Brewer's Art

Brewer's Art
1106 N. Charles St.
Mt. Vernon, Baltimore
American (new)
www.belgianbeer.com
410-547-6925
Cost: $$$
Reservations: Varies
Date of meal: Sunday September 23, 2007 (8pm)
National Price-Quality Frontier: Inside It
Baltimore Price-Quality Frontier: Inside It

Brewer's Art is very hard to categorize and for a few reasons. One is that for price-point purposes it is really two restaurants: a bar and a restaurant

• Bar: In the front, they have a lounge and bar that serves pub fare. The bar has "light fare" like burgers, sandwiches and pizza ($8-$11). Note that there are lounge tables here, so you don't have to stand or sit at the bar.
  
• Restaurant: In the back, they have a restaurant that serves more substantial entrees. The entrees are rather pricey ($17-$27, where only the vegetarian pasta and one chicken dish are below $22). Note that the restaurant runs a special to get people in on Sunday and Monday nights: a half-dozen $15 bottles of wine. These are entirely drinkable and constitute a great deal; they are also a loss-leader to get you in the door to order the very expensive entrees.
• Both Bar and Restaurant: Both share in common the salads and appetizers ($7-$12). Desserts (which I assume you can get in the bar) are in the $7 range.
  

The upshot of this is that you could plausibly put Brewer's Art into three price-points (see my cost key for the price ranges they imply):

• $$: If you aren't committed to sitting down in the restaurant and ordering entrees, Brewer's Art is moderately priced.
• $$$: If you eat in the restaurant on a Sunday or Monday with the express purpose of ordering a $15 bottle of wine, Brewer's Art is a bit pricey but not unreasonable (I'll say the wine deal is really an entree subsidy so I'll include it in the $$$).
• $$$$: If you eat in the restaurant and order meat or fish entrees, Brewer's Art is quite (and in my view, too) expensive.
  

While I haven't eaten in in the bar/lounge, I suspect this is the better deal. This is confirmed by the fact that it was full on a Sunday night while the restaurant was nearly empty. I plan to come back to try the lounge. Note that you may have trouble getting a table in the lounge during peak times (and I suspect you can't make a reservation for the lounge).

The other reason that it is hard to categorize is that it is very upscale to be a Belgian brew pub.

I liked the decor a lot. The dining room is decorated like an old-world library in a private home in the 19th century. This works better than when I've seen it tried elsewhere, as in The Barclay Prime steakhouse in Philadelphia which adds modernist elements that make it look like they are trying too hard. Brewer's Art reminds me a bit (but only a bit) like the room in The Matrix where Neo is asked to choose between the "blue pill" and the "red pill", but not nearly as run-down. Brewer's Art does look a bit run-down but in a good way, like the building has been around forever and the furniture is nice but old.

With a name like Brewer's Art, you know (or at least suspect) that they take beer seriously. Please note that their website is www.belgianbeer.com; how this wasn't taken is beyond me. They have several beers they brew themselves (and lots of other beers also), so if you like Belgian beer and/or microbrews you probably want to come here. I do like these and didn't get a chance to try these, so I'm looking forward to returning to sit in the lounge and try their pub food and Belgian beers.

Our dining experience had some problems that I'll detail, but I want to lead with the fact that a) some problems in the restaurant were probably idiosyncratic (aka, our bad luck and unlikely to be repeated) and b) this doesn't really reflect badly on the bar/lounge which is very different and I can't wait to try.

We ordered:

• wine ($15, see above) : petite syrah (entirely drinkable, excellent at that price, I'm guessing it is a $10 bottle in a wine store)
• appetizer ($7): pork belly with peaches. At this price-point, I thought this wasn't bad. However, the beaches were cold which was definitely not the way to go and the pork belly , while cooked properly, arrived insufficiently warm. Sauce was nice.
• pasta entree ($17): gnocchi with caramelized shallots and chanterelle mushrooms. This was very good.
• steak frites ($26): fries were too salty. Steak was solid but not amazing. Wine-shallot sauce was a bit heavy for my taste. Frites were too salty but had lots of great herbs (rosemary?) that made the NaCl-fest tolerable.
  
