm butter color— the perfect palette for her decorations. A Christmas garland adorned with big red bows and pine cones cascades down the stairwell. The garland, along with the autumnal fruit arrangement above the fireplace mantel, Mitchell created herself.

Mitchell’s Christmas tree, purchased from Misty Valley Farm in Hunt Valley, is set as a focal point in her living room and is always decked out with little trinkets and ornaments. She is especially fond of collecting “annual” ornaments. From the Tower of London, she has miniature replicas of the crown jewels. Her alma mater, the College of Notre Dame, where she serves as chairman of the board, provides her with models of unique places on campus. If pressed, she reveals that her favorites are from the White House Historical Association, including one that celebrates the 200th anniversary of the White House and another that features the Marine Band from the early 1800s. She particularly treasures the latter because her father was a Marine during World War II.

As involving as the decoration process is, Mitchell enjoys every minute of it. Her nieces and nephews come by to help set up. Friends and other family members stop by to exchange gifts and share in a delectable Christmas meal. “I love Christmas!” Mitchell says. “I love the colors, smells and the general feeling of camaraderie!”

Porter’s, the once-hugely popular neighborhood bar in Federal Hill, has closed. ... >>In Ellicott City, a new Italian eatery, Portalli’s, will take over the Main Street location vacated by Jordan’s Steakhouse, which closed earlier in the fall. ... >>In Hampden, Kolper’s tavern has been reopened by the owners of Hopkins Deli. ... >>The long-dormant restaurant space at the American Visionary Art Museum is getting a new tenant. Formerly Joy America, the café will get a new menu and a new name: Mr. Rain’s Fun House. ... >>Stoney River Legendary Steaks has opened in the new wing at Towson Town Center. (825 Dulaney Valley Road, 410-583-5250)

Is it “the best chocolate cake in the universe?” You decide.

Cake
4 eggs separated
1 cup granulated sugar
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) sweet butter
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon cake flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons very finely ground skinned hazelnuts
Beat egg yolks and sugar together until mixture is thick and pale yellow. Meanwhile, in the top of a double boiler set over simmering water, melt the chocolate with the butter, whisking constantly until smooth; cool slightly.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8-inch springform pan. Line the bottom with a circle of wax paper. Grease the paper and lightly flour lining and sides of pan. Pour chocolate-butter mixture into egg mixture and stir just to blend. Fold in flour, salt, and ground hazelnuts. Whip egg whites until stiff and fold gently into batter.

Pour the cake batter into prepared pan and rap the pan lightly on a work surface to eliminate any air bubbles. Set on the middle rack of the oven and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until edges are firm and inside is set but still somewhat soft. Do not worry if top cracks slightly. Cool in the pan, set on a rack, for 1 hour. Remove sides of pan and cool cake to room temperature.

When cake is cool, invert it onto a serving plate and spread top and sides with hazelnut buttercream (see below). Refrigerate cake for 30 minutes.

Remove cake from refrigerator and spread top and sides with warm chocolate icing (see below). Work quickly, as icing sets. Refrigerate the cake for at least 1 hour before cutting and serving.

Hazelnut Buttercream
1 1/4 shelled hazelnuts
5 tablespoons corn syrup
2 tablespoons brandy
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

Roast hazelnuts on a baking sheet in a 350-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes. Remove nuts from oven and rub between towels to remove skins. Transfer to the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade and process until nuts begin to form a paste, peanut butter-like in texture. Scrape paste into a bowl and stir in corn syrup and brandy. Let sit for 20 minutes. (Can be prepared in advance and refrigerated. Let return to room temperature before proceeding with recipe.)

Cream confectioners’ sugar and butter together until light and fluffy. Add hazelnut paste and mix thoroughly.

Chocolate Icing
4 tablespoons sweet butter
4 ounces semisweet chocolate
3 tablespoons cream
2/3 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Melt butter and chocolate together in the top part of a double boiler over simmering water, whisking constantly. Remove pan from heat and beat in cream. Sift in confectioners’ sugar and vanilla. Icing should be very smooth. Spread while warm.

The first chicken recipe listed in “The Silver Palate Cookbook,” this was a hostess favorite because you could put all the ingredients together to marinate the night before and bake it right before dinner. The combination of prunes, capers and olives may seem faddish, but it still tastes darn good. Note: the original recipe is written to serve 10 to 12. I have halved the quantities, but feel free to play around with measurements. The recipe is pretty indestructible.

5 pounds of chicken pieces (a combination of dark and white meat, if you like, bone-in or boneless; it works any way)
6 to 8 cloves of garlic, finely minced
1 tablespoon oregano
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup pitted prunes
1/2 cup pitted Spanish green olives
1/2 cup capers
3 bay leaves
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white wine
Chopped parsley for garnish

In a large bowl, combine all but last 3 ingredients. Cover and let marinate, refrigerated, overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Arrange chicken in a single layer in 1 or 2 large shallow baking pans and spoon marinade over it evenly. Sprinkle chicken pieces with brown sugar and pour white wine around them.

Bake for 50 minutes to an hour, basting frequently with pan juices until done. With a slotted spoon, transfer chicken, prunes, olives and capers to a serving platter. Moisten with a few spoonfuls of pan juices and sprinkle generously with parsley. Pass remaining pan juices in a sauceboat. Serves 6.

16 ounces cream cheese                                      
2 eggs              
2 lemons, zested
8 ounces sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla  
3 tablespoons corn flour  
14 ounces white chocolate, melted  
10 1/2 ounces whipping cream
Prebaked tart shells or 9-inch pie shell

Candied Lemon Rind
2 lemon rinds, cut in thin strands
Sugar syrup (combine 1 cup sugar with ½ cup water)

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Beat cream cheese until soft. In a separate bowl, mix together eggs, lemon zest, sugar, vanilla, and corn flour. Add to cream cheese mixture and continue beating. Add melted chocolate and cream and mix until well combined. Pour filling into pie shell and bake until center is wobbly (about 20 minutes). Remove from oven and cool on counter, then refrigerate overnight or until firm. For the candied rind, blanch the lemon strands in boiling water for one minute, drain, and shock in cold water. Repeat process two more times. Transfer lemon strands to a small pan of sugar syrup and gently simmer until lemon strands are almost clear (about 15 minutes).  Cool in syrup and reserve for garnishing the tops of the tarts.

Serves 9

5 whole eggs
5 large yolks
1/2 cup sugar
9 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
8 ounces unsalted butter
1/2 cup flour
Double Devon cream or whipped cream

In a mixer, combine eggs, yolks, and sugar, and beat until pale, about 7 minutes. Melt the chocolate and butter over a double boiler until completely smooth. Remove from the heat, and slowly pour the melted butter and chocolate into the egg mixture, beating until smooth. Remove bowl from the mixer and fold in the flour. Refrigerate batter overnight and spoon into buttered ramekins. Cook in a preheated, 350-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes. The center should be liquid and the outside cooked like a cake. Serve with a spoon of double Devon or whipped cream.

Serves 6

18 ounces dark chocolate    
7 ounces heavy whipping cream        
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 tablespoons Kahlua          
4 ounces cocoa powder            
4 ounces confectionary sugar
4 ounces chopped toasted nuts (almonds, pecans, etc.)

Heat the chocolate, cream, and butter gently in a double boiler, stirring mixture until almost melted. Remove from heat and continue to stir until completely melted. Stir in Kahlua and allow to cool, then refrigerate until firm. Form into small bite-size balls and roll them in the sugar, powder, and nuts. Store in an airtight container in a cool, dry place.

Makes 2 dozen

9 ounces dark chocolate, chopped
8 ounces chocolate sauce  
1 large egg                  
5 large egg yolks                
1/2 cup sugar
2 ounces water        
1 2/3 cups heavy whipping cream
1 chocolate cake (your favorite recipe)
Cocoa powder

Crème Chantilly
1 cup whipping cream
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Melt the chocolate over a double boiler until completely smooth; remove and cool to room temperature. Meanwhile, combine the eggs and beat for 7 minutes on medium-high speed. In a small sauce pan, cook the sugar and water until 250 degrees using a candy thermometer. Remove the sugar from the stove and pour into egg mixture; beat for another 2 to 3 minutes. Let egg and sugar mixture cool to room temperature. Beat the whipping cream until soft peaks. Gently fold the egg mixture into the whipping cream. Then add the melted chocolate to the whipped cream, gently mixing it until the absence of streaks.

To make the crème chantilly, whip the cream until it forms soft peaks, then add the sugar and vanilla; mix until firm peaks are formed. Refrigerate. To make the layered cake, slice the cake into thin layers and add the mousse between the layers. Let the cake set in the refrigerator for several hours and serve with chocolate sauce, crème Chantilly, and a dusting of chocolate powder.

Serves 6-9

It’s official. As of 2009, Baltimore has lost its unofficial nickname, Smalltimore, with the unveiling of its first luxury boutique hotel, the Four Diamond Luxury-awarded Hotel Monaco. Located in the heart of downtown, it occupies the top seven floors of the original Beaux Arts B&O Railroad headquarters building. And it isn’t just any luxury boutique hotel, either. It’s a Kimpton hotel. The Kimpton brand is known to locate only in tourist-cum-smart-biz spots, such as San Francisco, Miami, Chicago, NYC and Seattle, to name just a few.

What’s to like? Lots. Staying true to the brand, the hotel is eco-friendly (there’s even a recycle waste basket in each guest room); pet friendly (the entrance to the hotel has a doggie bowl filled with food and water; and for those who don’t travel with their pet, a complimentary gold fish is available for their stay); and just downright friendly, e.g., if there’s anything you need, just ask. But don’t be surprised if you don’t find yourself asking— this is a hotel that hasn’t forgotten anything.

Case in point is the mini-bar, which is loaded with a creative selection of goodies— some organic and healthy, some spot-on junk food. You can’t help but want to raid the Pop Chips, Bissinger’s Blueberry Acai Gummy Pandas, Altoids, Snickers bars and Peanut M&M’s, a 2007 Sonoma La Crema Pinot Noir and a 2005 Kendall-Jackson Merlot, Maker’s Mark bourbon, Bombay Sapphire dry gin, Coca-Cola (regular and diet) and Honest Tea’s Organic Honey Green Tea. You’ll also find a tinned first-aid kit, Pangea Organics Facial Mask (Japanese Matcha Tea with Acai & Goji Berry) and Lip Care (Italian Mandarin with Rose), Tom’s Natural Spearmint toothpaste, Alba Mango Vanilla Shave Cream— even a wooden train whistle to keep with the Hotel Monaco theme of “World Traveler.”

Dallas-based Wilson Associates designed the hotel to recall the B&O’s past, and there is the feeling in the lobby that one is waiting for a train to go on a grand 1920s adventure. The front desk sits atop steamer trunk designs, which complement the steamer trunk bed stands in the guest rooms. The nightlight is an old sepia-toned B&O photo, blown up to fill a panel in the closet door, and backlit. The meeting rooms are named after world destinations: Athens, Vienna, Caracas, Tokyo. Leopard-, zebra- and giraffe- (for the taller guest) print robes hang in the closets of the rooms, which are decorated in bold colors and whimsical details— that blue! the carpet! the headboard! — which are everywhere.

