Woodberry Kitchen is Back! Who Cares?

Woodberry Tavern menu. Click to embiggen.

When Woodberry Kitchen originally opened to rave reviews, including from people whose opinions I respect, I just rolled my eyes. I'd been to other of Spike Gjerde's restaurants, the ones owned with his brother, Charlie, and while they were good, none were particularly impressive. One was memorable, however., as it was the location of a birthday dinner on a particularly bad birthday. I won't bore you with those details. Let's just say that a whole Maine lobster served in a bowl of oily sauce is almost impossible to eat. Had I been in charge, that lobster would have had its claws and tail pre-cracked, or better yet, I would have removed the meat from the shell and arranged it daintily on a plate. Instead, the Powers That Be dictated that I wrestle with the whole greasy beast, which refused to submit to the cracker (which was also greasy, as were my hands). I should have sent the dish back, but I was already having a terrible day and some part of me must have felt that I deserved my fate. In any case, I've had it out for the Gjerde brothers since then.

Well, mostly Spike. Charlie seems like a nice guy, and his restaurants are all accessible places with decent grub. Spike, however, has long suffered from delusions of grandeur, which can only have been exacerbated by winning a James Beard Award. (Meanwhile, poor Cindy Wolf of Charleston, et. al., is the food world's version of Susan Lucci.) 

Mr Minx and I ate at Woodberry Kitchen a couple of times. Once was for our anniversary in 2011; while the overall experience wasn't optimal, we did have some good food. Another time was a free dinner sponsored by an olive oil producer; I assume I was invited because I was attending the Natural Foods Expo going on at the Convention Center that same week. And the third time was for Restaurant Week a few years back. I chose paw paw pie for dessert. It had the most unappealing curdled texture, beige/vomit color, and little to no flavor, yet somehow it made it out of the pastry kitchen. And while we didn't despise the restaurant, we always wondered how it was so popular. Honestly, I can cook homey dishes like chicken and dumplings myself, so why should I pay good money for it? Yes, it's nice to know that the animals that go into my food have been treated humanely, but I don't want to feel like I'm paying their condo fees.

Woodberry Kitchen has been closed for a while because of Covid, and Spike took advantage of the time off by revamping the place. He sold off the old fixtures and kitschy country barn decor crap and is dedicating what used to be the restaurant dining room to private events. The old private event room on the side is now the restaurant, rebranded as Woodberry Tavern. Just for shits and grins, I put myself on their mailing list so I could find out when they were reopening. Maybe he was going to take a page from Charlie's book and reopen the restaurant as a place the common man can go to enjoy a nice meal. Or maybe not. In advance of the Tavern's opening on December 8, I received an email with a link to the menu, which I have inserted above. 

Spike's out of his fucking mind. $59 for fried chicken with dumplings! $35 for "red pepper squash" and tofu. Perhaps he plans to use part of that $35 to buy a comma. The pig would have to come out in a top hat and do a little soft shoe for me before I'd pay 49 bucks for a schnitzel. Yeah yeah, entrees come with "miso-roasted" carrots, creamed kale, and potatoes with a fancy name that translates to "like a straw doormat" in French. Mr Minx makes incredible pommes pallaisson (note to Spike--you also need to buy an S) regularly, with about .75 worth of ingredients.

I'm sure Woodberry Tavern (hmm...perhaps the prices include an overnight stay?) will still pack in the people who have nothing better to do with their money. The least expensive 2-course meal there, without beverage, will cost $61.50pp including the 23% service fee. (The menu notes, "You are welcome to add additional gratuity for the service staff." Perhaps you should pay your staff a living wage, eh, rather than expect your customers to do it for you, on top of your ridiculous food prices.) We Minxes will only eat there for free, which of course ain't happening. LOL In the meantime, we'll be spending our money at places like True Chesapeake, Cosima, La Cuchara, Petit Louis, and all the mom-and-pop Chinese restaurants we favor. 

Published on minxeats.com

Flashback Friday - Woodberry Kitchen

This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on October 17, 2011.

This was a fun post to write, even if the meal wasn't very much fun.
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Like Cindy Wolf's Charleston, Spike Gjerde's Woodberry Kitchen is touted by both local food press and foodies alike. When I read such effusive praise, I'm always very skeptical, especially since we weren't at all impressed by the one visit we paid to Charleston. We had managed to avoid dining at Woodberry Kitchen for almost four years, but thought maybe it was high time to give in to the hype.