• chocolate torte ($7): pretty good, but the chocolate lacked the rich intensity you want in a torte

According to our server, the chef "accidentally turned the oven off" which led to a 40 minute gap between our ordering and the arrival of the appetizer. I could imagine this being a serious problem if you were even a bit pressed for time. The other off-putting thing about the meal was that my spouse discovered a (rather small and cute) cockroach on the wood wall's wood paneling. This is an old building and such things are probably inevitable and I have no reason to believe the restaurant is in any way unhygienic. The fact that I'm looking forward to going back to the lounge shows I don't think this is a big deal. Still, I could imagine that some people would find this a serious problem also.

Our server was excellent. She was straight with us about which of the inexpensive wines to choose and had a helpful, straightforward, and unstuffy manner that I found appealing given the slightly stuffy decor in the restaurant. One thing she did I really liked was pour both of us a taste of the wine (instead of just the man in the group, which I've always thought was a bit sexist).

In sum, I would return to the lounge for Belgian beer and pub food, but I found the restaurant too expensive for the quality.

Thai Landing

Thai Landing
1207 N. Charles St.
Mount Vernon, Baltimore
410-727-1234
www.thailanding.us
Thai
Cost: $$
Reservations: Not Needed
Date of meal: Monday, September 10, 2007
National Price-Quality Frontier: Inside It
Baltimore Price-Quality Frontier: Inside It


Thai Landing is a perfectly adequate Thai place in Mount Vernon. The space is small and narrow, with decor that is pleasant but nothing special. The walls have some Thai art and objects, but decorations are less extensive than at Thai Restaurant.

I ordered the Pad Thai and chicken green curry ($12 each). While the menu is fairly standard, these are about the most boring things I could have ordered. This is mostly by design; every Thai restaurant offers these dishes and this makes them easy to compare. The portions were relatively small, so that a hungry couple would not be out of line to order three entrees.

While not gross or horrible, I was a little disappointed with the entrees. The Pad Thai lacked punch; it was light on sugar and fish sauce and heavy on a brown liquid that I can only guess was oyster or soy sauce (two things you don't really expect or want in Pad Thai). The green curry was made with string beans that tasted like they were right out of the can; I suspect they were. The basil wasn't flavorful, and the curry also seemed to be missing any sweet or sour elements to add subtlety to the flavor. This is what Thai cooking tastes like if you have to make do without sugar, fish sauce, and fresh vegetables.

If I lived in Mount Vernon and craved Thai food, I'd be open to Thai Landing. However, I absolutely would not travel across town for it. Thai Restaurant in Waverly has better flavors and ingredients with (slightly) nicer decor at the same price point. While Thai Restaurant could survive in a competitive market for Thai food (e.g., Seattle or Philadelphia) with a 20% price reduction, Thai Landing could not.

Iggie's Pizza

Iggie's Pizza
818 N. Calvert
Mount Vernon, Baltimore
pizza
www.iggiespizza.com
410-528-0818
Cost: $$
Reservations: Not needed
Date of meal: September 6, 2007
National Price-Quality Frontier: Inside It
Baltimore Price-Quality Frontier: On It

I went to Izzie's for pizza. It's self-serve. You go up to the counter, order, pay (no tipping), wait, pick up your pizza, bring it to your table, and eat it. It's also BYO. Iggie's is about as upscale as possible given this. On a Thursday evening, it was quite busy with 20-something bohemian Mount Vernon types. Decor is simple but elegantly so. It would be an ideal place for a 2nd date if you were 21.