The details are what make Kimpton hotels stand out from all the rest. The lobby’s trendy background music and edgy furniture in muted charcoals mixed with limes and fuchsia colors are placed invitingly around a 5-foot-long, double-sided glowing fireplace framed by gold-tinted marbled mirror tiles.This “living room” is the backdrop for a complimentary Wine Hour that takes place every afternoon, where the hotel guests can mingle.The beds in each of the 202 luxury rooms and suites are not only draped in Italian Frette linens, but some come extra-long for taller people, and all have Mount Everest-sized stacks of fluffy pillows. Bathrooms have glass-enclosed stalls with over-sized shower heads and deep, deep Jacuzzi baths with two opposing seats. Baths are stocked with L’Occitane amenities, including a mint pine rosemary effervescent revitalizing sugar cube, and very cool, stylish stainless steel soap dishes.

And then there are the in-room spa treatments. Probably none better than the 80-minute deep tissue massage, with Kerstin Florian lavender aromatherapy oils. Even the dogs can get massages here (along with walks and treats).
 
Hungry for something more than those treats in the mini-bar? Head downstairs to Hotel Monaco’s restaurant, the B&O American Brasserie, truly a destination in itself (see page 36).Chef E. Michael Reidt, a Food & Wine “Best New Chef,” amazes the palate with his repertoire of contemporary American classics.

So you can ditch the “Smalltimore.” With the Hotel Monaco in town, Baltimore ups its stature, sophistication and worldly grandeur. We’re still Charm City, of course, but with Kimpton as our newest resident, we’re that much cooler.

HOTEL MONACO,
2 N. Charles St., 443-692-6170, http://www.monaco-baltimore.com

“Welcome to hell,” says Sharon Hooper, as she ushers me through the kitchen door of Hoehn’s, the Conkling Street bakery that has been in her family for three generations. I take in Sharon’s pink headscarf and crocs, and think that this is not hell as I have pictured it. Hell doesn’t smell of sweet yeast dough and fresh peaches, and hell would be hotter and absent the fan whirring above the worn wood floor, each plank laid on an even diagonal. In hell, boiling oil would be for recalcitrant souls, not crullers. And in hell, I’m pretty sure there would be no smearcase cake, the purpose of my morning visit to Highlandtown.

Although I am not one of the many Baltimoreans who ate smearcase cake, our hometown version of cheesecake, before ever tasting New York-style cheesecake, the confection still holds a sweet place in my culinary heart, partly because of what it’s not. Smearcase is flat, not mile-high, rectangular instead of round, light instead of heavy. It has a yeast crust rather than one made from crumbly graham crackers, and it’s got a shade of tartness to it, rather than all-out sweetness. As its name suggests, its origins are German (“case” an Anglicized version of KŠse, the German word for “cheese”), and you used to be able to find it at Rodot’s and Mount Holly bakeries on the West Side, which are, sadly, no longer around. Luckily, Fenwick, Hoehn’s and Woodlea bakeries on the East Side all still sell it.

I bake cheesecake at home, but I’ve never made smearcase. And while I know I could find a recipe online, why do that when I can learn from an actual, human expert? Call me old-fashioned. So I ask Sharon, whose smearcase ranks as the family favorite these days, if she’ll teach me. Sure, she says, explaining that the bakery’s recipe comes from her grandfather, William Hoehn, who brought it from Stuttgart on the Rhine in the 1920s. “It’s one of those things that we’ve never stopped making for 80 years,” she says.  If I can get to the bakery by 4:30 a.m., her cousin and baking partner, Lou Sahlender, will show me how they do it.
Lou and Sharon have baked together for more than 20 years, and say they don’t even have to speak to communicate (though, of course, they do). Sharon came aboard at the bakery roughly 30 years ago during her father’s tenure. Lou came later, after working in another bakery as a dishwasher, where, he says, he found his calling after stepping in when the baker didn’t show up. Where Sharon is pale and blond with thick bangs, Lou is broad and stocky, and his 5 o’clock shadow extends past his chin to his shaved head. He’s got a Highlandtown twang and strong wrists. I like him immediately.

After Sharon hands me an apron, Lou points to custard boiling in a caldron-like bowl, and I feel like I’m Hermione in “Potions” class as I watch the thick yellow mass steam and bubble. Smearcase cake, as it turns out, is made of a custard base and a cheese mixture, and Lou explains that we’ll use a chilled version he made yesterday in putting together today’s batch. Because the cake’s crust is a yeast dough, we’ll also use a batch made yesterday. “Otherwise we’d have to be here at 11 the night before to wait for it to rise,” Sharon adds wryly.

I’m a little disappointed that I don’t get to make all the cake’s components, but there’s still plenty to do. We add cottage cheese and sugar that Lou has measured out on a balance, whose surface is as scaly as a rough elbow, to the deep bowl of a giant floor-standing Hobart mixer. Lou pulls a substantial bowl of the cooled custard from the fridge and instructs me to add it by handfuls, a little at a time. The custard feels cool and squishy, but not unpleasant, under my hands. When it’s all combined, the mixture is as smooth as, well, custard.

Lou unhooks the bowl from the mixer and carries it to the long wooden counter that runs along one side of the kitchen. Above it, a bank of galvanized drawers, a little like a baker’s card catalog, is labeled with things like “kimmel” (caraway seed), “tools” and “cinnamon.”

Waiting on the counter are two long pans lined with yeast dough. Lou hands me a dough docker, a small roller with spikes on it that looks like a medieval torture instrument, and instructs me to roll it over the dough to release the air in it. After that we plop handfuls of filling onto the dough until Lou says, “Enough.” Then we spread the mixture with a scraper, making sure the surface is smooth. After eyeing mine, Lou kindly takes over. “You know when you’re born and you know what you’re supposed to do?” he asks. “I think I was born to be a baker. I take a lot of pride in my work. If it don’t look right, it don’t go out.” Besides, he says, if the cake is uneven, “people will look in the case and see which place has the most [filling] and want that slice.”

Lou opens the drawer marked cinnamon and I sprinkle it— “not too much,” he warns— over the cakes before he places a metal rim around the inner edge of each pan to prevent spills and runs his index finger around the rims to create a little moat that prevents the batter from rising up. Lou grabs a long paddle and deftly slides the cakes into the ancient brick wall oven in one fluid motion. I peek in to see the two pans shining under the arch of blackened bricks.

While the cakes bake, we tackle other essential tasks. Sharon shapes bread dough into loaves. Lou rolls out dough for buns. I frost fruit tarts with handfuls of sugar icing. Another woman named Mary fills doughnuts with gooey marshmallow. We drink seriously cold Cokes, even though it isn’t yet 6 a.m.

Throughout the morning, a buzzer goes off, and Lou pushes the small clock’s alarm back 15 minutes every time.

At 7:30 a.m. the bakery opens, and from the kitchen door, Sharon and I watch customers place their orders. “Around here they just call it cheesecake,” she says, as the ladies behind the counter slice the cooled smearcase, my smearcase, into rectangular slices. “Only the people of German descent and older people call it smearcase. From time to time an out-of-towner comes in and asks for cheesecake, and boy, are they startled.” I’d like to hope the surprise is a pleasant one, like a new rendition of their favorite song.

Though Sharon, Lou and Mary will keep working for a few more hours, Sharon urges me to turn in my apron and gather some goodies to take home. I don’t need to be asked twice. I pick out some marshmallow doughnuts, a few crullers and a slab of smearcase, and make my way, in daylight now, to share the bounty of my labor with my family.

Hoehn’s is open Wednesday through Saturday, 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., 400 S. Conkling St., 410-675-2884.

Hoehns Smearcase Cake

While Savvy’s diet certainly isn’t going vegan any time soon, her shower has a holistic new vibe thanks to Turkish-born Hampdenite Sevi Kay. Sevi’s eponymous line of handmade skin, body and hair products is usually only available online, but Kay has now opened her Avenue storefront lab for a few hours on Saturdays (12-5). Everything she makes is chemical-free, cruelty-free, animal- and animal-product free. Even her packaging is recycled. Jump-start your day with Mint Chang soap— a lively, exfoliating combo of peppermint, bamboo, lufa and lemongrass. Her yummy pumpkin seed shampoo and conditioner are super gentle and the vanilla and mango body butter is perfect for skin that already feels winter-weary. She also offers a small line of mineral-based makeup in gorgeous shades that have no artificial fragrance, no FD&C coloring and no parabens. The best part? Unlike Savvy’s Whole Foods bill, loading up her bathroom with organics was shockingly inexpensive. Don’t miss: Grrroom Dog, Sevi’s line of shampoos, paw butter, ear and coat tonic for your vegan, eco-friendly four-legged family member.  813 W. 36th St., 410-522-5151

Inner glow

A modern design allows the historic architecture of this relocated barn to shine through.

With its doors closed, the barn-turned-pool house resembles a large cedar box— simple and sleek, topped by a standing seam metal roof. But slide those colossal doors open at night and the building’s front transforms into a stage alive with light. The main attraction, the barn’s interior, suddenly blazes into sight through massive glass windows.

“The idea was that at night when the doors opened, you’d get this incredible transparency into the barn,” says architect Tom Gamper, of Schamu Machowski Greco Architects. “It was the idea of this glass membrane that lets the old architecture speak for itself, as if it were on display.”

The barn now rests on an expanse of property in northern Baltimore County, overlooking a new 20-by-50-foot pool built into a quartzite and Tennessee sandstone patio. But nearly three years ago, the 18th-century bank barn sat on a farm in New Hampshire. There, it was discovered by Ken Epworth, art director and owner of The Barn People, a barn restoration and reconstruction company based in Vermont.

“By the time I got to it, the real estate developer just wanted it out of there,” says Epworth. “It was abandoned, rundown— just standing there being historical.” After hearing from a couple looking for an old building to refurbish into a pool house, Epworth transported the barn to this Baltimore County property, where he and Gamper collaborated on its reconstruction.

On top of the barn’s 35-by-52-foot frame, The Barn People installed antique sheath boards on the roof, walls and loft ceilings, which create a finished look for the interior. On the exterior, they installed insulated panels over the roof structure and walls, and sheathed the exterior in cedar siding.

The owners studded the barn walls with a number of Marvin awning windows, a slight departure from the original architecture (old barns had few windows), but as a result, light pours into the structure. “It’s a new life for an old building, and windows are important,” says Epworth. “You want to be able to see out, and it also lights the building.”

Throughout the project, Gamper aimed for a comfortable merging of the new and the old. “For anything new that we did, we wanted the new to activate the old and not drown it out,” he explains. “And that takes some subtlety.”

For instance, the few areas of newer wood on the ground floor were stained verdigris green to blend in with the original wood, and a thick beam from a single tree, felled before 1800, stretches the width of the ceiling. Though the builders primarily stayed true to the barn’s original layout (from the 9-foot-8-inch high loft to the old slaughter wheel hanging from the ceiling), they added a catwalk and metal railing to form the loft into a complete circle. Another subtle modern twist was the installation of a geothermal heating and cooling system.

In general, the owners kept the new amenities unobtrusive so as not to detract from the building. The groundfloor rooms were converted into a mini kitchen, laundry room, mechanical room and bathing area with a steam shower and powder room. The loft contains an office and sitting area, while the center of the barn functions as a multi-purpose entertainment space. They kept the decor simple: custom-made iron lanterns along the lower wall, a few scattered paintings, rust patina-style ceiling fans, pitchfork-backed stools at the bar.

The barn took approximately two years to renovate, but the owners love the resulting flexibility— along with the peaceful atmosphere. “It’s the warmth of the building,” explains one of the homeowners. “You walk in there and it just sort of envelops you. It’s really a wonderful feeling.”

