The Baltimore area is a very special place: great music, great theater, great museums, great sports (usually) and, without a doubt, great restaurants. No matter what part of town you live in, you’ll find many interesting restaurants, both old and new.
Here are mine, beginning with where I live: Towson.
The Nordstrom Café and Nordstrom Restaurant
Convenience is major since I live across the street and walk at the Nordstrom Mall for exercise. Once a week after our three-mile walk, friends Lina and Roy and I go to the Nordstrom Café. While Roy orders gourmet tea, Lina and I each get a mango-citrus smoothie. Freshly made, absolutely delicious.
Lunches at the Nordstrom Restaurant include a variety of salads and sandwiches, which come with a salad, all fresh. I mostly go with friends Cinda or Deb, and we start with Nordstrom’s special tomato-basil soup, which is for sale separately. Service is excellent, and one can sit and chat for hours, often with Amanda, Nordstrom’s store manager.
First Watch
Founded in 1983 in Florida, this restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch first came to the Baltimore area in 2006, in Pikesville. My lawyer friend Stu introduced me to First Watch in the Giant Shopping Center, across from the Timonium Fairgrounds. (There is now another First Watch in Towson.)
Their special steel-cut oatmeal with fresh fruit is the best breakfast. Their lunch is the best bargain: soup and a large salad or large sandwich for under $20.
They also offer seasonal healthy beverages. Some customers come daily.
The Gourmet at Kenilworth
A spin-off from the Catonsville Gourmet, it opened in 2021. My go-to lunch, usually with friends Wanda or Ann, is the strawberry-feta-tuna salad: healthy, delicious and enough for the next day. Their desserts are “to die for,” as the saying goes. Like my friend David, I order the same thing in whatever restaurant I am in. So, for desserts at the Gourmet, it is definitely tiramisu.
Fish dinners at the Gourmet are excellent. My choice: rockfish, which comes with potatoes and a perfectly cooked vegetable medley. The restaurant also offers many oyster specialties.
Petit Louis Bistro
Making my way to Roland Park, Petit Louis Bistro, a 25-year-old Foreman Wolf-owned restaurant, never disappoints. A bit noisy on week-ends, it does resemble a Paris bistro. For lunch, my police friend Stan and I each order the salmon filet entrée. With friend Sally, I often order the vegetable omelet or the quiche Lorraine. Each comes with an excellent mesclun salad. There is a daily prix fixe and service is superb.
Johnny’s
Petit Louis’ downstairs neighbor, also a Foreman Wolf-owned restaurant, Johnny’s is more casual and with great choices. Their Tuesday half-priced burgers feature turkey burgers, beef burgers, as well as bean and veggie burgers. My personal favorite — again, I pretty much have the same entrée in each of my favorite restaurants — is their beet salad. Although it is not always on the menu, I can always order it. If I or a friend is having a birthday, the server will supply a free dessert.
Although I have been to Johnny’s with many friends, it is most fun with Steven and Rob and their two teenage boys, Kofi and Gil. I still remember a much younger Gil getting two orders of oysters — oh, that was at Petit Louis!
Both Johnny’s and Petit Louis offer outdoor seating, which is also a plus.
Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen
My favorite, saving the best for last, is located in the Baltimore Museum of Art. Gertrude’s was started by chef John Shields in 1998 and has been thriving ever since. John, who was born in Baltimore and who studied at the Peabody Conservatory, started his first restaurant in Berkeley, California, returning to Baltimore several years later.
It is the one restaurant, I think, where you can get a great meal for $25 or $125. My Gertrude’s regular, despite a varied menu, is their cup of soup with a half sandwich — chicken salad with grapes and almonds — that comes with fruit for $17. The soups of the day are creative and excellent. A watermelon gazpacho this past summer was divine, but my usual soup is cream of crab with lump crab and sherry. My friend JoAnn, with whom I often go, orders something different each time so I can observe the variety.
John Shields has written five cookbooks, if people want to try his recipes at home. Diners can sit inside or outside (partly enclosed, and heated, depending on the weather), enjoying the fountain, the sculpture and the landscape.
“We are part of the local food community,” says John. Every Saturday, he explains, he can be found with Paul Wright, Gertrude’s manager, at the 32nd Street Farmer’s Market, “where decisions are made about the specials for the coming week … based on the season.”
Whereas each of my many friends has their own favorite restaurants, I chose mine for quality, taste, convenience and economy. Nearly all their food is locally sourced. As John Shields puts it, “We are fortunate to live and work in this beautiful and bountiful Chesapeake Region.”
— Lynne Agress, Towson
The letter writer teaches in the Odyssey Program of the Johns Hopkins University and was president of BWB-Business Writing Inc., a writing and editing consulting company. She is the author of “The Feminine Irony” and “Working With Words.”
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