Best Restaurants in Baltimore

AAfter what can be described as the salad days of Baltimore's culinary expansion in the past several years, the upscale dining scene's bubble has finally burst. Last year sounded the death knell for far too many greats—Fork & Wrench, Jack's Bistro, Modern Cook Shop, Parts & Labor (sniff, sniff), Salt Tavern, Wit & Wisdom—so let us pause for a moment of silence to honor those we’ve lost.

STOKING THE FIRE AT FLAMANT BEFORE DINNER SERVICE.

But just as restaurants continue to close, those that remain are at the top of their game. Whether these establishments have stood the test of time and trends (happy 50-plus to Restaurante Tio Pepe and The Prime Rib!) or survived fire and flood (Peter’s Inn and La Cuchara, respectively), we’re dubbing 2019 the year of “survival of the restaurant fittest.”

In the fly-by-night, blink-and-you-missed-it gastronomic world these days, we also salute those Charm City restaurants that have weathered the ups and downs, like our cover model, Cinghiale, a Harbor East institution that continues to delight night after night, despite being in the midst of a massive construction zone, as well as some stiff new competition, or the newly rebranded Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen, where executive chef Doug Wetzel, a triathlete who almost died of severe heatstroke while competing in 2015, represents the ultimate comeback story.

But mere endurance isn’t enough. The restaurants that persist have one thing in common at the core. They connect us, trigger a memory, leave us with a sense of longing, remind us of our childhoods—or our travels—offer us something new or daring that teaches us or deepens us in some way. (After some mushrooms at Foraged, you’ll never take a walk in the woods in quite the same way again.) These are the restaurants that have fed us well, for sure. But they’ve done more than that: They’ve moved us in some inexpressible way and, if we’ve looked up between bites to really look—and listen—they’ve told us a story.

The restaurants on this list—hailing from still-trendy Hampden to family-friendly Columbia to the up-and-coming Downtown district and historic Annapolis—have done just that. To prove our point, we take you behind the scenes at four special spots: two old-timers that have enjoyed recent reincarnations and two promising newcomers that have quickly made their marks while feeling like they’ve been here all along. In this issue, we honor the 50 spots that are not only surviving but thriving, making Baltimore a delicious place to eat—and live.

Ceviche Clasico WITH ANDEAN CORN in leche de tigre AT PUERTO 511.

PARIS-BREST at Chez Hugo Bistro.

DOWNTOWN / 206 E. Redwood St.

By Lauren Cohen

chef-owner STEVE MONNIER PREPS FOR SERVICE.

Tasting menus are somewhat of a specialty for Monnier, who previously owned the prix-fixe-focused Arômes in Hampden. At Hugo, a polished sequel inside the historic downtown Merchant’s Club, he’s focused on more familiar fare, while still employing French techniques. It’s evident, though, that the experimental menus—which he offers only on Wednesday and Thursday nights—are what keep him ignited.

At 6 p.m., maître d' Marquette Shaw calls down to the prep space to alert the team that the first table has arrived. Three cooks, led by chef de cuisine Jeff Schultz, take their positions in the open kitchen, whose pièce de résistance is a flickering hearth where most of the grilling and smoking is done. Hanging above it is a string of drying celeriac strands that will later be used in a bacon-infused “tagliatelle” topped with white truffles.

Monnier takes his post and begins assembling a carrot tartare with black radish and Champagne vinegar that he carefully wraps in sorrel leaves. In the meantime, the rest of the team begins cooking proteins for the bistro’s signature boeuf bourguignon and cassoulet toulousain. Though Monnier didn’t have time to print the tasting menu for service coordinator Ashley Hanrahan on this night, she’s accustomed to his style. “I’ve worked a lot of dinners with him,” she says. “But there will always be a surprise. He’ll use a different sauce or something that I would never see coming.’”

As he places a quenelle of sunchoke hummus with roasted pumpkin seeds atop a pair of French porcelain plates, a special visitor steals the chef’s attention. It’s his five-year-old son, the restaurant’s namesake, Hugo.