RESOURCES
Architect Tom Gamper, Schamu Machowski Greco Architects, Baltimore, 410-685-3582, smgarch.com
Construction Ken Epworth, The Barn People, Windsor, Vt., 802-674-5898, thebarnpeople.com

At home in a barn

This stone, wood and copper structure provides a lovely, rustic habitat for a nature-loving couple.

No architects, contractors or designers for Terry Leland. When he purchased his 20th-century wooden bank barn in 1984, Leland started making additions and changes right away— and he’s never really stopped.

“I’m always painting something and changing something,” Leland says. “But the primary construction has been finished for four or five years now.”

Nestled among hemlock and pine trees and built into a hill, the redwood barn sits on 1 1/4 acres near Loch Raven Reservoir. The building was originally part of a family estate, with the family house (now part of a separate property) sitting several acres down the road. “They obviously were gentleman farmers,” Leland notes with a chuckle. “They didn’t want the barn really close to the house!”

For Leland and his wife, Patti, both retired, the barn is the perfect home in the country. “It’s beautiful— the pine trees and the grass and meadow. We see the water of Loch Raven when the leaves fall,” he says. “Every day when I drive in there it gives me a thrill to look at that house. There’s nothing artificial on it. There is no plastic, there is no aluminum. It’s all stone and wood and copper, and that’s what I like. It’s a natural-looking home.”

The original oak siding of the barn (replaced with redwood in the late 1960s) is preserved on the interior basement walls, and nearly all of the yellow pine flooring inside remains unchanged. However, Leland did make several other updates. In 1986, he added a pool behind the barn; a few years later, he replaced the old shutters with pane windows. He also added a garage and a cedar pergola at the back of the house. His favorite project: converting part of the walk-in basement, where the animals were once kept, into a billiard room.

He chose a simple, rugged decor, leaving the floors and fireplace in their original brick, hanging a few copper lanterns and placing a few bar stools around an old library table where he plays cards with his friends. Beyond that, he painted the original wooden door blue, put up a few paintings of barns and billiard rooms and left it at that. The feeling of age and history was something Leland didn’t want to lose. “Sometimes when I’m down there and I drink enough beer, I hear a horse,” he says with a laugh.

Patti Leland mainly took control of the upstairs design, selecting a more traditional decor. There, they installed new bathrooms, granite countertops and tumbled marble floors, and painted the walls in neutrals and subtle greens and blues. The third-floor hayloft they use for bedrooms.

In all of the Lelands’ updates to the barn, comfort remained important, along with staying true to the warm atmosphere of an old, very lived-in barn that continues to collect stories over the years. “When I go outside and look back at the house,” Leland says, “I kind of look at it and think, ‘Boy, if these walls could talk…’”

Country sanctuary

This stately bank barn offers gracious living quarters for humans and horses alike.

Paula and John Mitcherling named their eight-acre property just off Loch Raven “The Sanctuary,” intending the name to mean a retreat for both people and animals. With their expansive stretch of rolling green hills and trees in Phoenix, Md., the Mitcherlings knew that someday they would bring Paula’s two horses home from Arizona. But first, they had to build a barn.

When Paula’s father, George Kelley, retired and announced plans to move to the country, together the Kelleys and the Mitcherlings came up with the perfect plan. They would build a barn on the three acres of pasture next to the Mitcherlings’ house, with the upper level serving as a home for the Kelleys and the lower level as a stable for the horses.

“We chose a bank barn because bank barns are cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter, because it’s half underground,” Paula Mitcherling explains. They hired an Amish group, Sylvan Stoltzfus Builders, to erect the frame for a German-style barn with a 4-foot overshot on the front, built into the side of a hill.

Simple materials such as iron, stone and wood give the barn a rustic feel. The siding is white pine board and batten stained a pale gray, and the standing seam metal roof sports a cupola and a deer weather vane (a little link back to the property’s name).

“I love the rustic outlook of the building,” says John Mitcherling. “It looks like it’s been here for 100 years, even though it’s very modern.”

Stacked stone forms the base and pillars of the barn, stretching out in a bluestone-capped path to the patio. Custom ironwork tops the stone wall, with real horseshoes from one of the Mitcherlings’ horses cast into the fence and a stone horse head mounted onto the first-floor retaining wall.

The bottom level, with Southern yellow pine walls and a recycled rubber floor, acts as a working stable with three stalls where horses can enjoy top-notch amenities: air conditioning and heating, an automatic water fly spray system, a sprinkler system and even rotating feeding doors. “We actually have the sound system in the barn!” says Paula Mitcherling, laughing. “Horses like music, too.”

“We spent a lot of time on the details there,” says Sylvan Stoltzfus, the Amish contractor. “The first floor of that barn where the horses are was nice enough to live in.”

The Mitcherlings hired another contracting company, Lin-Mar Homes, to finish the Kelleys’ living quarters upstairs. They aimed for a clean-lined modern look, with state-of-the-art everything. “It’s a very contemporary, updated feel, and that really contrasts with the outside,” says John Mitcherling.

A stacked stone fireplace, white couch and flat screen TV adorn hardwood oak floors and tan walls. The kitchen features stainless steel appliances, a granite countertop and cherry cabinets. The large center living space was designed to let in an abundance of light and air, with a vaulted ceiling and a row of glass doors leading to the patio providing a view of the pasture. “There’s a breeze blowing through there all the time,” says John Mitcherling. “It’s just a beautiful setting.”

After about a year and a half of work, the barn was completed in 2007, and the Kelleys moved in. At some point, the Mitcherlings’ two horses will join them. “The fact that we can all live here in a symbiotic relationship makes it a true sanctuary for all of us,” says John Mitcherling. 

RESOURCES
Architect Wes Burton, Burton Pfund Architecture,  410-321-5957
Exterior Construction Sylvan Stoltzfus, Sylvan Stoltzfus Builders, 717-442-8408
Interior Construction Al Fyle, Lin-Mar Homes, Fallston, 410-557-7322, lin-marhomes.com

Party central

A vintage 1930s dairy barn gets a new life as an entertainment space on this Monkton farm.

By Nayana Davis
photographed by Erik Kvalsvik

Springmeade Manor lies in the heart of Maryland hunt country near Monkton. The 54-acre property is part of the land originally surveyed and patented by U.S. Senator and delegate to the Continental Congress Charles Carroll, and is visually stunning, with lush green fields, forests and a vast, glistening lake. The many buildings on-site include a main house, guesthouse, gazebo, several sheds— and what the current residents call a “party barn.”

When the residents, a mature couple, first saw Springmeade Manor, they were struck by its beauty. However, the derelict barn, with its chipped paint, missing shingles and many pigeons, was an eyesore.

“We wanted a place where we could hold large gatherings with family and friends,” the husband says. “The barn, as it was, looked terrible. We knew we had some work to do.” So the couple enlisted architect Robert Hollendonner and the late interior designer Greg LeVanis to create some Old English charm for the barn.

The entrance is marked by two towering doors modeled after those that adorn the Maine stables of the Rockefeller family. Inside, there is a modestly decorated first floor with a small bar, a coat room and a row of white benches along one wall. Tall, white pillars run through the center of the room, contrasting with exquisite antique chandeliers hanging overhead. The focal point of the first floor, however, is the large pine canoe suspended from the ceiling

“We generally use the first floor to set up a large banquet table,” says the husband. “This is where some of our smaller functions take place.”

Upstairs, however, is a whole different story. Two massive sliding doors open up to reveal windows that enable sunshine to flood the pine wood room. “It’s even more beautiful in the moonlight,” the husband says. “The atmosphere just becomes so serene.”

In this space, it is the collection of prized game animals the husband shot in Africa over the past 30 years that truly warrants attention. The centerpiece is a Cape buffalo head mounted above the gas fireplace festooned with bronze lion statues. Oryx and deer heads are hung on either side of the buffalo, and pheasants, fowl and other game are scattered throughout the room. Above the toilet in the bathroom, an ostrich head peeks out of a small window pane.

A grand, eye-catching chandelier hangs in the center of the room, illuminating the Persian carpet below. Small dining tables and chairs are set off to the side for company. A cluster of gentlemen’s chairs are grouped in a corner for quieter conversation.

“This is where we hold our big celebrations— wedding receptions, birthday parties, political rallies, hunt teas,” the husband says. “It’s a sight! People come out in full hunting gear complete with boots and helmets. They park their horses in the stable and then come in for some good times.”

It seems like the “party barn” is serving the couple well.

RESOURCES
Architect Robert Hollendonner, 202-332-1100

Really, who doesn’t like cheese? Silly question—everyone seems to in one form or another. Chefs often joke that if we want to sell a dish, just add cheese!

In my quest to come up with cheese-oriented dishes for this column, I decided to develop recipes in which cheese becomes the main focus of the dish, from appetizer to dessert, with proper accompaniments and flavor pairings.
 
The first recipe is a salad of greens, sliced pears, and crostini topped with a melted, Italian goat cheese called Nocetto di Capra. It’s a perfect example of a soft, ripened cheese, slightly sweet, with a velvety texture. Next is the sautéed gnocchi with a cheese sauce made from Fontina, a semi-soft, cow’s milk cheese that becomes more pungent as it ages. It’s an Italian favorite for its melting abilities. The cheese course is a little nontraditional, served with stewed fruit and oatmeal and hazelnut crisps—both perfect accompaniments to the Australian Roaring Forties Blue Cheese, which has honey notes, and is super creamy from being aged in wax.

Lastly, I picked a trifle of pound cake, caramelized peaches, and mascarpone cheese for dessert. Mascarpone is a cultured cheese, produced without aging or introducing bacteria. Sweet but tangy, it’s a great substitute for traditional pastry cream. So there you have it—four very different dishes but all with a chef’s best secret in common.

Recipes:

• Mixed Greens, Pears, Radishes, and Warm Goat Cheese Crostini
• Vanilla Poached Dried Fruits, Hazelnut Oatmeal Crisps, and Roaring Forties Blue Cheese
• Sautéed Gnocchi, Poached Egg, and Fontina Cheese Sauce
• Caramelized Peach Trifle with Crema di Mascarpone

Andrew Evans is the chef at Easton’s Thai Ki.

While at a late-night diner with friends recently, the server brought plates of steaming fries covered in gravy and grilled cheese and Monte Cristo sandwiches on buttered toast. And then he brought my plate: a skimpy house salad sans croutons.  Everyone nibbled off of everyone else’s meal— except for mine, which my friends dismissed with a wave of their forks. After all, who’s itching for a bite of iceberg lettuce?

Rabbit food isn’t my first choice for appeasing late-night cravings, either. But this past year, I was diagnosed with celiac disease, also known as the permanent intolerance to gluten, and since then, I’ve had to change my eating ways. Gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley and rye— scan the ingredient lists of most consumables and you’ll find it’s a main component.  Unfortunately, there’s no pill that provides an invisible shield to protect me from gluten. The only way to treat celiac disease is to adhere to a strict gluten-free diet. 

Initially, a gluten-free diet seemed like a death sentence, or at least a recipe for a joyless life. I love to eat. I eat when I’m anxiety- ridden or mellow, caffeine-jolted or sleepy, elated or depressed. Learning that I’d need to steer clear of gnocchi, mozzarella sticks, glazed doughnuts with chocolate icing and Chinese take-out— forever— was literally hard to swallow.

