<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><HTML><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4">Reading his obituaries in today's Times and Washington Post reminded me of Apple's 2003 piece on Baltimore, which I will paste in below. At the time it appeared I was a bit shocked to see such a good food article appear under the byline of a reporter who I thought of as a political correspondent. It's quite impressive how a good reporter who's not even from here can actually get everything right! <BR>
<BR>
The obituaries are at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/nyregion/05applecnd.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/04/AR2006100400703.html. If you enjoy those, you'll love Calvin Trillin's New Yorker profile: http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/030929fa_fact1. <BR>
<BR>
-Matthew<BR>
<BR>
************************************************<BR>
<BR>
In Bawlmer, Hon, Crab Is King<BR>
<BR>
New York Times<BR>
February 19, 2003<BR>
By R. W. APPLE Jr. <BR>
<BR>
BALTIMORE <BR>
"BALTIMORE is a quirky kind of town," its former mayor,<BR>
Kurt Schmoke, said not long ago. "Its heart is still<BR>
working class, even if the economic realities have changed.<BR>
It is suspicious of anything elegant or stylish or<BR>
pretentious. We have this world-famous educational<BR>
institution, Johns Hopkins, in our midst, but it has never<BR>
quite won the affection of ordinary Baltimoreans." <BR>
<BR>
You can see that spirit in the refreshingly unpompous local<BR>
politicians, including the two senators, a tough,<BR>
wisecracking Polish-American, Barbara Mikulski, and a<BR>
reserved, cerebral Greek-American, Paul Sarbanes, as well<BR>
as William Donald Schaefer, a wacky former mayor and<BR>
governor who once settled a bet by diving into the seal<BR>
pool at the National Aquarium. You can see it in the city's<BR>
sports heroes, gritty men like Frank Robinson, Johnny<BR>
Unitas and Cal Ripken, who never blew their own horns. <BR>
<BR>
And you can see it in the work of Baltimore's favorite-son<BR>
moviemakers, John Waters, who celebrated beehive hairdos,<BR>
and Barry Levinson, who fondly explored the world of siding<BR>
salesmen. Both like to set their films in their hometown,<BR>
in what the iconoclastic Mr. Waters calls "this gloriously<BR>
decrepit, inexplicably charming city." <BR>
<BR>
The standard form of greeting is "hon," a term of<BR>
endearment commemorated by a faux-50's restaurant called<BR>
Cafe Hon in Hampden, up north near the main Hopkins campus<BR>
and the national Lacrosse Hall of Fame. <BR>
<BR>
Baltimore's eating habits are idiosyncratic, too. The city<BR>
loves crabs, oysters and rockfish from Chesapeake Bay,<BR>
which its poet laureate, H. L. Mencken, once described as<BR>
"an immense protein factory." It prefers diners and taverns<BR>
tucked into venerable row houses to newer, trendier spots.<BR>
It shops in the city's old-fashioned covered markets, a<BR>
half-dozen of them - the only places except the Ravens and<BR>
the Orioles games where all of Baltimore comes together,<BR>
blue-collar and blue-blooded, black and white, Greeks and<BR>
Italians and Germans. <BR>
<BR>
Crab is king. People here can't live without their crab<BR>
soup, their crab cakes and especially their spicy steamed<BR>
blue crabs, which they rip open, split in two, crack with a<BR>
wooden mallet and prod with a knife, excavating every last<BR>
bite of sweet snowy meat with all the fervor of an<BR>
Egyptologist opening a pharaoh's tomb. In the winter<BR>
months, when the big hard-shells - scientific name<BR>
Callinectes sapidus, which means beautiful swimmer - are<BR>
not available locally, the leading purveyors fly them in<BR>
from ports in the South. <BR>
<BR>
Unhappily, most visitors miss the best of Bawlmer eating.<BR>
Taking the line of least resistance, they stop at the<BR>