BANQUETTE IN DINING ROOM at Chez Hugo Bistro.

“It’s time to get to work man,” jokes general manager Christopher Scott, as he crouches down to give Hugo a hug. The wide-eyed boy high-fives all of the chefs across the line before suiting up in a blue-and-white apron that Monnier has to tie around his waist twice. He hangs around the kitchen briefly before retreating to the dining room, where he waits patiently for his order: a medium-rare burger with American cheese.

Hugo’s presence brings out the true essence of this restaurant. Though it has only been open for a year, the staff has come to rely on one another like family. Lined up above the range are a collection of magnets that the chefs have all brought back as souvenirs for one another, from places as far as California and Peru.

Several hours later, the chefs assemble a foie gras-filled “Snickers” bar as the final dish of the tasting menu. Though Monnier and his team will do it all again the following evening, it never gets mundane. “At the end of the day, it’s a bistro,” he says. “We’re very casual. We just try to do better every day and not take ourselves too seriously.”

BEEF TENDERLOIN with HOUSE-MADE STEAK SAUCE AND fingerling potatoes; A SIDE OF ONION RINGs; the wedge salad; a server FOLDS LINENS aT cunningham’s.

Towson / 1 Olympic Pl.

The pitch-perfect balance of modern and rustic never ceases to amaze us at this lively Towson spot. The dining room dazzles with dangling crystal, dim lighting, and plush seating, while the menu offers countryside cuisine sourced directly from the restaurant’s Cockeysville farm. Scroll through the iPad list of worldly wines before choosing from wood-fired pizzas, pristine pastas, and farm-to-fork meats like a plump pork chop with sweet apple butter. On a winter’s visit, a spot-on recommendation from our server was the royal sea bass in a tomato stew with chorizo and littleneck clams. Hunks of crusty sourdough from the restaurant’s in-house bakery came in handy for lapping up the sweet sauce. If you happen to save room for dessert, a shareable sundae with caramel popcorn is an enticing sendoff.

AGNOLOTTI IN Pea purée; CHICKEN FORGIONE WITH Spicy broccolini; ROASTED JAPANESE EGGPLANT WITH Lemon yogurt, Fresno peppers, mint, AND pistachios; CHEF PLATES A DISH at Duck, Duck Goose.

FELLS POINT / 814 S. Broadway

Duck Duck Goose OWNER-CHEF Ashish Alfred

GRILLED LOBSTER; LEMON-PEAR DOUGHNUTs WITH fromage blanc GELATO AND ACAcia honey DRIZZLE AT FLAMANT.

ANNAPOLIS / 17 Annapolis St.

As Belgian chef Frederik De Pue shakes up the culinary no-man’s-land of West Annapolis, there’s a new stunner in the state capital. Pick any nook in this charming bungalow and prepare to pique your senses with unique riffs on classic European cuisine. This space is all about intimacy, whether you’re watching the chef sous vide your buttery duck breast a l’orange from the open kitchen or simply sucking down broiled bone marrow with bourbon flambé and salt-cured capers while basking in the glow of the fireplace. The crock of bouillabaisse meant for two—a mountain of just-caught fish swimming in a fragrant broth—honors the town’s claim to fame as a seafood city. At meal’s end, keep those warm and fuzzy feelings coming by roasting your own s’mores on the front-patio fire pit. 

ROASTING BRUSSELS SPROUTS; A BEET SALAD; THE MUSHROOM STEW AT FORAGED.

HAMPDEN / 3520 Chestnut Ave.

By JANE MARION

OWNER-CHEF, CHRIS AMENDOLA.