And yet, the diagnosis nevertheless brought relief, ending the mysterious health problems I’d suffered for years. On some days during my undergraduate years, I’d lie in bed drenched in sweat from waves of nausea and searing, debilitating abdominal attacks, literally unable to get out. Then there were days that blurred into nights then back into days when I’d drift into narcoleptic comas, sleeping for more than 24 hours straight. 

While doctors labored to diagnose me, I played the role of a scientific experiment. At the ripe age of 22, I became intimate with X-ray machines, needles and suction tubes. Colonoscopies? Let’s just say that I’ve undergone more than the average 75-year-old.

At the end of it all, I learned I was joining the one in 133 Americans with celiac disease.  That’s a pretty sizable group, and many experts actually think this figure is low since Americans are not routinely tested for the disease. But with more and more information circulating, our ranks are growing every day. It’s not a club anyone would rush to join, that’s for sure. But, as I’ve learned, the diagnosis doesn’t have to mean an end to enjoyable eating. It just means a different way of eating.

Not too long after my diagnosis, I ventured on my first gluten-free grocery trip. I dawdled in the aisles, hoping against hope to discover that Texas toast was not, in fact, made out of bread, or that my favorite frozen pizzas had miraculously turned gluten-free overnight. But when I looked at the ingredient lists, I had to admit I was dreaming. Gluten was gluten and, unfortunately, it didn’t vaporize from the array of cake and brownie mixes, pretzels and oatmeal pies that used to comprise my favorite foods.

So I wandered over to the frozen foods section and opened the freezer doors to skim the ingredient lists of my least favorite items: frozen diet meals. I almost fainted when I saw that most microwaveable, low-calorie meals are doused in sauces or gravies containing gluten as a thickening agent. Not only could I no longer eat my favorite foods, I couldn’t even eat my least favorite foods. It was obviously time for a radical change.

My grocery purchases now include fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables, plain meats and gluten-free grains such as rice. I make my own sauces and gravies with cornstarch that are much healthier and cheaper than prepared sauces. I also plan my meals according to a weekly agenda and include leeway for snacks, including almonds and apple slices with peanut butter. On the days that I work all day and attend graduate school at night, I tote a hefty supply of food in my backpack to ensure I’m not tempted to grab something out of the vending machine.

Grocery shopping is still strenuous and time-consuming, because I have to analyze the ingredients of every item not marked “gluten-free.” I can’t assume that foods will maintain consistency, because manufacturers constantly change them from one batch to another. Still, there are times when a visit to the food store feels similar to winning the lottery, like the day when Chex cereal first boasted the label “gluten-free” in big, bold letters. When I realized I didn’t have to drive a half-hour to purchase specially made cereal and could stock up at my local store, I called my mother to inform her. Fifteen purchased boxes later, I felt like a millionaire worth my weight in Chex squares.

Shopping at specialty grocery stores like Whole Foods, Wegmans and Trader Joe’s is now a true delight. Such stores offer gluten-free foods in substitution for most common items and the gluten-free foods are either clearly labeled with signs or are housed in particular aisles. Each individual item also bears a prominent gluten-free label or notation on its packaging.  In a wave of carefree gluttony, I’m able to toss gluten-free lasagnas, frozen chocolate chip cookie dough, pretzels and pizza crusts into my shopping cart. I’ll decline to comment on my receipt, but for me, the cost is well worth the safety, convenience and taste.
Sure, not all gluten-free items are top-notch, five-star quality foods. As I discovered, one brand of gluten-free rice bread is equivalent to (well, worse than) gnawing through a cardboard box, so I’ve since transitioned to making sandwiches and paninis with gluten-free waffles, which I actually prefer to the average loaf of white bread. And let’s not forget my recent discovery of lemon-glazed, gluten-free doughnuts, which are far superior to the average glutinous doughnut. 

Sadly, dining out can be a challenging experience for the gal who has to avoid gluten. First of all, it’s mainly chain restaurants that go out of their way to accommodate the growing numbers of diners with gluten intolerances. Uno Chicago Grill offers gluten-free pizza and beer. Although it does not offer the signature deep-dish crust, the crusts of its gluten-free pizzas are nevertheless light and flaky— and one of the best pizzas I’ve ever tasted. P.F. Chang’s offers gluten-free soy sauces. And the menu at Bonefish Grill politely reminds consumers to request the Bonefish Caesar salad without croutons and also lists gluten-free desserts, like its fudgey, macadamia nut brownie. These restaurants readily distribute ingredient information to inquiring consumers, and they also offer nutritional information on their Web sites.

When I first arrive at Bonefish in Bel Air, prepared both to dine and chat with operating partner Eriksson Hill, I notify the host that I would like a gluten-free entrée list. She hands me a hard copy menu, similar to those distributed to other patrons, tailored to my dietary concerns.  I have no need to question if there’s flour in my soup or a bread crumb rub on my chicken.  Instead, I simply skim the menu and select from a wide variety of meals containing the “GF” notation, everything from filet mignon to salmon salad with citrus vinaigrette to a list of wines and cocktails that also bear the GF notation. I decide on the chicken garnished with goat cheese and spinach.

When Hill sits down with me, he proceeds to detail the food allergy and gluten intolerance training given to each new employee. Servers communicate to kitchen staff that a diner has ordered a gluten-free meal by way of a computer prompt, and cooks are knowledgeable that gluten-free food must be prepared in fresh pans with clean cooking utensils. “Gluten-free menus take the guesswork out,” he says. “Rather than be afraid of it and ignore it, we under- stand that people have it.” 

Independently owned restaurants are beginning to acknowledge the need for awareness as well. Brian Greene, executive chef at Gertrude’s at the Baltimore Museum of Art, is knowledgeable of every ingredient in a meal.  “We’re a ‘scratch house’— we make all of the food ourselves,” he states. So when a customer asks for an ingredient list, the server can communicate with Greene or with owner and chef John Shields, both of whom can cite ingredient lists from memory. Greene explains that he receives eight to 12 requests from food-allergic customers per day, with those requests rising on a regular basis. 

“Food allergies shouldn’t preclude you from going to dinner with your best friends.  It’s a physical ailment that has to be accommodated,” says Greene, who personally prepares meals for those with special needs. He carefully avoids cross-contamination, selecting a fresh plate directly from the dishwasher and re-sterilizing food preparation surfaces and cooking utensils prior to cooking a gluten-free dish. Greene may lead diners through certain dishes listed on the menu that are gluten-free or, time permitting, create a custom plate. The restaurant encourages patrons with allergies or intolerances to call ahead. 

Donna Crivello, owner and executive chef of Donna’s Restaurants, explains that her staff is educated about dietary restrictions, since many of them have various ones as well, but stresses the importance that consumers voice their particular needs. “Not every item is listed on the menu,” she states, and she further explains that her kitchen staff will custom prepare items for regular customers with gluten intolerances or food allergies. Customers may substitute side dishes of pasta with gluten-free rice, risotto, potatoes or polenta. If a chicken dish has bread crumbs in the crust, staff will either grill or roast the chicken, instead. Or, diners may choose from dishes already gluten-free, including the chicken and steak salads.

On the other end of the spectrum, some restaurants that offer gluten-free menus do not properly inform or train staff members about food handling and preparation methods. On one occasion while dining out with my mom, I ordered an entrée from a gluten-free menu, only to find that a breadstick had been added to the side of my salad. I sent the salad back— the addition of a breadstick had cross-contaminated my plate, defeating the overall purpose of a gluten-free menu.

In my year or so of eating gluten-free, I’ve also found it’s risky to trust most fast-food restaurants that offer allergen information. I asked one drive-thru attendee at Wendy’s if she knew of the gluten-free foods for individuals with celiac disease as listed on the online menu.  Ready to order a bowl of chili and hamburger patty (no bun), I was slightly surprised when she couldn’t provide the requested information. “I’m not sure what you mean,” she said. “We just offer what’s there.” Then she scowled at me as if I were a carrier of the Black Plague, unaware that my disease is not contagious. 

Things are improving for gluten-intolerant diners, but the fact is that people with celiac disease still have to dine out mostly at restaurants that do not offer gluten-free menus— and that’s not always the easiest or most elegant experience. “When I go to a restaurant that does not have a gluten-free menu, the waiter or waitress gives me a hard time, usually thinking that I am being a picky eater,” says Nottingham resident Samantha Warm, who was diagnosed with celiac disease in April 2007. “At times, I do feel obnoxious. But my problem is that I do not know if a meal contains gluten or not, so I have to be extra careful.”

I share Warm’s concern— I know it’s a pain, but I have to ask. If I unknowingly ingest gluten, I experience extreme fatigue one to two days later, as if I’m blanketed in a thick, mental haze. I may also experience severe gastrointestinal pains and, worse, may eventually suffer from long-term consequences such as infertility and cancer. 

There are no current state-mandated programs for restaurants that offer gluten-free foods to consumers. Instead, independent organizations, such as the Gluten Intolerance Group of North America, certify restaurants like Bonefish Grill that seek to be labeled as gluten-free.  Specifically, the organization sponsors the Gluten-Free Restaurant Awareness Program, which provides volunteer representatives to establish an ongoing relationship with both restaurants and staff members. Organizations like the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness also offer courses to certify local restaurants as gluten-free. Lebanese Taverna and Roy’s, both in Harbor East, are certified as GREAT Kitchens by the Gluten-Free Resource Education and Awareness Training (GREAT) program of the NFCA.

Legislation to protect consumers with food-related allergies is slowly developing. Ming’s Law of Massachusetts recently set a precedent for states across the country by requiring restaurants to educate workers about food allergies and necessary measures to take if serving customers with special needs. Maryland does not require such intensive, allergen-specific training, nor does it require that restaurants be state-certified to serve gluten-free food. But the state is gradually joining national trends to publicize the disease, and recently declared May Celiac Awareness Month.

Restaurant owners may balk at accommodating gluten-free diets— it requires extra effort and some extra expense at the start, after all— but it’s savvy business sense considering celiac disease is one of the most common genetic diseases to date. I know when I dine out with friends, the primary question is not, “What is everyone in the mood for?” but rather, “Lisa, where can you eat?” I influence where my money and the money of my friends and family are spent.

For now, I follow the rules and simply daydream of the day when I can show up at a diner with friends after a night out on the town and order gluten-free fries dripping with cornstarch-based gravy and gluten-free grilled cheese or baked meatloaf void of bread crumbs. Then, when the food arrives, steaming and golden and smelling so good, my friends will reach to eat off of my plate. That will be pure, gluten-free, heaven.

Lisa Cleary is a writer and production editor who lives in Baltimore.