Pizzas come in 8 inch and 14 inch sizes. The 14 inch pizza was a little small for two (if you are pretty hungry) and a little big for one. The four cheese pizza with garlic was very good. Pizza here is very thin crust; much more Italian than American style. I like this but perhaps others find it a bit dry. Pizzas are interesting: duck confit is a topping, lots of goat cheese, etc. You don't come here for pepperoni. Pizzas were in the $14 range for 14 inch pizzas. They have frozen pizzas you can take home and bake later, but this seems to defeat the purpose.

Personally, I would rather go here than S'ghetti Eddie's. I think this reflects personal taste more than innate superiority. Prices are similar, though Iggie's is more expensive because pizza's there are 16 inches (30 percent larger surface area). Iggie's has far superior decor. Both have interesting options and good ingredients, but the thin-crust thing is more novel. While both aiming to be high-end pizzerias, they are relatively far apart and catering to different crowds. S'ghetti Eddie's is all about the Roland Park parents who want to bring their kids to pizza but want good ingredients and interesting toppings; Eddie's is for single bohemian 20-somethings from Mount Vernon. You couldn't take kids to Iggie's or a date to S'ghette Eddie's. There is room for both; these two products are about as differentiated as two high-end pizzerias can be.

Nam Kang

Nam Kang
2126 Maryland Ave. (at 22nd St.)
Charles North, Baltimore
Korean
410-685-6237
Cost: $$
Reservations: Not needed
Date of meal: September 5, 2007
National Price-Quality Frontier: Inside It
Baltimore Price-Quality Frontier: On It

Nam Kang is a medium-size restaurant in the basement of a rather sketchy block of Charles North (south of Charles Village and North of Mt. Vernon); there are lots of Korean establishments right around here. The inside is far from fancy, but it is clean and has homey touches. (The bathroom could have been worse but it could have smelled better.) A few excellent signs about Nam Kang:

1. When I called, the hostess answered in Korean.
2. Nearly all the patrons were Korean, the main exceptions for the night being my spouse, me, and a Caucasian graduate student I know who speaks in Korean and lived in Korea.

Nearly 100% of the speaking we overheard was in Korean (except for the annoying flat-screen TV showing CNN which we asked them to turn down). While I'm not a stickler for excellent English skills for servers in ethnic restaurants, our server's English was not really good enough to do her job. We were unable to successfully communicate the question "Can we have dish x served without ingredient y?" Despite her limited English, the server was attentive, competent, friendly and tried hard. They were not understaffed.

Panchan were outstanding. For those who haven't done these before, these are the little bowls of vegetables, kimchi, and such that they bring out before the meal. These are free. The highlights for me were the fish cakes (sweet and savory) and a chili-rubbed green vegetable (spicy but not overpowering). The tofu was a little bland.

We ordered bolgogi ($17, Korean barbecued beef in a sizzling platter) that was a bit sweet and quite good, though the price was a bit steep. The Bi Bim Bap ($11 since we got it in a hot stone pot, which is rice with egg and vegetables) was also very good. The stone was hot enough that you got the crispy rice goodness that comes from the rice getting seared against the stone. These are standard dishes and they were perfectly prepared. We also got one of our favorites, which is a scallion pancake (with not-too-spicy green chilis, $11) which was out of sight. Thing of a pizza-sized vegetable-laden version of what you can get as an appetizer in Chinese restaurants. Huge chunks of scallion and chili would just fall out of it. It was oily enough not to be dry but not so much as to be heavy and gross. This could not have been better.

At the end of our meal, they brought complimentary desserty beverages. These were latte colored and cold, with visible grains of rice. It had a rice and (????) bean-paste taste. Normally, I do not really like Asian desserts (a horrible generalization, I know, but I have tried a lot of them in my day) but this one was refreshing, palate cleansing, and tasted pretty good.

I absolutely loved Nam Kang. I think it would be a strong contender is Seattle, LA, or San Francisco (cities with lots of options for Korean food), though it would have to cut prices 20% to be competitive in these cities. I would be happy to bring Korean friends here.

