Review: The Buttonwood Offers Eclectic Plates in Mt. Vernon

Walk into The Buttonwood, down the street from The Walters Art Museum in Mt. Vernon, and you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d wandered into an interior design store instead of a restaurant.

There are statues, fountains, mirrors, figurines, and illuminated shelves filled with ceramics crowding the front of the space, which is painted showroom white, lit by skylights, and features a gorgeous parquet-style wood floor. When you venture further inside, you realize there are tables and chairs: church benches, marble cafe tables, and fan-like porter chairs with velvet cushions—part Episcopalian shabby-chic, part A Passage to India.

This is Minh Quang Vo’s latest project, envisioned as both restaurant and retail space, though only the former has been realized so far. Vo, who owns The Bun Shop half a mile north on Read Street and another one in Towson, opened The Buttonwood at the end of December.

“It’s a bougie Cracker Barrel with retail,” he says with a wide smile. What that means, at least to Vo, is a menu that travels the globe as much as he did before he got into the restaurant business.

Before opening The Bun Shop, Vo was a PhD candidate in sciences at Johns Hopkins. And before that, he was something of a world traveler, visiting places that would later inspire his menu, including Spain, South America, and Uganda. He moved to Baltimore from West Palm Beach, and The Buttonwood is named for his favorite South Florida tree—he even had plans to replant one from Florida, though it didn’t survive the journey, which is why it’s now been painted gold and installed under a skylight among the tables.

“I like the beauty of a well-designed experiment,” says Vo one afternoon from behind the long marble cocktail bar at the back of the restaurant, his long dark hair secured with a fork.

Vo, it should be said, is not only The Buttonwood’s sole owner and designer but also its chef. The menu thus features a fantastic version of parkora, Indian-style fritters with cilantro chutney; Vietnamese braised spareribs and a stellar version of a bánh mì; a bulgogi melt, kind of like a Korean Reuben sandwich; and tandoori fried chicken.

There’s also a terrific egg sandwich called a Ugandan Rolex. It’s a popular street food that Vo lived on when he was in Uganda, here made from an omelet, vegetables, and paratha, the Indian flat bread.

If you ask nicely, your server may refill your dish of cilantro chutney, a blissful condiment that is somehow both hot and cooling and pairs well with many things on the menu, including the fries that come with that excellent bánh mì.

The Buttonwood is an odd and marvelous mash-up of things, both on the menu and in the space itself. Even the floor has a story: Vo says that he befriended a number of squeegee boys at his Mt. Vernon Bun Shop, who ended up helping him build out The Buttonwood, including the floor, which they fashioned out of used wooden pallets.

“It’s not a cuisine, it’s a concept,” says Vo of his restaurant. “Really, I just wanted to make beautiful spaces.”

THE BUTTONWOOD: 527 N. Charles St., Baltimore, 667-260-4534. HOURS: Fri., Sat. 11 a.m. to midnight; Sun., Mon., Wed., Thurs. 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. PRICES: Starters: $7.50-9.50; sandwiches and entrees: $10.50-22; dessert: $10.