Visit the following Web sites for more information on gluten-free dining in the Baltimore and Maryland region:

>Gluten Free in Baltimore at Glutenfreebaltimore.blogspot.com
>Maryland Gluten-Free Restaurant Guide at Celicachandbook.com
>Urbanspoon Baltimore at Urbanspoon.com Gluten Free Restaurants
>Gluten Free Registry at glutenfreeregistry.com

Rarely do such a beautifully designed space and a thoughtful, appealing menu mingle so well as at B&O American Brasserie. The grand, two-level space (originally part of the Beaux Arts B&O Railroad headquarters building) has been given a sophisticated sheen with mod accents, leather-clad walls and high-backed, settle-style banquettes. Overseeing the kitchen is E. Michael Reidt (one of Food & Wine magazine’s “Best New Chefs” of 2001) and he’s created a menu of tempting regional American classics such as Murray’s Farms Chicken with Pesto Mash, Fisherman’s Stew, Vande Rose Pot Roast and Steak Frites with Duck Fat Fries. There are brick oven flatbread pizzas, too, and down-home specials like Ham and Biscuits with Gravy and Buttermilk Battered Fried Chicken. The concoctions from the lengthy bar menu are given equal weight, and it’s worth asking for a Chamomile Cup (their spin on a Pimm’s Cup), a Horsecar (Tanqueray 10 gin with blueberries and thyme) or the B&O Manhattan (Woodford Reserve bourbon with port and maple syrup standing in for sweet vermouth). Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. (2 N. Charles St., 443-692-6172)

Baltimore has received a significant amount of national foodie recognition recently. Anthony Bourdain included stops at The Roost and Mo’s Seafood in his (misguidedly named) “Rust Belt” episode of the Food Network show “No Reservations.” Former Red Maple chef Jill Snyder and Abacrombie chef Jesse Sandlin enjoyed their 15 minutes of “Top Chef” fame, and Duff Goldman and crew continue to charm on “Ace of Cakes.” And, in the past few months, three very different Baltimore restaurants have been singled out for recognition by three very different media outlets. We asked the owners of each what the awards have really meant to their business. Was it like winning the lottery or, well, more like winning the election for student council president?

Seeing stars at Charleston
Initially, Tony Foreman seems blasé when I ask about the effect of the four stars awarded by “Mobil Travel Guide” to his and wife Cindy Wolf’s restaurant, Charleston. “It’s nice to get mentioned,” says Foreman. “But it doesn’t do a tremendous amount directly. Clients are what boost you.” It would seem to be a rather humble attitude from Baltimore’s only four-star restaurant, one of 150 across the nation, a designation Charleston earned and has maintained since its dining room renovation approximately four years ago. But then Foreman reveals that he wants all the stars.

“We’re about a year engaged in what we would do to get five stars [from Mobil],” he admits. “And I will be pissed off every single day until we’re on that list.”

It won’t be easy. There are only 20 five-star restaurants in the U.S., none of which, it probably goes without saying, are in Baltimore. And Mobil, which bills itself as “the gold standard of travel ratings and reviews,” is notoriously picky. According to Mobil president and CEO Shane O’Flaherty, four- and five-star level restaurants are inspected twice— once to evaluate the facility of the restaurant, and once for service, which includes the food and staff comportment.

During an anonymous visit, one of Mobil’s 18 full-time independent contractors will (mentally) respond to 125 criteria meant to gauge the quality of their experience and measure it against similarly ranked four-star restaurants across the country. (Foreman says the restaurant staff have never been aware of a Mobil reviewer in the restaurant.) They will time staff to see if a cocktail is offered within a minute of being seated, make note that glasses are refilled within 30 seconds of being empty and notice if a diner has to signal staff to come to the table.
The differences between four stars and five stars is very slight, explains O’Flaherty, and often have little to do with a difference in quality of food— some even seem pretty obtuse. In a four-star restaurant, an amuse bouche is “offered;” in a five-star restaurant, “the amuse bouche is of exceptional quality and presentation.” Tables in a four-star restaurant are padded, have napkins that are all-cotton or linen, varied china patterns and high-quality, heavy flatware. Five-star table linens are “of exceptional quality and design,” are set with “exquisite china” and the highest quality glassware “specifically matched to individual wine or spirit.”

“The main difference,” says O’Flaherty, “is that the execution is closer to flawless. There are more things right, more consistency. A complete wow experience.”  Restaurants can be upgraded from four to five stars, he says, but it usually requires more investment in the property and staff. 

Although Foreman is tight-lipped about exactly how he is going about earning his fifth star, some of the Mobil requirements, like the use of solid, rather than hollow ice cubes, the inclusion of a cheese course on the menu and a table being available immediately when guests arrive, seem easier to accomplish than others. For instance, how does one evaluate that a “guest’s name is used effectively as a signal of recognition, but discreetly,” or that “food is flawless, a delightful and interesting experience”?

Still, as Foreman points out, in a city like Baltimore where tourism, conventioneers and hometown business expense accounts are modest in comparison with other cities, four-star recognition is still an honor, as is other recognition from The New York Times to Zagat guides. Zagat, in particular, Foreman points out, is “reflective of the marketplace” because the reviews come from actual diners rather than critics. Mobil, he says, “is more pure.” Both bring people to the restaurants, Foreman concedes, but he still relies on word of mouth rather than national recognition. “The media does not pay the bills,” Foreman says adamantly. “The people in the seats do. If you ever lose focus of that, you’re a fool.”

Foodies around town agree with Foreman’s sentiment. “National publicity doesn’t affect how I eat out at all,” explains Baltimore Foodies founder Lars Rusins. “Personally and professionally I think it’s great that Baltimore gets that recognition,” he adds, but he says he finds guides like Mobil and Zagat useful in eating in other cities, not his own.

Of the seven still-open three-star Baltimore restaurants listed on Mobil’s Web site, two— Pazo and Cinghiale— are also owned by Foreman and Wolf. Foreman would like to see Cinghiale earn a fourth star. To that end, staff there and at Charleston are competing to see which restaurant can earn another star first when the rankings are announced again in January. May the best restaurant win.

A Great Sign at Woodberry Kitchen
When Spike Gjerde got the call from Bon Appetit magazine in early spring, he was hesitant to tell anyone. The magazine, one of the “Big Three” national food magazines along with Food & Wine and Gourmet, wanted to include Gjerde’s Woodberry Kitchen in its list of the Top 10 best new restaurants in America, all of which, according to writer Andrew Knowlton, offer “the new standard: simple, satisfying, local food— all served with zero pretense.” Gjerde and his staff, however, weren’t convinced it would actually happen. “We didn’t allow ourselves to hope that it was what they said it was, because you never know until you see it,” he says. 

When the magazine called to request a recipe and set up a photography shoot, Gjerde felt more confident. “That was a great sign,” he admits.
The Woodberry Kitchen staff members went to work, testing and re-testing their chosen recipe, spiced pear flatbread with goat cheese and mustard cream, trying to make sure that the scaled-down version would work as well in a home kitchen as it did in the restaurant’s signature wood-burning stove. They made sure they could get their hands on a chunk of Firefly Farms’ Black and Blue, a blue goat cheese the Garrett County farm makes in limited quantities. “[That cheese] was really important to that particular recipe,” says Gjerde.

The full-page photo of Gjerde’s hands spooning mustard cream from a small pan onto the puffy browned flatbread appears on page 71 of the September 2009 issue. The brief blurb accompanying the flatbread recipe extols the restaurant’s beautiful Clipper Mill space and notes that Gjerde was local and sustainable long before local and sustainable were cool.
Although Gjerde concedes that the accolade may bring in visitors from out of town, he explains that it’s hard to gauge any economic impact from the mention. Reaction from friends and customers, however, has been overwhelming (though not quite as immediate as when Duff Goldman chose a dessert from the restaurant during a segment of the Food Network’s “The Best Thing I Ever Ate,” earlier this year, and Gjerde received 30 e-mails the night the show ran and had five people at the bar eating dessert the next night). Perhaps most important is the feeling of pride shared by the restaurant staff.  “I’ve never gotten any attention like that, and I’ve never worked with such a good group of people before,” says Gjerde. “And it’s great… the way they [Bon Appetit] said what’s happening here is really special.”

Heart Attack at Mother’s Federal Hill Grille
Smack dab between the virtual chalkboard listing the day’s daily specials and the ad for the Purple Patio (“Baltimore’s best tailgate party for Ravens’ home games”) on the Web site for Mother’s Federal Hill Grille, is the banner that reads: “See Mother’s on the ‘Today’ show!” Click the link and there’s Mother’s chef and co-owner Adam Rather showing Matt Lauer how he dips half-pound burgers stuffed with cheddar into beer batter then into a deep fryer. These are Mother’s Heart Attack on a Plate, he explains as the camera cuts to two petite women each chowing down on a half a burger before returning to Lauer who eagerly cuts into one.

As the Mother’s Web site also will tell you, Food Network magazine chose the restaurant’s $10.95 Heart Attack on a Plate as one of the nation’s 50 best burgers, and “the burger you absolutely have to try in Maryland.” “Cardiologists may disagree,” reads a blurb on the Food Network’s website, “but burger lovers think this 8-ounce beef patty— stuffed with cheddar and dipped in ale batter and deep fried— is worth the obvious health risks.” It was the Food Network designation, prompted by a best burger accolade in Food Network magazine, that led to the “Today” show appearance.

If your head is spinning around that chain of events, so is Mother’s co-owner, Dave Rather (brother of Adam).  All of this publicity over a burger, Dave Rather acknowledges, is “hard to imagine, but great.” “It makes us feel good,” he says. “It’s a hard business, but this is a validation that we’re doing something right, that we’re making people happy, making people feel good.”

It’s also boosted restaurant revenue considerably. Sales of the Heart Attack on a Plate have quadrupled, Dave Rather reports, and the famous burger has drawn customers from around the city. Recently a party from New Jersey called to get directions to the restaurant after reading about the burger, and the Rather brothers are starting a burger challenge to see who can eat the most Heart Attacks on a Plate in a row (so far the record is two). And, of course, there’s a Heart Attack on a Plate T-shirt.

Dave Rather admits that he’s always wanted Mother’s to be in the Zagat guide for Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and perhaps all the publicity will be enough to get Zagat voters, food-avid Baltimoreans who generally eat out an average of four times a week, to notice. On the other hand, the Rather brothers are more than pleased with local publicity and the business built by word of mouth.

“Just the sales of those burgers is great,” Rather enthuses. “It’s sort of taken on a life of its own.”

In the winter of 2006, Steve Ward was between jobs and searching for direction. He found himself at dinner with a group of Baltimore restaurateurs and wine experts such as Jorge Ordonez, a premier importer of Spanish wines, and Dan Philips, whose work importing Australian wine helped fuel the explosion in that country’s wines over the past decade.
Argentina, Ward suspected, was headed for similar growth. “In terms of winemaking around the world today,” he says,  “I think Argentina is probably the most exciting place.” Wine makers in Argentina are just beginning to implement modern techniques and change the way they make wines, he says.” Combined with the excellent physical conditions, this revolution in winemaking promises enormous potential. In 2007, though, most of the Argentinian wine U.S. consumers had seen was mass-produced and without much personality.

Nobody, it seemed to Ward, had decided to go to Argentina and seek out the finer wines. “What do you think about someone doing what you did, but for Argentina?” Ward asked his friends that night. Their reply was simple, “You should do it.”

So Ward, 39, bought his first ticket to Argentina. There was only one problem: “I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.”

Despite befriending importers like Philips and learning from them, the business of importing was still mostly a mystery to Ward. Wine, however, was something he had been tasting and studying for almost 20 years.

At 18, one of Ward’s first jobs was at a wine store in Howard County. From there he moved on to working in restaurants, including the first of Baltimore favorites Spike and Charlie Gjerde. After several years working in finance, Ward returned to the restaurant business when he opened Vespa in Federal Hill in 1999.

It was through Vespa that Ward made the connections with importers and distributors that would be so crucial once he returned from Argentina. However, a solid background in the end product wouldn’t be quite enough to make a skilled importer; Ward had yet to learn the business of modern winemaking.

In 2006, Ward sold Vespa and moved to Napa Valley to work at a vineyard there. “During harvest we did everything, from cleaning out barrels to crushing grapes, really every aspect of winemaking.”