It’s a Thursday afternoon at Foraged, and chef-owner Chris Amendola is trimming turnips and readying radishes that will later get glazed and tossed into the vegetarian risotto. With his slight build and man bun, Amendola looks younger than his 34 years, though he’s fit a lot into them, working in kitchens alongside famed chefs including James Beard Award-winner Dan Barber of Blue Hill Farm and Sean Brock of Husk. “Sean Brock was one of the calmest chefs I’ve ever known,” says Amendola, “but Dan Barber would talk down to you and make you feel like a worthless piece of shit.” In his own kitchen, Amendola exudes the sense of calm and confidence that comes with being your own boss. By 4 p.m., he’s received his meat—beef, pork, chicken—from Rettland Farm; green garlic, beets, broccoli rabe, and potatoes from Third Way, Karma, and Moon Valley farms; and oysters from Sapidus Farms.

After a string of burn-out jobs, the avid mushroom forager briefly considered another line of work before deciding to open Foraged—his first restaurant—in December 2017. “I’d like to think I could make it outside restaurants,” says Amendola. “But I don’t think I could.” He assembled a team of familiar faces—Nico Bustos as his house manager and Chris Lewis, his sous chef, both of whom he worked with at Fleet Street Kitchen. “The baby” is Stephen Stone, a game designer by day, whom Amendola hired as a line cook after Stone messaged him on Instagram. “His entire feed was food,” recalls the chef.

THE PLANT WALL at foraged.

After family meal, Stone, who works the fryer and cold station, runs watermelon radishes through the mandolin for a beet salad. Meanwhile, Lewis oversees the preparations of the proteins and Amendola works other elements of the hot dishes, including his mushroom stew, which mainly features ingredients he has foraged himself. By 7 p.m., most of the patrons, including chef Jerry Pellegrino and his party of four, have arrived—all at the same time. Now it’s Nico’s chance to sell the seasonal menu, which reads like a field guide to the Maryland woods. “I can count on one hand how many times something has gone back to the kitchen,” he says, as customers are ever-appreciative. One diner stops by the kitchen to gush: “Your meat game is off the hook.” Another expresses her amazement that “even in the bathroom there’s basil growing.” In a rare down moment, Amendola peers out into the dining room. “I’m looking at the expressions on their faces as dishes arrive,” he says. “I like to see their initial reactions.” But it’s really their final feedback that speaks the loudest. Says the chef, “I like watching the plates come back completely clean.”

SEAFOOD SALAD AND MISS JEAN’S RED CRAB SOUP; DINING ROOM AT GERTRUDE’S CHESAPEAKE KITCHEN. FRIED OYSTERS READY FOR PLATING.

CHARLES VILLAGE / 10 Art Museum Dr.

By JESS MAYHUGH

CHEF DOUG WETZEL AT WORK IN THE KITCHEN.

Clad in a simple black apron, John Shields glides through the dining room of his restaurant, Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen, and patrons start to buzz: “There’s John!” “Is he cooking tonight?” With his bright eyes and silver hair, he moves beyond the bar to a dimly lit enclave and introduces Olga, who is lighting votives. “She does this to make it smell like a church,” he cracks, before swinging open the right door to the kitchen.

“Now we have to get through Kelly. He’s like a wall,” Shields says of his expediter, who is prepping cups of tartar and cocktail sauces. Racks to the left of the glowing ovens are piled floor-to-ceiling with trays of pan-fried chicken and domes of jumbo-lump crab.

Just past the expo station is Eddie Knott wrapping asparagus stalks in prosciutto. “We’ve got a party on the terrace tonight. Eddie is a master caterer and has been here for years,” Shields explains. Behind him, Yolanda Johnson, a former Army cook, turns out tons of soup and, apparently, the latest celebrity gossip. Shields calls her “the soup queen of the Pa-taps-a-co” in his best Bawlmerese. There’s Maria Cruz, or “Mama” (Olga’s mom), the kitchen’s matriarch, who has a shrine to the Pope and Lady of Guadalupe at her dishwashing station. At the cooktops are Minas Lentis, at the restaurant for 10 years, and Chico Lizama, helping sauté tonight. Frying pans hiss, oven timers beep, and the distinct smell of Old Bay wafts through the air. “This is close quarters back here,” says Shields. “The whole thing becomes a real dance.”