One of the main reasons we've never eaten at Woodberry Kitchen is that every time we check the online menu, we're not tempted by any of the offerings. They all sound so boring and plain and homey. If we want chicken and dumplings or a pork chop, we're perfectly capable of doing that in our own kitchen. And if we do go out and pay $28 for chicken and biscuits, well, the thing better be singing and dancing, I don't care how local/sustainable/free range/spoon fed it is. As it happened, Mr Minx and I were looking for a place in which to celebrate our 11th anniversary. A glance at Woodberry Kitchen's online menu revealed some items we might actually be into trying, so I made a reservation. Unfortunately, by the time October 7th rolled around, the menu was once more full of ho-hum selections. We went anyway.

The restaurant itself is set in one of the many old mill buildings that line the Jones Falls in the Hampden area of Baltimore City. With exposed brick, wooden tables, and plaid-clad servers, the place tries hard to evoke a feeling of modern rusticity. Kind of like the joints run by the bearded, pickle-making hipsters in Brooklyn who have already become a modern stereotype mocked by food critics. There's nothing else quite like Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore, though, so we've fallen for the image.

Not us, however.

If there's a bad table to be had in a restaurant, it's almost guaranteed that Mr Minx and I will get it. Maybe our preference to dine early gets us labeled as middle-aged or elderly rubes who won't appreciate the place and don't deserve a quieter or less-trafficked table. At Woodberry Kitchen, we clearly got the worst table in the house - a tiny one on the second floor, next to the service counter, where we were treated to the sight of servers slicing bread and packing up leftovers for two-and-one-half hours. Over my right shoulder, I could see particulate matter in the air coming from the fryers and the wood oven beneath us, and I knew that when we left the restaurant we'd be reeking of food odors. Immediately to our right, in our peripheral vision, was a line of round paper lantern-style light fixtures suspended from the ceiling. As the evening grew darker, these lights grew to have the effect of a bare lightbulb suspended from a basement ceiling. And strangely, as it got darker outside, the lights dimmed more and more until eventually we were sitting in the shadows.

It took us a while to decide what to eat. Between the stink of the fryers and the din of the music, I was irritated. Eventually, though, we were able to select a few items that seemed interesting. Because we expected small portions, we ordered both a flatbread and the "butcher's board" for starters, along with an order of wood-roasted okra.

The okra came out first. It was not a dish to convert okra-haters, those pussies who whine about the vegetable's delightfully mucilaginous texture. To me, it's more creamy than slimy, and what's more, okra tastes wonderful. WK's okra was still crisp and crunchy, with flavorful spots of char here and there, and made a good start to our meal.

Wood-roasted Richfield heirloom okra, pickled fish peppers

Soon afterward, we received the "foraged" mushroom flatbread. I don't know if the foraging was done in the wild or at the farmer's market, but the pizza-like creation was sublime. The crust was perfect - thin and chewy, the mushrooms nice and roasty, and the cabbage surprising. Forget Woodberry Kitchen - Spike Gjerde needs to open a pizza parlor. Looking down onto all of the many flatbreads arrayed on tables below our perch is all the evidence I need to declare Spike's Pizza a rousing success. (One party of six monopolized a table for about as long as we did. They ordered one dish of popcorn, some cheese and crackers, and five out of six "entrees" were $15 flatbreads. I think our dinner for two cost more than theirs.)

 Foraged mushrooms, savoy cabbage, onion, goat's cheese

With the flatbread came the WK Butcher's Board, a long plank topped with an arrangement of cured meat products. While a nice presentation, the board was longer than the table was wide, so part of it hung out over the edge of the table. The portion was generous, probably better for a party of four to share than a party of two. All of the meats were quite tasty, and I especially enjoyed the head cheese and the air-dried beef, which had a flavor reminiscent of pepperoni. The house-made pretzel sticks and pickles were also quite good.

 WK Butcher's Board - cured pork neck, black ham, pork belly, air-dried beef,
pretzels, head cheese, apricot jam, pickles, brown mustard, and assorted crackery things

Considering that the flatbread and Butcher's Board were so large, I'm rather surprised that our server didn't say anything when we also ordered entrées. Considering how long it took for our entrées to arrive, we probably could have cancelled the order. (Guess they had to kill the cow.)

I ate less than half of my Kitchen Burger and about three of the fries because I wanted to save room for dessert. The burger was fine, I suppose. Cooked perfectly to medium, the meat was juicy, but like most beef these days, it didn't taste particularly beefy. I loved the squishy sesame seed-topped bun though, which was toasted and buttered. The fries were also very good - crisp outside and soft within, like fries should be.

Kitchen Burger - house-ground chuck, lettuce, onion & pickles, fries/ raw cheddar

Mr Minx ordered steak because he was hungry and was surprised at both the generous amount of vegetables and the small amount of steak on the plate. The steak was tender, with a nicely seasoned crust, but the aggressively spicy padron pepper sauce underneath everything killed the flavor of the meat, which didn't have much of the expected "nutty" or "buttery" qualities customary to dry-aged beef.