“He really knows the industry from the viewpoint of the quality in the bottle,” says David Schroeder, director of brand management at Bacchus Importers. Bacchus distributes fine wine and spirits in the Maryland, D.C. and Delaware areas and was the first distribution company to work with Ward. “He works hard. He’s articulate and knowledgeable. When someone carries those characteristic traits, you gravitate toward helping him.”

“The logistics of shipping wine around the world are not easy,” Ward admits, but with Bacchus’ expertise, Ward christened his business Oasis Wines and the first of his wines hit shelves and wine lists in Baltimore in August of 2008.

“I think Steve’s wines have been first-rate without exception,” says Bruce Dorsey, owner of Metropolitan Coffeehouse + Wine Bar, which carries some of Ward’s Argentinian finds. 

“It’s the tip of the iceberg for the stuff that I found,” Ward says— the search for new wines is continuous. “A big part of it is selection and trying to find really cool interesting things that have real personality and some unique qualities.” That means Ward takes a lot of trips and tastes a lot of wines. Friends like to call him the “International Man of Leisure,” but his trips are as much work as they are fun.

“In the beginning it was really tough because I didn’t know anyone.” With no contacts and little Spanish, Ward had to rely on simple perseverance. “I was the guy who just kept showing up. After about three or four times, the winemakers started to realize I was serious.”

Dorsey got the opportunity to join Ward on one of his trips. “It was work. Driving around to see 10 winemakers, it takes all day,” Dorsey says. At each winery Ward might try a dozen wines before setting off down a dusty country road in search of the next poorly labeled vineyard. For Ward, though, the trips are worth it.

“That’s the thing, to find really cool things that are a good value and get that back here and get that into restaurants’ hands, get it into wine stores’ hands. That’s the broad picture. That’s the mission,” he says with a grin. “I get excited and smile just thinking about it.”

Visit facebook.com/oasiswines. Stores carrying the wines include Bin 604, Chesapeake Wine Co., North Charles Wine & Spirits, The Wine Source and Quarry Wine & Spirits. Restaurants include Woodberry Kitchen, Corks, 13.5% Wine Bar, Metropolitan Wine Bar, The Prime Rib and Ruth’s Chris.

Here we are again. Our annual Food Issue is one of my favorite issues to edit and produce, and it’s one of our readers’ favorites as well, if newsstand sales and reader feedback are a measure. Sometimes it’s hard to wait for the November issue to fit in all of the food-related feature stories that we come across in the course of the year.

And food seems to be a major trend in general this year. The rise of the “eat local,” farm-to-table and organic food movements is quite visible in the media. The recent success of the film “Julie & Julia,” based on both the exploits of food blogger Julie Powell and of cooking legend Julia Child, is one example. A recent cover story in The New York Times Magazine by Michael Pollan is another. According to Pollan, people are more interested in food now than at any time in recent memory. And the rise of television’s Food Network, food-related reality shows (like Bravo’s “Top Chef”) and cooking shows in general is one form of proof. Ironically, at the same time people are more interested in food and watching people cook on TV, they are doing less and less of it at home. That’s good news for restaurants, I suppose.

It would seem that Baltimore is definitely on the map, as far as the Food Network is concerned, and that’s a good thing. Our own Duff Goldman’s “Ace of Cakes” show is based here. CakeLove’s Warren Brown maintains an outpost here. Two of our local restaurant chefs, Jesse Sandlin and Jill Snyder, have been featured contestants on “Top Chef.” Food personality Ted Allen is no stranger to town, and has shot a Food Network pilot here. (I won’t dwell on Anthony Bourdain’s mean-spirited Baltimore-as-depicted-in-”The Wire”-agenda episode of “No Reservations.”) In this issue, Style food writer Mary K. Zajac takes a look at how media attention affects restaurants in Charm City (page 106). She also gets a lesson in another local food icon— smearcase— in her Food for Thought column (page 44).

About two years ago, I read a story in The New York Times (yes, I am one of those newspaper-reading dinosaurs) about the burgeoning trend of underground dinners in Seattle and New York. Well, the movement has hit Baltimore, and we sent senior editor Laura Wexler to two homegrown dinners, one in a downtown gallery space and one in a Waverly back- yard. If this trend is new to you, read more about it on page 120.

One story didn’t make it to press. We’d originally planned a fun visual feature on restaurant house jackets— you know, those shabby, mothball-scented sport coats that fine dining establishments with strict dress codes lend to male diners who show up for their reservation sans jacket? We wanted to photograph those jackets at The Oregon Grille and The Prime Rib, the last two local bastions of this sartorial practice. I’m sorry to report that The Prime Rib relaxed its jackets-only code this past summer. It doesn’t sit well with me. I like having a few places that really do feel more special because of this rule— must every place be completely egalitarian and lax in the name of “comfort”? I guess that leaves only The Oregon Grille to uphold this genteel rule of civility.
 
Brian Michael Lawrence
editor-in-chief
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http://www.baltimorestyle.com

On a warm, breezy early August evening, Chef’s Expressions chef/owner Jerry Edwards marked his 50th birthday with an al fresco party for 330 guests at the Silo Point residences in Locust Point. The party was the centerpiece of a full weekend’s worth of events to celebrate the occasion, and raised $6,500 for Jerry’s pet charity, Meals On Wheels. (The prior evening he hosted a seated, five-course wine dinner for family, close friends and staff at the Tremont Grand, and the day after this party he held an open house brunch at home for 70, including most of the staff who’d worked the other events.)

Edwards spent several months planning the party along with his wife, Julie, and executive chef John Walsh. Guests were welcomed to the party with glasses of white peach sangria and then led through the lobby to the outdoor terrace spanning the rear of the complex. Open-air tents held service bars and six stations with wine and food pairings; another tent was reserved for dancing, courtesy of the band Powerhouse.

At a midpoint in the evening, longtime friend Jay Block sabered a magnum of champagne (opening it by slicing off the top of the bottle with the stroke of a sword) to the delight of the crowd and the host took the microphone to thank his family and guests. The menu included grilled Red Angus tenderloin filets and Thai chile steamed mussels. A four-layer cake— designed by local TV celebrity chef Duff Goldman— provided a sweet ending to the evening’s festivities. 

After taking a family member to dinner recently, and watching her not only send back all of her own food to the kitchen, but also that of her husband and three children, three things occurred to me. 1) I will never dine out with her again. 2) Was it possible to exit the restaurant without being noticed? 3) What a hard time chefs and waitstaff must have dealing with diners’ whims (and whining). After I recovered from the embarrassment, I had to wonder: how common around town is the phenomenon of diners sending their meals back to the kitchen?

Most of the restaurant owners, managers, chefs and waitstaff I talked with were, perhaps unsurprisingly, rather circumspect regarding the issue, voicing some variation of what Randy Marriner, the proprietor of Victoria Gastro Pub in Columbia, says. “We tend to have 100 percent guest satisfaction. For the most part, people don’t send food back. The plates come back looking like they’ve been licked clean.”

But even the best restaurant in the world can’t escape, from time to time, someone like my particular family member. So I kept asking. I flagged down John Shields, chef/owner of Gertrude’s at the BMA and the king of a good story, and asked him if people send food back. To which he replied, “Oh, yeah! In fact, we’re pretty sure that there’s a whole group of people out there that have these little boxes filled with hair. They’ll strategically place one on the plate only after they’ve eaten at least three-fourths of a meal. Suddenly that hair just appears.”

Con artists aside, Shields says there are any number of reasons people return food. “A lot of people, especially when they’re older, can’t sense ‘hot’ very well,” he says. “So they’re constantly sending very hot soup back, until it’s heading back to them a bubbling mass of gloop. This one woman, well, we couldn’t get it hot enough for her. So I asked the pastry chef to take out the torch and put it under his arm like a pepper shaker. He told her, ‘I can heat it up a little more if it isn’t hot enough yet.’”

Sascha Wolhandler of Sascha’s 527 agrees with Shields— like Marilyn, some of her customers like it very, very hot. “There are hot flashes, cold flashes and soup flashes,” she says. “The soup can never be hot enough for a menopausal woman. I challenge any meteorologist to get the temperature right for them.”

Misunderstandings can also be at the source of many a “return to sender.” Nino Germano, chef and co-owner of La Scala Ristorante, recalls one customer who “ordered risotto, but she thought she would be getting spaghetti and meatballs.” Nate Beachler, general manager at The Oceanaire Seafood Room, says some folks are put off by the char dish when it’s brought to the table. “It often surprises people to see the whole head and tail on it— it scares them,” he says. “That’s a dish that sometimes comes back.” And then there are those in search of a free meal. “People go online and get 5,000 coupons, read all the loopholes, stick them all together and try to get a meal for free,” says Nancy Longo, chef/owner at Pierpoint. “I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”
From her perch at the Mt. Washington Tavern, Shannon Maddox offers up a plate of first-class returned meal vignettes. “First of all, you’ve got an older customer on a fixed income who’s trying to penny-pinch. She orders a burger, with lettuce and tomato on the side. Then she wants a little more lettuce. Then she wants more tomatoes. Then she wants dressing. Basically, she wants to build herself a little salad without paying for it.” Of course, that customer is balanced out by another who sent back a sandwich because it was too big!

And some chefs say that a lot of times the entrée is almost fully eaten by the time the complaint comes in.Allison Parker Abromitis, manager for the Charleston Group restaurants, says that she hears from waiters that they’ll offer to take a diner’s plate while the chef is making them a replacement, but the diner refuses, saying,  “‘No, I’m just going to work on this until you bring me back my food.’” “Sometimes there’s not even any sauce left on the plate,” says Daniel Chaustit, the chef at Crush. “I have to think, ‘How horrible was it?’”

Scooter Holt, manager at Corks, points out that it’s not only about the food. “Let’s not forget the person who drinks three-quarters of the wine and then finds a gnat in it. You can’t tell me these same people buy a bottle of wine to take home and take it back to the liquor store or dump it if they find a gnat in that,” he says.
The more restaurant people thought about it, the more stories they unearthed about the types of food returners. There are the con artists— “Someone brought in a glass Coke bottle bottom and put it in the salad and they said they swallowed it,” says

Longo. And the braggarts— young people who have seen their parents return food. Says Maddox: “They’ll come in with a date and try to get it over on you. They want to show off in front of their companion about their knowledge of food. And there we are, taking this back and that back, making them look good, and us looking like we’ve done everything wrong, when actually, everything’s great.”

Then there’s the procrastinator. According to Marcie Prince, manager at the Iron Bridge Wine Co. in Columbia, “Sometimes you get somebody who’ll come in to complain about something they’d eaten a week prior, saying it was inedible. You know, we need to know if there’s a problem when it happens right away, not later.”

And don’t forget the “off-menu” type. “This guy, he wanted wasabi, even though it wasn’t even on the menu,” says Shields. “He’s screaming at the waitress, who finally just bursts into tears. He made everyone return everything they were eating. I had to ‘comp’ him 50 percent of the whole meal. He didn’t leave his waitress a tip. Not a penny. They had to give me nerve pills.”

And king of them all, says Holt, is the professional complainer. “This guy, he walks in the door, and you just know him upon seeing him. As a waiter, you’re like, ‘OK, here we go. We’ve got a code blue.’ You’re reading the specials, they aren’t looking at you, their arms are crossed and they’re defiant. You just put your seat belt on and get ready. The food will either be 1) sent back, 2) complained about or 3) something bad. Their goal is to turn the restaurant into chaos. A fellow server calls it ‘Dining as a Sport.’ Most people when they send something back are legitimately not happy. But the code blue is not going to be happy until that restaurant is falling apart around them. Don’t think for a minute that there aren’t people out there that don’t play this game. They do. It’s like the shark coming into the shallow waters to feed.”

