Dining Out: a meal with art and soul
by Lynn Williams
maindish@baltimoreguide.com
Waverly has been teetering on the cusp of trendiness for a couple of decades now, without ever quite making it. Yet there are signifiers that the former home of the Orioles and Colts is making a turnaround.
It has an historic district lined with beautifully kept Victorian houses, a massive newish supermarket, and a farmer’s market where you can find some of the best chefs in town shopping on Saturday morning. Yes, it’s still a little rough around the edges, but who would have thought, once upon a time, that blue-collar bastions such as Canton and Hampden would become so hot?
The restaurant scene is gentifying, too. Neighborhood stalwarts such as The Thai Restaurant and Pete’s Grille have been joined by a genuinely stylish, white-tablecloth café, Darker Than Blue.
Named for a Curtis Mayfield tune, Darker Than Blue Café is the brainchild of Casey Jenkins, a Culinary Institute of America-trained chef who previously worked at The Water’s Edge and Paolo’s Harborplace. His aim at Darker Than Blue is to fuse fine dining with the soulful cooking of the African-American South, with dishes such as slow-roasted baby back ribs, crab cakes with jasmine rice and citrus-steamed corn, and a fried chicken platter with baked macaroni and cheese, candied yams and sautéed baby spinach.
My Waverly-based friend Ann and I decided to drop by the all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch, which is the best possible way to sample the chef’s strengths. (Separate seatings are held from 11 to 12:30 and 1 to 2:45, so that the food does not languish on the steam table; egg dishes and other breakfast items can also be ordered from the kitchen.) It was quite a spread: fried chicken, cornmeal-crusted catfish, sausage patties with thick sausage gravy, petite salmon cakes, salty, aromatic greens, yams, cornbread, hot grits. Nothing was gussied up—i.e., no lobster or truffle oil in the macaroni—but was made with a chef’s eye for the best ingredients, and expert spicing and preparation. This is soul food just the way a group of elderly black church-ladies would do it—if, of course, they had degrees from the Culinary Institute of America.
The star of the meal? The baked macaroni and cheese: rich and creamy inside, crusty outside, and made with a distinctive, flavorful cheddar. I’ve had tons of mac ‘n’ cheese in my time, and make a pretty good one too, but this is undoubtedly the best in town. Maybe the world.
The dining room pays tribute to jazz and blues, both in the artwork that lines the brick-red walls and the traditional Crescent City look of the space, with its ceiling fans and white tablecloths. You’ll hear them on, too—in the background for now, but eventually live. Later this spring, Jenkins and his business partners plan to open an upstairs room that will feature performances on weekends. If you want something jazzy to drink, though, bring your own; the strongest thing this café serves is peach-mango tea.
Darker Than Blue Café
3034 Greenmount Ave.
Hours: Open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tues.-Thurs., 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fri-Sat., 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sun.
Phone: 443-872-4468
Our brunch for two: $37.70
The Latest Dish…
Most fundraising galas offer glamorous food, but the Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland’s Culinary Extravaganza is in a class of its own. The meals that the organization prepares for the homebound and elderly are pretty good themselves—or so reports my mother, who used the service after a recent operation—but for the Extravaganza they pull out all the stops, bringing in star chefs and caterers, two dozen of them, to set up stations. This year’s roster includes such well-known names as Nino Germano, Nancy Longo, Michel Tersiguel and Duff Goldman. The event is scheduled for April 7 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the M&T Pavilion at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center (home of the Hippodrome). Tickets are $150, $115 of which is tax-deductible. To get yours, call 410-558-0932, or place an order at www.mealsonwheelsmd.org/culinary/tickets.