unfortunate mass feederies along the north side of the<BR>
Inner Harbor, or at commercialized, gentrified crab houses<BR>
like Obrycki's, or in Little Italy. Marty Katz, a Baltimore<BR>
photographer and food critic who took the pictures that<BR>
accompany this article, dismisses the copycat restaurants<BR>
in that neighborhood as "our versions of Mamma Leone's." <BR>
<BR>
My nominee for the single best crab dish in Baltimore, if<BR>
not the Western Hemisphere, is the jumbo lump crab cake at<BR>
Faidley's Seafood in the Lexington Market, which was<BR>
founded in 1782 and refurbished only recently. <BR>
<BR>
You eat it standing up, at a counter or at a table with no<BR>
chairs. Nancy Faidley Devine, 67, makes every one herself,<BR>
including those she ships by mail, and last Christmas week<BR>
she shipped 2,800. <BR>
<BR>
"Other people handle the stuff too much," she told me, "and<BR>
it ruins the cake's texture," the same way that overworking<BR>
sometimes toughens a pie crust. <BR>
<BR>
In summer, Faidley's crab meat comes from packinghouses in<BR>
Wingate and Crisfield, Md., farther down the bay, and in<BR>
winter it comes from Texas, Florida and North Carolina.<BR>
Mrs. Devine won't use imported crab meat - "pretty," she<BR>
said, "but no flavor" - and she won't use pasteurized crab<BR>
meat, because it has a flat, metallic taste. <BR>
<BR>
She said she watches carefully to make sure the meat<BR>
contains plenty of yellowish "mustard," or fat, which is as<BR>
important to the flavor of a crab cake as marbling is to<BR>
the flavor of a sirloin. <BR>
<BR>
Faidley's sells a crab cake made from claw meat for $4.50<BR>
and one made from backfin for $7.95 as well as the jumbo<BR>
lump cake at $12.95. Each is seasoned differently and each<BR>
has its virtues, but the costliest one, about the size of a<BR>
slightly flattened Major League baseball, deep-fried to a<BR>
golden turn, with crisp little hills and dales all around,<BR>
is well worth the premium. <BR>
<BR>
Delicate, delicious, creamy and sweet, it may not quite be<BR>
heaven, but by my reckoning it's a persuasive preview. <BR>
<BR>
Mrs. Devine is canny about her recipe, except to say that<BR>
it contains only a touch of Baltimore's ubiquitous Old Bay<BR>
Seasoning, which can impart a harsh taste, plus broken<BR>
saltines for body, mayonnaise, several mustards and spices.<BR>
Her husband, Bill, 71, a retired naval officer who never<BR>
lost the habit of salty talk, said the secret would die<BR>
with his wife. "I sleep with her," he added, "and she won't<BR>
tell me." <BR>
<BR>
IT takes 20 minutes or so to drive to Dundalk, just east of<BR>
the city line, where giant maritime cranes serve the docks,<BR>
and the huge Sparrows Point mill spews out smoke and<BR>
hot-rolled steel. The Costas Inn is there, a bluejeans and<BR>
Cat hat tavern disguised as a crab house. Several of the<BR>
Baltimore feinschmeckers I talked to said it serves the<BR>
best steamed crabs in town, and it certainly impressed me. <BR>
<BR>
You get the whole proletarian nine yards: Lots of good<BR>
beer on draught, including amber-colored Pennsylvania-made<BR>
Yuengling, from the nation's oldest brewery; stacks of<BR>
paper towels (not napkins) to clean up with; tables covered<BR>
with heavy butcher paper; the spice-slathered crabs dumped<BR>
unceremoniously in front of you from plastic trays. <BR>
<BR>
And what crabs! Crab houses here describe size in terms of<BR>
price, and the ones my friend and I ordered were 44's,<BR>
meaning they cost $44 a dozen. Huge brutes, heavy, full of<BR>
luscious meat. Three each were plenty after a bowl of spicy<BR>
Maryland crab soup, rich with vegetables. When we finished,<BR>
our lips were stinging, our fingers were smeared with<BR>
reddish gunk and a tumulus of shell and cartilage rose<BR>
before each of us. Finger bowls were not provided. <BR>