Joking aside, most chefs, like executive chef at Sotto Sopra, Bill Crouse, take returned food seriously. “Any time someone sends food back, it’s a big concern,” he says. “For the most part, it’s a learning tool for all of us. We’ll redo the dish and I will walk it back to the customer and apologize.” Daniel Raffel, manager at Alizée at the Colonnade, adds, “We immediately bring an unhappy customer a demitasse of a soup, so they have something in front of them while they wait.An empty space on the table isn’t helping anyone.”

Which leads to the question— do these chefs, proprietors and managers ever send back food while dining out? James Kinney, the managing partner of The Capital Grille, says, “I’m pretty careful when I order. I might ask more than your general consumer. I try to make sure everything is perfect before my food comes.” Christie Smertycha, manager of Jack’s Bistro agrees, “If I’ve read the ingredients, then it becomes my responsibility if I don’t really like the food. Spoiled food is the only reason I’ll ever send anything back,” she says. Jesse Sandlin, chef at Abacrombie, agrees. “I can pretty much suffer through anything, but I really can’t stand an overcooked steak.”

Shields tried to send food back one time at a local pub— but failed. “When our food comes out, I’m looking at my crab cake and it’s got this yellowish-greenish hue and I immediately know it’s gone bad. ... Once the fats in the crab break down, it releases ammonia, a very distinctive look and, more so, aroma. So I called the woman over and sort of whispered, ‘Well, this has gone bad.’ So she takes it back. My friends have eaten three-fourths of their meal by the time the cook finally returns. She looks like an Army cook out of a TV show— filthy apron, cigarette hanging out of her mouth, etc. She says, very loudly, ‘What the hell is wrong with the crab cake? Ain’t nothing wrong with this. Smell it,’ and she pushes it directly into my nose. So there I am with crab on the end of my nose. And the restaurant charged me for it. I thought about not paying for it, but then I realized that if I tried to get the check changed, I could be there another half hour. Plus, I didn’t want that woman coming back out of the kitchen. I was scared of her!”

Beyond all the misadventures, Shields remains strategically philosophical, as do most restaurateurs, about the phenomenon of returned food— even when he knows it’s a scam. “If that customer places that hair in the food at the last minute… it’s not worth having a fight over it. If you do that, they’re going to tell 10 people who tell 10 other people who tell 10 other people and it becomes all about that hair,” he says. “It’s easier just to give them what they want.”

But, readers— and my food-returning family member— don’t get any ideas. Shields is not going to fall for the hair trick every time!

At 10 a.m. on an early fall day, Gino Troia is in the cramped galley kitchen of Grano, preparing Puttanesca, Bolognese and eight other sauces for the hungry crowds that descend on the humble Hampden pasta bar each day. Several miles north, in the earth-toned, hushed dining rooms of Café Troia, Gino’s ex-wife, Carol Troia, and their eldest daughter, Lisa Troia Martin, are inspecting the table settings and the heavy, leather-bound menus in preparation for the lunch crowd of lawyers and business people who dine at the venerable downtown Towson institution.

And a few hundred yards east on Allegheny Avenue, in Zia’s Café, with its lime green walls and mountain air aroma (thanks to a few drops of essential oil placed into the miniature fountain), Daniela Troia, the youngest daughter, is stocking the cold case with the day’s selections of raw food, including live zucchini Alfredo, live taco salad, raw shepherd’s pie and raw tiramisu.

At this hour, Elena Troia, the matriarch of them all, is at her Lutherville home, having rightfully earned the chance to rest and relax after 29 years in the tailoring business and nearly 10 years in the kitchen at Café Troia— not to mention a few months helping out Daniela when she opened Zia’s in 2004. At 86, Elena claims she “doesn’t cook much” anymore, though she still makes dinner regularly for her son, Gino. And since, as she says, “I don’t like frozen food and I don’t like leftovers,” she cooks daily. But even if she never again made her famous eggplant parmesan, or pasta with cauliflower or squash, or hearty homemade soups, Baltimoreans would still be ingesting her culinary creations. The food served at Grano, Café Troia and, yes, Zia’s Café, bears the influence of the short, round Italian lady known to her family as Nonna, who brought her family to Baltimore in 1962 so they could have more opportunities than existed in war-ravaged Naples.

Long before the Troias arrived in Baltimore, members of the family were active participants in Italy’s rich culinary culture. In the early 1900s, Elena’s uncle was the renowned chef for Diego Aragona Pignatelli Cortes, the Duke of Monteleone, who lived in a palace on the outskirts of Naples. Elena’s sister apprenticed as a chef in Strasbourg, Germany, after World War II and went on to open restaurants in Stuttgart and Sorrento. And she and her husband, Carmine, a chef, opened their first restaurant in Calabria, at the toe of Italy’s boot, in 1952 and ran it for several years before getting homesick and returning to Naples. “I always loved to be in the restaurant business,” says Elena in her heavily accented English. “I love to create dishes.”

As intertwined as the Troias were with life in Naples— the entire extended family of 15 or so lived in one big house— they longed to escape. “Everyone in Naples wanted to go to America,” says Gino. “We had no recollection of the war— I was born in 1945— but the destruction was everywhere around us. We were looking at the sky through the windows of bombed-out buildings, even 20 years later.” The family chose Baltimore because Elena’s sister was living here with her husband, whom she’d met during the war.

They came expecting skyscrapers and were surprised by 1960s Baltimore. “We thought America would be more modern,” says Gino. “It was not the America we expected.” The family lived with Elena’s sister in Dundalk before moving into a rowhouse on Calvert Street. Elena got a job as a dressmaker— to this day she still makes her own dress patterns— Gino enrolled at Maryland Institute College of Art to study interior design and his younger brother, Ernesto, attended Baltimore Polytechnic Institute. “My brother and I couldn’t speak any English,” says Gino. “When my mother, whose father was Welsh, spoke English, I wondered if I would ever speak that well. Later I realized her English wasn’t that good!”

Meanwhile, Carmine, whose English was also limited, sought out kitchen work in Little Italy’s restaurants. “He couldn’t believe everything was adulterated— that they put sugar in the tomato sauce and MSG and meat tenderizers on the meat,” says Gino. “I remember him being mad that he had to cook that kind of food.”

In speaking about Little Italy, (or, for that matter, about most of the Italian restaurants in Maryland) Gino can barely contain his disgust. His family never wanted to open a restaurant there because they wanted to cook authentic Italian food— not tourist fare, he says. And they certainly never ate in Little Italy. The few times they dined out, they traveled to Italian restaurants in D.C. or New York City.

Normally a gentle and retiring fellow, Gino breaks character to say, “If I can express my true opinion, I have to say without reservation that most Italian restaurants in Maryland suck. I think you did not expect me to say this, but you get tired of being surrounded by culinary mediocrity.”

In the late 1960s, Elena and Carmine bought a carryout restaurant in Dundalk and renamed it Bella Napoli. After a few years, the family sold the carryout and opened Europa Foods, an Italian market, on Harford Road. They struggled to make ends meet. “The problem was we didn’t conform to what people wanted at the time. We didn’t want to sell Utz potato chips. On the shelf we had Brunello and people wanted rosé,” says Gino. “The only way we survived was by working very, very hard.”

Within a few years, Carmine and Elena were able to buy a home in Hamilton with two magnolia trees and a row of azaleas in the yard. For the next three decades, Elena presided over epic Sunday dinners there. The family would arrive by 10 a.m. and start cooking, finally sitting down to eat at 2 or 3 p.m. Elena had put a second kitchen in the basement and on some Sundays the entire crew would grill peppers for canning or make gnocchi and set it on a clean white sheet atop the master bed to firm up. They’d extend the table from the dining room into the living room (eventually they widened the doorway between the two rooms) to fit 20, and onto that table would be placed platters of the foods that were home to them: soups, pastas, fish. “Cooking was the event,” says Daniela Troia, 35. “That’s what we did together. Every Sunday we were there.”

“There are so many Catholic holidays and each one has its own food,” says Daniela’s sister, Lisa Troia Martin, 43. On Mardi Gras, the family would have lasagna. On Christmas Eve, the family gathered for a feast that featured antipasto, escarole soup, pasta with mussels or clams, bakala (dried salted cod), fried cod and cauliflower critters, bronzini and eel. “Nonna is incredible,” says Lisa. “She could take a cardboard box and cook it and make it taste good.” (Elena recently co-authored a cookbook with a Greek friend, and plans to create a second one that intersperses stories of her life with family recipes.)

“On Thanksgiving, my grandmother made a full Italian meal— seven courses— and then we’d have turkey dinner,” says Daniela. “I was like, ‘Can’t we have American food one day a year?’”

By the late 1970s, Gino’s brother, Ernesto, was working as the chef at Velleggia’s in Towson after attending culinary school at Baltimore International College, and Gino had opened Troia Hair Studio at 604 Allegheny Ave., smack in the middle of where Café Troia and Zia’s Café stand today. He had had some training back in Naples, but mostly he learned how to cut hair by watching his mother cut cloth, he says. “I still have people asking me to cut their hair,” he says. “But I decided it wasn’t really my vocation. Food was so innate to me. Cutting hair was a way to make money.”

Gino persuaded Ernesto to leave Velleggia’s and together they opened Troia Brothers’ International Market and Café in the lower level of the Penthouse Condominiums at 28 Allegheny Ave. “We sold mostly meats and cheeses— 30 different kinds of cheeses. We sold coffee. We sold 10 different kinds of vinegar and olive oil,” says Gino. “Our customers were interested in learning about food and we had no problem teaching them.”

But Gino and Ernesto soon learned the same lesson that Carmine and Elena had learned at Europa Foods, which they closed after a few years: the profit margin in a market wasn’t ideal. “My brother said one day, ‘Let’s take all the food and cook it,’” says Gino. So the brothers studied a recipe from “The Silver Palate” cookbook for a foreign (to them) dish known as chicken salad and incorporated touches that were familiar: fresh basil and parsley. They had a two-burner stove where Elena cooked soups and sauces and Ernesto made risotto and polenta. They put that out on the shelves, and people came in, bought it and ate it at a table. Gradually, the brothers removed the shelves and replaced them with tables, and by 1988, they were running a full-fledged restaurant— Café Troia. The Troia family— sans Carmine, who had died in 1978— was back in the restaurant business, cooking the food they loved using fresh, local ingredients long before that was the fashion.

“It was an instant success,” says Gino. “People knew us from our market and from our parents’ market and the carryout. And my brother was a very good chef. It was wonderful to work with all of the family.” Carol, a former budget assistant at Johns Hopkins who’d been Gino’s partner in the salon, ran the business side of things. After Elena retired from the tailoring business, she helped in the kitchen. And once school ended for the day at Immaculate Conception, Daniela would walk in the back door of the restaurant and help out in the kitchen until after the dinner rush ended.

As the years passed, Café Troia expanded. The family remained at the core of the business, with Gino presiding over the wine list and cooking alongside Ernesto until Ernesto left to open a restaurant in the warmer climate of Vieques Island, Puerto Rico. (After a few years he returned and worked periodically at the restaurant until his death in 2001.)