Noticeably absent from the spectacle is executive chef Doug Wetzel who, since 2007, has been posted between pastry and expo so he can see the lay of the land. But he hasn’t been here in weeks. “I guess you could call it a sabbatical,” he explains later. “I need time to rewire the way I think.”

Nearly four years ago, on May 30, 2015, Wetzel was in tip-top shape competing in the Rock Hall International Triathlon on the Eastern Shore. Right after the 1500-meter swim and 24.5-mile bike ride, the 32-year-old collapsed from heatstroke. At death’s door, he was flown to Shock Trauma in Baltimore, where a team of nearly 200 brought him back from multiple organ failure. By the next day, he was undergoing a liver transplant and began the arduous process of recovery. Miraculously, before Thanksgiving, he was back to work full-time. “What you do is minimize the entire event,” Wetzel says. “You don’t want to deal with it, so you think, ‘I'm healing. No big deal, I dodged a bullet.’” Still in a wheelchair, he came to work to do orders one Monday in October. “Work blocked all the bad stuff. I even randomly started a doughnut business that winter. It all makes sense to me now—you keep piling on to distract yourself from what you’re really going through.”

Wetzel worked 300-cover lunches during the Matisse-Diebenkorn exhibit at the adjacent Baltimore Museum of Art in 2016. He even spearheaded the restaurant’s recent menu transformation from Gertrude’s to Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen. But now, after a dizzying few years, the chef admits that he never let himself process his own trauma and is suffering from anxiety and depression. “This has been a weird but natural evolution of me trying to fill my time differently,” he says, tearfully. “I realize now that work was a coping mechanism. I became a huge workaholic.” As Shields sees it: “He was so appreciative to be alive that he started to do everything. He was always like that, but this was like whoa.” While Wetzel knew it was time to take a break in late 2018—and that his close relationship with Shields would allow him to do just that—he knew his absence from the kitchen would be temporary. He plans to come back gradually, on a part-time basis, and achieve a healthy work-life balance that feels right for him and his wife, Kacey. “There is this core family at Gertrude’s,” Wetzel says. “The kitchen feels like home for me, and it’s a place where I feel safe.”

GERTRUDE’S STAFF INSIDE THE BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART.

Plus, Wetzel is energized by the new menu he developed: creative small plates, a fashionable cocktail menu, and fresh takes on sustainable seafood. “When we first opened, the BMA was this foreboding building on a hill,” Shields says. “But now you see art students studying on the steps, more exciting exhibits. It’s really alive now, and we want to mirror that.” Adding to the signature crab cakes and fried chicken are dishes like crabby “poutine,” mini shepherd’s pie croquettes, and Baltimore catties—a play on a traditional coddie using blue catfish. “We looked at the menu and focused on what people really like, embracing this idea that we’re not stuck,” Wetzel says. “I thought outside the box to come up with dishes I’d want to eat. It didn’t have to feel like old Gertrude’s.”

Though there is certainly nothing wrong with that. This grand dame—with its blue-haired regulars and sculpture garden parties—has clearly been doing something right. You can see it back in the cramped but congenial kitchen, where decades-old staff laugh at Yolanda’s jokes, worship the ground that Mama walks on, and listen when Lizama says that an order is lagging. This is the where Shields took a chance 20 years ago and it’s where, right between pastry and expo, a perch will be waiting for Wetzel when he is ready to come back. “If everyone is happy and in harmony in the kitchen, it’s going to show in the food,” Wetzel says. “We’re not perfect, no one is. But I’m a firm believer that happy chefs make better food.”

OWNERS BUD AND KARIN TIFFANY; THE bar; GARLIC BREAD; TUNA TARTAR WITH FRIED WONTONS at peter's inn.

FELLS POINT / 504 S. Ann St.

By Lydia Woolever

STEPPING INSIDE Peter’s Inn.