 Liberty Delight dry-aged tavern steak - fried potatoes, green beans, tomato, padron pepper sauce

We also shared a side dish of underseasoned, slightly sandy, chard.

For dessert, Mr Minx went for the C.M.P., an item touted as the "best thing he ever ate," by Charm City Cakes' Duff Goldman. The bruléed marshmallow sauce on the top was a nice touch, but it made me fear for my dental work. The hubby, on the other hand, loved it.

C.M.P.  - malt ice cream, chocolate sauce, marshmallow fluff, wet peanuts

I had a sundae as well, the "Big Whoop," consisting of pumpkin ice cream layered with a pumpkin whoopie pie, candied pecans, and bourbon caramel. I expect whoopie pies to be soft, but this one had a bit of a crunchy crust. Crunchier still were the candied pecans, both of which lent nice contrast to the melty ice cream. I loved it. (No picture, because by the time dessert arrived, it was so dark on the 2nd floor, the only parts of the sundae visible in the photos I took were the bright blobs of ice cream.)

So while the faux-rustic surroundings, poor lighting, and incredible din were less-than-pleasing to us, I have to admit that the food was pretty darn good. Hype-worthy? Maybe not. But Woodberry Kitchen is certainly busy enough not to need my opinion one way or the other to be successful. Just ask Ravens kicker Billy Cundiff, who scored a much better table than we did.

Woodberry Kitchen
2010 Clipper Park Rd
Baltimore, MD 21211
www.woodberrykitchen.com
(410) 464-8000

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Parts & Labor

We finally went to Parts & Labor. And I almost hate to admit that I loved everything about it.

Why do I hate admitting it? Well, for one thing, it's not much fun to write a review for a truly delicious meal. What else can be said other that dishes are delicious, amazing, tasty, well-prepared, outrageously good, and near perfect? And I can use all of those commendatory words for Parts & Labor.

For another thing, and I know I'm probably in the minority here, I think Spike Gjerde's restaurants are a bit pretentious. Like not serving lemons or soda (soda!) in cocktails at Shoo-Fly because neither are local products. (That policy has changed, due to public outcry. Sometimes you have to give the people what they want.) But Parts & Labor hits all the right notes--good food, good drinks, extremely pleasant service. We even got a table by a window, which made for good photos.

Charcuterie - smoked boar sausage, lomo, bastirma

Parts & Labor is very meat-centric, so vegetarians beware. The building, once a former tire shop, also houses the butchery for the Gjerde empire. Meat comes into the place whole (as in whole pigs and cows) and exits as sausage, charcuterie, and other meaty delights.

We started our meal with a selection of three items from the "salt house," aka charcuterie. There were six or so choices from which we selected a salami-like smoked boar sausage, lomo (a dry cured pork tenderloin), and bastirma, a highly seasoned air-dried beef. The latter, with it's curry-ish flavor, was the table's favorite, but all were outstanding.

Enormous lamb kielbasa

We tried the lamb kielbasa from the sausage selection of the menu. At $12, it was the most expensive selection on the list, but it's extreme deliciousness made it worth every penny. Plus, it was huge. The sausage's smokiness balanced the lamb's usual slight gaminess, and it was juicy and nicely seasoned. I think it was my favorite dish out of all, and we tried a lot.

Pork chop

My Dad is a bit of a fussy eater, and he likes his meat on the well-done side. It would have been a crime to order the restaurant's dry-aged beef well done, so we talked him into the pork chop, cooked to the well side of medium. It was moist and tender and even Dad enjoyed it.

16-oz rib eye

He wouldn't have enjoyed the rib-eye, which came medium-rare. Perfectly cooked and rested, the steak had a nice crust and added flavor from a topping of compound butter and bed of chimichurri sauce.

Korean short ribs, slaw

The Korean short ribs were a pretty close approximation of the kalbi one finds in a Korean restaurant, only, I think, more tender. The sweetness of the marinade was offset by a tangy slaw that would have been the only vegetable on the table had I not reminded our party that man does not live by meat alone.

Wood ash hominy

We tried a dish of hominy, which had a strong corn flavor and reminded me of the Southwest. At a book signing recently, someone lamented that hominy is seldom seen on restaurant menus these days, and to that I say...get thee to Parts & Labor.

Dirty rice with chicken livers, blood sausage, okra

I think the only dish that I had a complaint about was the dirty rice. While there was plenty of "dirt," in the form of chicken livers and blood sausage, I wanted it to taste even more funky.