“In high school, I didn’t want to go into the restaurant business. I wanted to study fashion,” says Daniela. “I got a scholarship to Johnson & Wales and went to visit, but I hated the food. So I went to Essex Community College and took some courses in restaurant management, and I realized how ahead of the game I was.”

While she attended college classes, Daniela continued to wait tables and bartend at Café Troia. Then one day she moved into the kitchen. “I started on the cold side and then moved to the hot side,” she says. “I was the first female on the line there. Once I started, I was hooked.”

Like her father and her grandmother, Daniela had never had formal culinary training. But she knew how to cook after years of those elaborate Sunday dinners, and years of hanging out in the kitchen. “It was innate,” she says, echoing her father. When Gino opened Troia at The Walters in 1997, she, Carol and Lisa took over running the Towson restaurant. Daniela worked in the office for a few hours each day— developing a catering business— and then stole down to the kitchen to do whatever needed to be done. “I guess at that point, at age 23 or so, I realized this was my career. The next year I became a partner. I loved it.”

And yet at the same time Daniela was delight-ing in creating the restaurant’s authentic Italian cuisine, she began to notice that she often felt exhausted and that her weight fluctuated uncontrollably. She bought a book about juicing and unearthed the old juicer her father had used to make her breakfasts when she was a kid. “I started drinking juice three times a day and I really felt different,” says Daniela. “Then I started reading more about nutrition and developing my own theories. At this point, I knew I was not going to be eating the way I’d grown up eating.”

She traveled to juice bars in other cities, thinking, “I want to have my own place and create my own world.” When she mentioned the idea to her father, he was encouraging. “He saw this space for rent and told me to go for it,” she says. “He wanted me close and on the same street as Troia.”

When she opened Zia’s Café (Zia is the word for “aunt” in Italian), Daniela didn’t know she would gravitate toward raw and vegan food. The idea was to offer the juices she loved, and to do what her family had always done— offer the freshest ingredients cooked simply. “I never wanted this to be called a health food restaurant because most health food doesn’t evolve from chefs,” she says. “In the beginning, my focus was really on serving the best of everything.”

These days, given the demands of her customers, nearly two-thirds of the offerings at Zia’s Café are raw. “We’re not talking about tempeh and tofu— I’m not into that.” She points to a raw taco dip and says, “That and some dehydrated crackers— mmm. I won’t eat anything just because it’s healthy. It has to taste good.” Pointing to the live lasagna, she says, “This has all the flavors of a fabulous restaurant. I should know!”

Elena and Daniela worked together to decipher the food chemistry behind raw desserts like chocolate chip cookies, pies and cakes. Now Zia’s supplies the Baltimore- and Annapolis-area Whole Foods stores with raw wholesale food, as well as offering it at Zia’s and through a catering business. And Daniela holds monthly raw food dinners as a way of both serving the growing raw food community in town and teaching new people about that way of eating. Just as Gino taught his customers about the glories of Italian espresso, she is educating hers about the wonders of raw biryani and raw chai cheesecake. (The fundamental principle behind raw foodism is that plant foods in their most natural state are the most nutritious.)

Last September, for Elena’s 85th birthday, Daniela cooked a multi-course raw food dinner. Just like they did on countless Sundays, the Troia family gathered at a big table, except this time it was at Daniela’s house in Towson. And instead of pasta and meat and fish, they dined on raw pineapple gazpacho, raw lasagna, salad and a live fruit trifle.

“They liked it,” says Daniela. “We’re a food family, and they’re open to what I’m doing.” That said, Nonna remains mystified that Daniela won’t eat pasta (occasionally Daniela will break down and eat gluten-free pasta at Nonna’s house to be a sport). And when Daniela’s longtime boyfriend demands to go to Grano, she takes her own food.

“I’m the black sheep of the family,” she says. “Actually, everyone always called my dad the black sheep, and he is. I guess I’m the red sheep.”

It’s not so much that Gino and Daniela are black or red sheep, says Lisa; it’s that they’re the artistic souls in the family. Pointing at her mother and herself, she says, “We’re not the artists— they are. It’s like being part of the family of Michelangelo. People say, ‘Can you paint?’ Yeah, I can paint, but not like him.”

Lisa was already studying business at Loyola College when her parents opened Café Troia, and after she graduated she got a job at T. Rowe Price, earned her M.B.A., married and had three children. She started doing office work at Troia parttime while her children were young. By 2005, she was there fulltime (and more), bringing her kids to the restaurant after school and on holidays.

In 2008, when issues with their lease arose, Lisa and Carol presided over the restaurant’s move across the street and they work there today as co-owners (though they, like everyone in the family, say they don’t believe in job titles). Lisa orders the wines, schedules the front of house staff and presides over marketing. Carol pays the bills, does the accounting and handles the catering business. In the new space, they offer the same award-winning food— among their signature dishes are Fettucine alla Bolognese, Ossobucco alla Milanese and Linguine Zia Teresa— in a nicer atmosphere, with an enlarged bar, an outdoor patio and deck and a kitchen double the size of the original one across the street.

Lisa says she is a good cook, but mostly because she grew up with good food, and because she likes to eat. As Nonna says, “To be a good cook, you have to be a good ‘fork.’” Carol, who grew up in a Polish family where cooking wasn’t much valued, says, “When I married Gino I couldn’t fry an egg. After I had Lisa, I would go over to her house for coffee and I learned to speak Italian and I learned how to cook.”

Café Troia’s longtime chef is Johnny Meyer, who worked first with Ernesto at Velleggia’s and has been at Troia for more than 20 years— but occasionally Lisa will work the line if necessary, and both she and Carol put in long hours on evenings and weekends. They laugh when people ask them who manages the restaurant. “One of us is always here,” says Carol. “We know every one of our customers— where they like to sit, what they like to eat, what they like to drink.”

Once in a while, someone who hasn’t been to Troia for a few years will come in and ask for Gino. “We just say, ‘He’s got his place downtown now,’” says Carol. There’s no animosity when she says this. Lisa and Carol are prospering at the original family business, while Daniela and Gino strike out in new directions.

On a fall afternoon, light streams into the sun porch at the new location of Grano Pasta bar at 3547 Chestnut Ave., the former site of Finnertea’s and most recently, Dangerously Delicious Pies. After a year and a half at the tiny storefront on The Avenue, Gino and partners Julie Padilla and Marc Dettori (a former co-owner of Brasserie Tatin and longtime restaurant maitre d’ and manager) have moved Grano to this space, which can seat 30 and has a kitchen that, while cozy, is far roomier than at the original location.

Gino opened Grano in April 2008 on the heels of closing Gino Troia in Canton, a restaurant he says was doomed from the start because of lack of parking and street traffic. (His restaurant at The Walters closed in 1999 due to space constraints at the museum.) “On a sunny day in January 2008 I was driving on The Avenue and I saw this ugly place on the corner. I said, ‘This is the perfect spot for a one-man operation. This is something for me to do.’”

His initial plan was to run Grano, which means “grain” in Italian, as a carryout— people would choose a pasta and a sauce and take their food to go. But when the restaurant opened, the same thing happened that had happened at Troia Brothers’ International Market and Café more than 20 years before: people wanted to stick around to eat. So Gino added as much seating as he could— there’s room for 10 inside and 10 more outside— and fleshed out the menu.

“It was an instant success,” he says, echoing his statements about the early days of Café Troia. “It’s a completely different crowd than at Troia. Here we have comfort food, not comfortable seats. I designed the menu for the economy— if you have $7.95, I can give you a plate of pasta.”

Crowds came to Grano seeking some of the same dishes that are on the menu at Troia, and Gino, a consummate host, was embarrassed turning them away. He hopes that happens less often in the new location, which, with its tangerine- and khaki-colored walls and wrought-iron lighting fixtures, looks like a more casual Café Troia.

Standing on the second floor of the building, in a room he plans to use as a group dining room, Gino says he doesn’t often dwell on his life in Italy. “I don’t think of myself as an immigrant,” he says. “We always wanted to amalgamate, to be Americans.” And yet the Troias’ success is due, in part, to their dual identities: as much as the family has embraced the American Dream, opening one small business after another, working hard to make their own success, they’ve held on to the culture and customs— and, above all, the beloved cuisine— of the old country.

Never could the chef for the Duke of Monteleone have imagined that one of his descendants— one of the Troia family of Naples— would own a restaurant selling raw lasagna and raw tiramisu. But raw or cooked, served in Hampden or Towson, the Troias remain a “food family” that loves to cook, eat and feed others.

Does the thought of selecting wines for your next party make you queasy? You are not alone. Many people find choosing wine a stressful task, but it doesn’t have to be. Think of wine as an ingredient in the recipe for a particular dish, not an independent course. It should taste as good when enjoyed with a dish as it does alone. The following guidelines will help focus your choices and create stress-free pairings.

> Match “like weights”  Specifically, match the weight of the wine with the weight of the food— light fare with lighter-bodied, more delicate wines, and fuller-bodied wines with bigger foods.Most of us wouldn’t think to order a light, fruity Sauvignon Blanc with a filet mignon. Conversely, a glass of hearty Cabernet Sauvignon doesn’t go well with a delicate seafood salad. Think of a boxing match— would you put a heavyweight in the ring with a featherweight?

> Think of your pairing strategy— contrast or complement?  We have all heard the sayings “opposites attract,” or the converse, “complementary partners make the best matches.” Sound like relationship advice? It is, but these rules also create successful food and wine pairings. Contrasting uses diverse flavors to enhance the differences; whereas complementary matches flavors to enhance the similarities. Think of a seafood dish in a creamy sauce. You could complement it with a rich, mellow white like Chardonnay or contrast it with a crisper white like Pinot Gris.

> Salt needs acid Acid in wine is that tangy or sour sensation felt on the tongue. That factor is found in crisp wines like Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling and Albari—o, to name a few. Salty foods neutralize or soften acidity in a wine and need to be paired with higher-acid wines.  Most meals should have at least moderate acidity. If the dish is particularly salty or briny, e.g., oysters, crabs, pickled items, etc.— look for crisp or high-acid wines.

> Fats soften tannins Tannins are naturally astringent substances found in grape skins, and are perceived in our mouths as a sense of dryness. Reds with firmer tannins are a natural pairing with a fattier dish like red meat, cheese or stew. Try a Cabernet Sauvignon with a bite ofsteak and notice how the tannins soften in your wine. Bold reds pair nicely with heartier dishes— Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Malbec or Syrah.

> Sweet with spicy   Fruity or sweeter wines tone down spicy foods, whereas high-alcohol, dry wines intensify the heat of spices. If you are serving spicy cuisine, look for wines that are fruity and even a bit sweet to counteract. Whites that work with spicy food include lush whites like Riesling, Viognier, GewŸrztraminer or Sauvignon Blanc. Reds that pair nicely with spicy dishes include fruity, lower tannin wines such as Beaujolais, Pinot Noir or Shiraz.

In the end, wine pairing is subject to personal taste. Chances are you and your guests may not agree on the best pairing for each course, but these rules can simplify selecting wines. So when entertaining, you can concentrate on the most important pairing— enjoying time with your guests! —Laurie Forster

Want to learn more about the factors used to determine wine style? Visit Laurie’s blog at thewinecoach.com.

Laurie Forster, The Wine Coach®, is a wine educator who creates corporate events, group tastings and team-building seminars. She is the author of “The Sipping Point: A Crash Course in Wine,” and can be heard each week on WBAL 1090 AM.

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