Helmand

Helmand
806 N. Charles St.
Mt. Vernon, Baltimore
410-752-0311
Afghani
www.helmand.com
Cost: $$
Reservations: Recommended
Date of meal: June 2007
National Price-Quality Frontier: Inside It
Baltimore Price-Quality Frontier: On It

Helmand has a great back story. The owner is the brother (or is it cousin? or nephew?) of President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. You can't go to Helmand without someone bringing up this fact. The food is good, though few of us are qualified to judge Afghani food. However, I am qualified to judge Helmand restaurants, as I've been to quite a few. There are Helmands run by Karzai's relatives in Boston (Cambridge, actually), San Francisco, and Chicago.

My favorite is the one in Boston. I went there many times and found the flavors more intense than those at my (only one) visit (so far) to the Baltimore Helmand. When I went to Helmand Baltimore (on a weekday) the wait was extensive despite our reservation. Staff was doing their best but they were a bit overwhelmed. Still, there was a bustle and intimacy to this Helmand that is lacking in the Cambridge one (where tables are more spaced out and the vibe is a little more austere).

I had a vegetarian platter, which was quite nice but nothing special. I was hoping for spicier. Still, this is a solid option for a medium-nice date or dinner with friends. I don't know of another equally nice non-standard ethnic (i.e., not Asian or European) restaurant in Baltimore.

Saffron (Closed)

Saffron
802 N. Charles St.
Mt. Vernon, Baltimore
410-528-1616
Eclectic
www.saffronbaltimore.com
Cost: $$$$
Reservations: Recommended
Date of meal: February 2007
National Price-Quality Frontier: Inside It
Baltimore Price-Quality Frontier: Inside It

The Saffron website indicates that the restaurant is "temporarily closed." I'm not sure how temporary this is. While I believe the restaurant was closed by the time I moved to Baltimore, I was taken there by my now-colleagues when I interviewed for my current position.

I thought it was a perfect place to take someone for work. It was quiet. Decor was plush. To my taste, it was a bit fussy but this kind of formality is probably good for work dinners. Service was good. If it re-opened, I would recommend it for a work dinner in the mid- to high-$20s range.

I don't remember what any of us ate, but I do remember thinking my food was only so-so. Maybe this presaged Saffron's closure, as I've been told that it has a string of very accomplished chefs in the past.

XS

XS
1307 N Charles St. (at Preston)
Mt. Vernon (technically in Mid-Town Belvedere), Baltimore
410-468-0002
Japanese
www.xsbaltimore.com
Cost: $$$
Date of meal: Thursday, August 16, 2007 (9pm)
National Price-Quality Frontier: Inside It
Baltimore Price-Quality Frontier: Inside It

XS is in a skinny building and has four floors. The first one is a coffee shop. The third one is a sushi bar, with additional seating for meals on the second and fourth (half) floors. There is a DJ booth floating at the level of the 4th floor looking down on the 3rd floor.

The sushi is somewhere between so-so and mediocre but is reasonably priced ($15-$20 for sushi dinner combinations). It's clear that food is a loss leader for alcohol sales (e.g., $9 mohitos). Given this, it was disappointing but not surprised to find that drinks were weak (literally as in low alcohol content and metaphorically as in of poor quality). After all, how can one be convinced to buy more alcohol if you feel tipsy after the first drink.

The menu is noteworthy though not in a good way for a foodie. They don't really have serve cooked entrees. They have a few Pan Asian noodle options (e.g., Pad Thai), some appetizers, and sushi. There was a cooked fish (Cod) dish on offer as a special. I suspect this lack of a cooked food menu reflects a dearth of kitchen space.

While I'm glad I went so that I could say I'd been there, this is not a good place for a foodie. They aren't shooting for that so this isn't really something to fault the restaurant owners. I suspect it is a good place to impress a 20 year-old club-goer. Even then, the scenester ambiance is too contrived and nakedly commercial to be convincing.