Grilled potatoes

The grilled fingerling potatoes were buttery and perfect...

Hearth wok with swiss chard, banana peppers, turnips, mushrooms, fermented tomato, benne

...and the Hearth wok was a bowl of deliciousness. I guess I could complain that the serving was too small, compared to everything else on the table, but the combination of flavors was really nice. A little sweet, a little sour (but not agrodolce), a little salty.

After we pigged out on meat, we ordered dessert. It was, after all, my brother's birthday. He chose the chocolate lard cake. Don't worry, it doesn't taste of lard (maybe a bit disappointingly), just of rich chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

Chocolate lard cake

Dad chose the blondie topped with peach conserve and an intriguing salty ice cream. This thing was huge, definitely share-able by two or more people, so I helped him. I had ordered only a single scoop of goat's milk ice cream, which was pleasantly goat-milky.

One hot blondie with salty ice cream and peach conserve

Mr Minx went for a peanut butter and bourbon concoction. It was good, but my favorite part was the super coffee-y ice cream that had noticeable bits of ground coffee beans. I wished I had ordered that AND the goat's milk flavor, but I had plenty to eat with sampling everyone else's desserts.

Bourbon caramel Peanut tart with coffee ice cream

Yes, we made complete pigs of ourselves, and I suffered when the bill came. But it was a special occasion and worth the splurge. I think on future visits we'll limit ourselves to 5 or 6 dishes, rather than 9. And maybe skip dessert. Or maybe we'll just do it all over again.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Aggio Popup at Artifact Coffee

Bryan Voltaggio, owner of Volt and Family Meal in Frederick, Range in DC, and Aggio, an Italian restaurant within Range, is opening a second outpost of Aggio in Power Plant Live! here in Baltimore sometime early this summer. To introduce the restaurant to locals, Spike Gjerde hosted a two-night Aggio pop-up at Artifact Coffee. We managed to snag a table for the first seating on the first night.

First appearances are important, and Aggio hit all the right notes there with a generous bread plate that included ethereal grissini and heartier foccacia. They were served with two dips, one an intensely salty whipped goat ricotta with lemon and olive oil, and an unusual whipped mortadella. At this point, we were pretty happy campers and looking forward to the rest of the meal.

The first of four courses were equally successful. I chose the chioggia beets. Voltaggio likes to play with textures, and in this dish, the naturally sweet beets were presented in both chunks and paper thin slices. I didn't really taste the charred rosemary component of the dish, but really enjoyed the fishiness of the tonnato sauce (made with tuna) and the bottarga (an Italian salted fish roe). It was an inspired combination.

Chioggia beets, tonnato sauce, charred rosemary, pine nuts, bottarga, arugula

Mr Minx's impeccably fresh raw tuna served with orange was also a nice combination of flavors. And because the house lights dimmed dramatically a little while earlier, Mr Minx wasn't sure what he had on his fork at any given time. He enjoyed the little game of "is it orange, or is it tuna?"

Tuna, pistachio, castelvetrano olive, blood orange sugo, citrus pith, radish

For the second course, Mr Minx chose the asparagus and I had the shrimp and polenta.

Asparagus, fava and pea ragu, wild herbs, smoked pecorino, almond

The asparagus was a big disappointment. While the stalks were nicely cooked and juicy/tender, the only flavor in the dish came from the smoked pecorino. It was perhaps a bit too subtle.

Prawns, polenta from buckwheat and yellow corn, sauce fra diavolo

Also too subtle was the prawn dish, a homely festival of brown. I felt it was bland and uninteresting and lacking the promised heat and flavor of the fra diavolo. Clearly the Washington Post's Tom Sietsema, who gave Aggio three stars, was served a different dish. "The seafood choices include a raft of grilled prawns adrift in a dark orange froth of shellfish stock, tomato paste and red chili flakes. 'Too pretty to eat' comes to mind. Ignore the thought and dive in. Beneath the tender seafood is soothing buckwheat polenta."

On to the pasta course, which was much more successful. We passed on the spinach pasta with crab and buttered popcorn to try the whole wheat lumache with lamb ragu and the spaghetti alla chitarra with meatballs.

Lamb ragu, whole wheat lumache, oak smoked pecorino, mustard leaf pesto

The ragu was rich and delicious, with a hearty lamb-gamy flavor. A perfect dish to cozy up with on a cold winter's night.

Meatballs braised in ragu pomodoro, chittara, basil, parmesan

I am not Italian, so I like my pasta drenched in sauce (IMHO, the reason to eat the pasta in the first place). Voltaggio's spaghetti alla chittara was cooked properly al dente and was coated with a rich tomato sauce. The terrific meatballs were fluffy and soft, and according to Sietsema, are made with a portion of mortadella. In other words, they were full of baloney.... 