<BR>
Taverns, the prototypical Baltimore eating places, come in<BR>
many varieties. Two of the best, in addition to Costas, are<BR>
Duda's, a laid-back bar facing the water in Fells Point,<BR>
which serves what may be the best hamburger in the city, a<BR>
plump disk of meat grilled to moist, deep-red perfection,<BR>
and Henninger's, a sweetheart of a back-street<BR>
establishment in the same neighborhood, where I felt like a<BR>
regular after two minutes. <BR>
<BR>
Henninger's décor is eclectic, to say the least, featuring<BR>
old black-and-white publicity photos of strippers alongside<BR>
a tapestry portrait of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy<BR>
and Martin Luther King. The food has ambition. When I<BR>
stopped in, the menu included fried oysters on a bed of<BR>
spinach with fennel and Pernod sauce, cooked by Jayne<BR>
Vieth, and thin-sliced brisket of beef, deftly smoked by<BR>
her husband, Kenny. The two of them own the little place. <BR>
<BR>
Baltimore is a good breakfast town, too. Movie buffs should<BR>
try the Hollywood Diner, a streamlined chrome beauty not<BR>
far from the courthouse. This is where Boogie, Eddie,<BR>
Fenwick and their friends, all of them afraid of growing<BR>
up, hung out in the Barry Levinson classic, "Diner" (1982).<BR>
Get there before 9 a.m. and you can have an egg and cheese<BR>
on toast for only 99 cents. <BR>
<BR>
If civilized talk and an unhurried session with the<BR>
newspapers is your morning game, Baltimore provides City<BR>
Cafe. The bagels are Manhattan-worthy, and the oatmeal is<BR>
Ohio-worthy. Blue Moon, a hip cubbyhole all but impossible<BR>
to get into on weekends, makes everything from scratch,<BR>
including smoothies, cinnamon rolls and potato pancakes<BR>
laced with bacon and green pepper. The scrapple is to die<BR>
for: cut thin, fried crisp on the outside, molten on the<BR>
inside. No easy thing to achieve, that. <BR>
<BR>
In Helmand, Baltimore has the most unlikely of ethnic<BR>
restaurants, an upmarket Afghan place, run by Qayum Karzai,<BR>
brother of the Afghan head of state, no less. Its kaddo<BR>
(sautéed pumpkin) and choppan (charcoaled rack of lamb)<BR>
merit the raves they win from local critics year after<BR>
year. <BR>
<BR>
Attman's is something else again in the ethnic line, a deli<BR>
in business since 1915 whose corned beef - a bit grainy, a<BR>
bit sour, not too salty - deserves to be mentioned in the<BR>
same breath with New York's best. You have to wait in a<BR>
long line at lunchtime for Attman's bulging sandwiches, Dr.<BR>
Brown's cream soda, half-sour dills and all-sour pickled<BR>
onions. The 1100 block of Lombard Street is called "Corned<BR>
Beef Row," but most of it is a wasteland now, except for<BR>
Attman's and the slightly ersatz Lenny's, whose Kelly green<BR>
paint job gives it away. <BR>
<BR>
I wish I could wax as enthusiastic about Baltimore's famous<BR>
pit beef. They serve it in joints on Route 40, the Pulaski<BR>
Highway, a real boulevard of broken dreams, lined with<BR>
cheap motels and shabby car lots. The beef is top round,<BR>
dry-rubbed, grilled over charcoal, sliced thin, slapped<BR>
into a kaiser roll and painted with horseradish. <BR>
<BR>
My friend Calvin Trillin, down from New York, came along<BR>
for a taste test. At Big Fat Daddy's, a sullen kid served<BR>
us drab, dried-out mystery meat that reminded me of<BR>
boarding school. We found the sandwich at Big Al's O.K., if<BR>
not a tenth as enticing as the spiced beef sandwiches<BR>
Chicago loves. <BR>
<BR>
A busy port for more than 250 years, Baltimore has long had<BR>
a sizable Greek population, which gathers at Samos, across<BR>
from the Orthodox church on Oldham Street in East<BR>
Baltimore. In this row-house neighborhood you see two of<BR>
the other things that set the city apart: white marble<BR>