One of the first things you notice upon entering Peter’s Inn is that the marlin still stands. One wintry night toward the end of 2017, not long after owners Karin and Bud Tiffany headed upstairs to bed, their first-floor rowhome restaurant nearly met its demise when a cast-aside cigarette engulfed the Fells Point institution in flames. The building’s façade was badly burned, and the interior was ravaged with smoke and water damage, leaving much of the iconic bric-a-brac stashed away for a costly cleaning. For longtime regulars, the newly bare walls are jarring at first—notwithstanding the old faithful stuffed fish, which now hangs above the bar—but it doesn’t take long to realize that the décor wasn’t what made Peter’s Peter’s anyway.

“I’ll tell you what I see,” says Karin before heading back to her tiny kitchen one early December evening. “I see old people, young people, black people, white people, Hons, Roland Park ladies, Orthodox Jews, artists. Peter’s is a great equalizer.”

Karin wouldn’t wish the fire on her worst enemy, not with all the insurance and renovation headaches that followed them well into 2018, but she has found a sense of renewal in its wake. "First of all, you get to start over,” she says. “That’s nice at 53. It’s also really tiring and scary.” Now, after a 10-month hiatus, you’d never know they closed. A gap like that can be the death of a restaurant, but much as the funds flooded in to help the Tiffanys rebuild, so did the customers, both loyal habitués and wide-eyed newcomers, once their former biker bar was resurrected.

On this night, lone drinkers tie one on at the bar, lovestruck couples lean over candlelit two-tops, and large parties cram into the back tables beneath the old oil paintings of Karin’s great-grandparents. They’re not here for grain bowls or zucchini noodles, which seem to be everywhere these days, except maybe here. Instead, they’ve gathered for the begrudgingly dependable charm—the tattooed waitstaff, the famous garlic bread, that perfectly seared petit filet. (Not to mention Bud’s own pot de creme desserts.) Sure, the tin ceiling is new, as are the glitzy chandeliers, but nudie artwork still hangs on the bathroom walls, and the neon “Cocktails” sign still tips its martini, now fittingly above the liquor bottles—a sort of last beacon of Old Baltimore. 

THE back dining room at Peter’s Inn.

A night at Peter’s unfolds like a scene in a film by John Waters (who unsurprisingly frequents the restaurant)—a beautiful chaos that gets louder and lewder as the hours wane on. You come to be a part of it. That the food happens to taste good, if not extraordinary, is just a bonus. 

“We’re the most charming sociopaths you’ll ever meet,” says Karin with a wicked smile, holding court at the end of the bar after the dinner rush as the old marlin watches overhead. “We’re humbled,” says Bud, looking around the full house. “It still feels like the same Peter’s, just a little tidied up.”

A TRIO OF CEVICHES; THE DINING ROOM; CHEF-Owner JOSE VICTORIO ALARCON at Puerto 511.

DOWNTOWN / 102 W. Clay St.

Situated on an otherwise run-down street in Baltimore’s Bromo Arts District, the unassuming Puerto 511 would be easy to overlook.But don’t. Owned by Peruvian-born chef Jose Victorio Alarcon and his wife, Connie, we can say with certainty—having just made it down the mountains of Machu Picchu ourselves—that this BYOB stunner offers thrillingly authentic dishes you won’t find anywhere else in town. Look for traditional techniques mixed with local ingredients such as grilled skewers of veal heart marinated in aji panca sauce and served with Peruvian corn and rocoto pepper sauce or a citrusy ceviche, including octopus, squid, white fish, sweet potato, and aji limo chile bathing in smoked tiger milk, as well as Asian fusion dishes (wok-fried rice with seafood and plantains, for instance) integral to Peruvian cuisine. Make this part of your regular restaurant rotation, but if it’s your first time, take the weekend-only (that’s Fridays and Saturdays) $59 per person prix-fixe tasting tour.

*[Editor’s Note: After our issue went to press, we were saddened to hear that Lupa, which appears on this list, was closing. “Maybe one day we can find a house for this shewolf,” wrote co-owner Tony Foreman on Instagram. “But, for now, ciao!”]