Dessert was hit or miss. Mr Minx had the cookie plate, featuring lemony "taralli" and chocolate biscotti. Despite the incorrect nomenclature (taralli are crunchy ring shaped crackers, and these were pillowy soft cakelets, more madeleine than cookie), Mr Minx enjoyed both. The "taralli" were especially tasty.

Cookie plate, Meyer lemon taralli, chocolate almond pistachio biscotti

My pistachio and olive plate tasted of neither. The kumquats were the star, as far as I'm concerned, sweetly bitter and bursting with citrus flavor. I wanted the sorbet to be more tangy, and the soft cake to taste like...something. But Voltaggio's textural contrasts are always fun and almost made up for the lack of pistachio.

Pistachio in olives, olive oil cake, pistachio cream, cara cara orange sorbet, crispy pomegranate, kumquats

We're eager to visit Aggio in its eventual destination downtown, realizing that part of the inconsistency of this meal may have been due to the tiny kitchen space at Artifact. It will be interesting to see how well the restaurant does in Power Plant Live!, which is still the Brokerage in my mind (a lame place, even when it was popular).

Posted on Minxeats.com.

California Olive Oil Council

Because Mr Minx and I had registered for the Natural Foods Expo, we were invited to attend a dinner at Woodberry Kitchen sponsored by the California Olive Oil Council. The California Olive Oil Council (COOC) is a non-profit marketing and trade association that promotes the consumption of California extra virgin olive oil. They represent 90% of all olive oil production in California. Because their standards are pretty strict, you can be assured that any extra virgin olive oil bearing a COOC seal is top-notch stuff that passed various chemical analysis standards and was taste-tested by the organization's taste panel.

There was a tasting of eight olive oils before dinner, but we only got to sample half of them, because you know how people like to stand in front of things and chat and generally get in the way. Rather than fight them, we got glasses of wine and walked away, figuring there would be plenty more oil to taste during dinner.

I like a good, peppery olive oil with a fairly strong green fruit flavor and moderate bitterness. The oils we did try on their own were very mild to my palate, and I think that made them perfect for cooking, as opposed to raw applications. We did start off the meal with an arugula salad though, topped with a lovely ricotta-like goat's cheese and pecans, and a creamy dressing containing olive oil from the producer Bari.

Roasted fall vegetables (Bari)

One of my favorite dishes was the bowl of glorious roasted fall vegetables, brought to the table family style (as were the remaining savory dishes). There were at least three colors of carrot in there, eggplant and squash, all bathed in more of the Bari olive oil. I love me some roasted carrots, and these were delicious. I just wish they had been peeled....

House-made linguine, garlic & herbs, Eve's Dream, cherry tomatoes
bread crumbs (Calivirgin)

Another fine dish was the tender linguine, served with a simple sauce of Calivirgin olive oil, garlic, and herbs. One of the other diners at our table determined that the pasta would be better without the garlic, so she ordered another dish to be prepared that way. And what do you know - she was absolutely right. Without the pungent garlic, the flavors of the olive oil and the cherry tomatoes and bits of other vegetables were more evident.

Slow-cooked swordfish, Anson Mills rice, kale,
summer garlic (Pasolivo)

We also ate a lovely tender swordfish with a soupy rice and vegetable combination. The garlic wasn't as evident in this dish as in the pasta dish, so all of the flavors were able to sing. This one was prepared with an oil from producer Pasolivo, who also produces oils flavored with citrus.

Oven-roasted chicken, braised chard, carrots
Enzo green sauce

The final savory dish was a perfectly roasted chicken flavored with rosemary, with more of those terrific carrots, and a green sauce made with certified organic Enzo olive oil.

Ascolano cake, highland bitters, fig conserve,
fig-peach ice cream

There was also an olive oil dessert featuring a cakelet made with Ascolano olive oil from the producer Lucero. With its almost tropical fruitiness, this oil worked beautifully without making the cake taste like, well, olive oil. The fig conserve, made in house of course, was delicious, but the flavors in the ice cream were too mild to discern, perhaps because the bitters in the whipped cream were too strong.

Overall, the meal was a nice introduction to California olive oils. To be honest, we tend to buy oils we can afford, regardless of the region in which they were produced, and regardless of flavor. Hey - they don't offer olive oil tastings at the Giant. But when we're in the market for a high quality oil, we will certainly look toward the olive oils of California, and I'll be keeping an eye out for their quality seal.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats.



Posted on Minxeats.com.