steps called stoops and facades of Formstone, a<BR>
cement-based falseface for porous brick. <BR>
<BR>
Nick Georgalas presides in the kitchen at Samos. Tall,<BR>
mustached, fierce-eyed, he looks like the partisan fighter<BR>
that his father was, and he is one of those cooks who gives<BR>
new life to culinary clichés. His grilled shrimp had too<BR>
much dried oregano for me, but his dolmades, his souvlaki,<BR>
his tsatziki and his grilled pita were worth much more than<BR>
the modest prices asked. <BR>
<BR>
The Black Olive in Fells Point, also Greek-owned, gets in<BR>
trouble because its prices are high. Many people are<BR>
reluctant to spend real money for Greek food (and Chinese<BR>
food), which is a mistake. Owned by Stelios Spiliadis,<BR>
whose brother runs Milos in New York, Black Olive is built<BR>
around a display of fish from far and wide, which are<BR>
presented atop a bank of ice: red snapper from the Gulf of<BR>
Mexico, turbot from the North Sea, daurade from the<BR>
Mediterranean, striped bass from the Chesapeake (which<BR>
Marylanders call rockfish, supposedly because the best ones<BR>
were once caught off the port of Rock Hall). <BR>
<BR>
Simply grilled or pan-fried, dressed with a squirt of lemon<BR>
and a few drops of best extra virgin olive oil, the fish is<BR>
fabulous. So are the mezes, or starters, especially the<BR>
chunky hummus and the olives, which are house-marinated in<BR>
zaatar, a Middle Eastern spice combination that includes<BR>
sumac, crushed sesame seeds and a thymelike regional herb<BR>
from a woody bush. <BR>
<BR>
YOU'LL accuse me of stretching a point, but I would include<BR>
the Women's Industrial Exchange in this roll call of ethnic<BR>
eating in Baltimore. Founded in 1880 as a means of helping<BR>
needy gentlewomen earn an income, it has been going strong<BR>
ever since on the same corner of North Charles Street,<BR>
selling handmade craft articles in the front room and<BR>
handmade WASP food - plain, unadorned, old-fashioned,<BR>
superbly ordinary American food - in the back room. <BR>
<BR>
Outside Greenwich and Locust Valley, there aren't many<BR>
cheerleaders these days for WASP food, but if a few more<BR>
serious eaters would try the industrial exchange (closed<BR>
for renovation until late spring) maybe that would change.<BR>
How's this for lunch: a pile of the best chicken salad<BR>
you've ever tasted, a block of ruby-red tomato aspic and a<BR>
deviled egg, for a big $6.75? Add a cupcake - yes, a<BR>
cupcake - or a wedge of lemon meringue pie for $3. <BR>
<BR>
Mencken fans will have noticed a few things missing. The<BR>
old grouch was a great drinker who called himself<BR>
"omnibibulous" and described the dry martini as "the only<BR>
American invention as perfect as a sonnet." He was a great<BR>
eater, who termed crab à la creole "the most magnificent<BR>
victual yet devised by mortal man." But much of Mencken's<BR>
Baltimore is gone, despite the city's predilection for the<BR>
tried and true. <BR>
<BR>
The hometown beer, National Bohemian, the beloved Natty<BR>
Boh, is brewed in North Carolina now. Other icons of the<BR>
Teutonic culinary culture have vanished as well, including<BR>
many of Mencken's favorite restaurants, like Miller<BR>
Brothers, where my father took me as a lad to eat turtle<BR>
soup; Schellhase's, where Mencken's Saturday Night Club<BR>
met, and Haussner's, which was stuffed with paintings and<BR>
sculptures that brought more than $10 million at auction<BR>
when it closed down. You can still find a snickerdoodle<BR>
cookie, but sour beef and dumplings, Baltimore's version of<BR>
sauerbraten, is disappearing fast. <BR>
<BR>
Depressing to report, Marconi's, a deliciously<BR>
anachronistic French-Italian salon on Saratoga Street, has<BR>
lost much of its charm, thanks to an aesthetically criminal<BR>
remodeling ordered by its new owner, Peter Angelos, a<BR>
