On Saturday night, Jamie and I joined some friends in Baltimore, Hillary and Glenn, at
Woodberry Kitchen for dinner. This is a very different restaurant. The atmosphere is causal hip and greatly profits from the restaurant's location in an old factory turned art studio, now on its third life as some kind of a planned community. The service was highly competent but unusual, our waitress displaying a passion for the food she was serving with an air of proprietorship that wait staffs almost never display (and of which I thoroughly approve). The menu focuses on local, organic foods and the preparation is an odd blend of upscaled and down home American that (usually) works quite well.
Glenn and Hillary have been to this restaurant many times so they knew the drill. We began by ordering off of their very creative list of cocktails - more flash and flare than substance (though I approve of their wine flight offering). Rather than appetizers we ordered "snacks": Ladyfinger Popcorn, Black Rock Orchard Pears, French Breakfast Radishes, and Deviled Eggs (with shaved ham on top - these were my favorite). The popcorn was small and, therefore, hard to eat, the tarragon butter with the Radishes was lovely, and the pears were poached (I'm pretty sure) and sweetened with a buckwheat honey, Jamie's favorite condiment at the moment. These are literally snacks, more along the lines of tapas than appetizers: just enough to warm you palette for the upcoming feast.
Next we shared three flat breads. Before detailing these I'd like to rant about flat bread for a moment. It's become very popular to have flat bread on your menu lately but these tend to be much more akin to pizza than true flat bread. The flat bread at Woodberry Kitchen is heavily leaning towards pizza and only really passes as flat bread because the topics are sparse. That being said, they were delicious. My favorite was a shrimp and pork belly combination that was simply decedent. Next came the short ribs with an onion chutney, and finally a pumpkin and squash combination that was wonderfully seasonal, though I thought the root veggies should have been cooked a bit more (opposite of my usual complaint).
For our entrees, Hillary had a baked rigatoni with sausage that was exactly what you would want such a dish to be - perfect comfort food. Jamie had a butcher's plate with a variety of meats (from blood pudding to speck) to sample, some mustard, and toast points. This was the most disappointing dish of the evening. Jamie said the bacon was off: kind of an incredible feat, not sure how they managed. Glenn had chicken and waffles, a slightly healthier version of a soul food favorite. Instead of deep frying the chicken they pan fry it between two cast iron skillets to get it crispy. The dish was excellent. I had one of their specials, scallops with sweet potato gnochhi. This was awesome. I am very pleased I ordered it, though it was hard to choose between it and the other special, same day slaughtered, free range, organic veal. I would have liked to taste that as well.
I skipped desert but the other's were quite pleased with theirs, including a sundae that had been super hyped on the food network (looked like a pretty regular sundae to me, except for the sugar glazed lid on top). I did have a terrible cup of espresso though (Jamie's was better - not sure what happened there).
I really want to go back to Woodberry Kitchen and check out the super lush sounding Sunday Brunch. I'd also like to sample their oysters, which no one else at the table seemed particularly interested in doing. The food was excellent, if a bit pricey for dressed up home cookin'. Overall I'd say that this is one of the better restaurants I've eaten at in Baltimore, after Charleston (one of my favorite restaurants in the country) and Petite Louis.