strong-willed millionaire who also owns the Orioles. The<BR>
handsome Venetian wallpaper is no more, an ugly acoustic<BR>
ceiling has been installed and the floor has been<BR>
overcleaned. <BR>
<BR>
But the thick broiled lamb chops with electric-green mint<BR>
jelly (a favorite of Mencken's and of my wife, Betsey) have<BR>
survived, at least until now, as has the fudgy chocolate<BR>
sundae so beloved by generations of well-bred Baltimoreans.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
BRIGHT new places have sprung up, of course. One of the<BR>
first was Nancy Longo's Pierpoint, still the place to go<BR>
for modern versions of traditional Baltimore dishes and<BR>
innovative uses of prime Eastern Shore produce. Gotta try<BR>
her smoked crab cakes. Much more recently, the Red Maple, a<BR>
long, skinny room designed by someone just back from the<BR>
Milan Furniture Fair, has mesmerized the city's<BR>
noctambulist young. More a bar than a restaurant, it<BR>
nevertheless serves classy Asian "tapas" like duck egg<BR>
rolls and shrimp and tuna tartare. <BR>
<BR>
But the undisputed prince and princess of Baltimore<BR>
gastronomy at the moment are Tony Foreman and his wife,<BR>
Cindy Wolf. A grape nut and a buddy of Robert Parker, the<BR>
internationally influential critic, who lives not far from<BR>
here, Mr. Foreman oversees the couple's two restaurants,<BR>
Charleston, downtown, and Petit Louis Bistro in<BR>
semi-suburban Roland Park. Neither is Baltimore-specific;<BR>
Petit Louis features dishes like choucroute garni and<BR>
cassoulet, in Paris-level versions, and Charleston's long<BR>
menu owes as much to Maine, South Carolina and Louisiana as<BR>
to Maryland. <BR>
<BR>
"This is an in-between town," Mr. Foreman said over a<BR>
bottle or two of fine Châteauneuf-du-Pape. "Not Southern,<BR>
not Northern. People have a Northern edge and a Southern<BR>
graciousness. They care. If they dig it, they let you know;<BR>
if they don't, they let you know. That makes our job<BR>
easier." <BR>
<BR>
Ms. Wolf's crisp, light-as-air fried green tomatoes make a<BR>
splendid foil for her crab and lobster hash. Her shrimp<BR>
with grits, tasso and andouille take you to New Orleans in<BR>
an instant. Her lamb and pork and ultrafresh fish never<BR>
disappoint. And the cheeses, a dozen or more every night,<BR>
knowledgeably chosen and intelligently served, are enough<BR>
to make any restaurateur proud. <BR>
<BR>
Now why, you may be asking, especially if you grew up just<BR>
after World War II, why has he written all this without a<BR>
single word about Lady Baltimore cakes? Well, those<BR>
delectably rich confections, whose layers are separated by<BR>
fluffy, rosewater-scented white frosting studded with<BR>
chopped raisins, orange peel, figs and pecans, have little<BR>
or nothing to do with this city. <BR>
<BR>
The name originated in "Lady Baltimore," a 1906 novel by<BR>
Owen Wister about a young man who walks into a tearoom in a<BR>
Southern city, modeled on Charleston, S.C., to order a<BR>
wedding cake. What he chooses is a Lady Baltimore cake, no<BR>
doubt about that, but exactly why it is so named is<BR>
unclear. Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, founded<BR>
Maryland, but history records no link between his wife and<BR>
baked goods. Neither of them ever visited North America. <BR>
<BR>
My mother used to make Lady Baltimore cakes for family<BR>
festivities, and they are favorites of mine. I have never<BR>
come across one in a restaurant here, but Eddie's of Roland<BR>
Park, the city's premier fancy grocery, makes a dandy one<BR>
on special order. <BR>
<BR>
<BR>
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/19/dining/19BALT.html?ex=1046683918&ei=1&en=d9d30857d11470bb<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
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