for foodies : Buzz

LaxPower.com posted this news item on a fire that broke out early Monday morning at North Baltimore's Mount Washington Tavern. Citing ABC2 and WBAL's direct reports on the blaze, the post refers to the establishment as a "lacrosse icon." Read the entire post here.

A host of events are on tap for the 2011 edition of Baltimore Beer Week, which begins October 6.

A sample:

So what’s in store this year? When queried, founder Joe Gold said many of the events are still evolving. However, plans are underway to have the first "Star Spangled Banger" parade of sorts starting at noon on October 6th at Baltimore’s historic Fort McHenry whereupon the fabled mallet will weave its way through some of Baltimore’s storied neighborhoods, visit various landmarks and taverns and ultimately end at Rams Head Live which will be the host venue for this year’s expanded Opening Tap Celebration. The hand-crafted mallet, used to tap the ceremonial first firkin, was crafted by wood expert John Gasparine and actually uses wood from Maryland’s famous fallen Wye Oak tree.

In addition to the Opening Tap Celebration, this year promises some great events like the 10th Anniversary of the Maryland Oktoberfest at Timonium Fairgrounds on October 8th, The Chesapeake Real Ale Festival featuring over 40 one of a kind firkins on October 15th and a Women-Centric event at Max’s Taphouse on October 13th. October 9th will feature a Historic Walking Pub Tour called a “Bar on Every Corner”.

A full schedule, along with more information about the event, can be found at the Baltimore Beer Week website.

Periodically Duff Goldman's name pops back up in the news and -- surprise! -- it's never for a story on how he's slowing down.

From the source:

Duff Goldman is sitting in a corner of the semi-secret Melrose Avenue location of his Charm City Cakes West bakery, checking the calendar on his iPhone. On the September schedule are meetings with his agent, magazine publisher Conde Nast and craft store Michael's; appearances and demos in Toronto, Buffalo, N.Y., Napa, Calif., and Beverly Hills; then it's back to New York to present a scholarship at the Culinary Institute of America. In between he's touring with his band to the National Buffalo Wing Festival, traveling to Le Mars, Iowa, to taste flavors for his namesake line of Blue Bunny Ice Cream and working on a giant cake in the shape of a sandwich for the opening of a Chick-fil-A.

"I can't believe I'm one of those people," Goldman says, "someone who flies in and then turns around the same day and flies out." He's like the James Brown of bakers - the hardest-working man in the cake business.

Read the whole story.

If Easton real estate agent Tim Miller can pull it off, National Premium beer will soon make a return to area coolers.

From Erik Maza at the Sun:

For decades, National Premium has been a hazy, distant memory. Stored-away memorabilia and faded beer ads were all that remained of its once-storied legacy.

That may change next year. Tim Miller, an Easton real estate agent, has acquired the trademark and has ambitious plans to bring the beer back to the Baltimore market by next baseball season. He has secured the formula and announced a new, spiffy logo. Capital investment and brewing are next.

Read the full story.

Longtime Baltimore area institution Gino's Burgers & Chicken -- absent from the state since 1991 -- has returned with a new location in Towson.

Gino's Burgers & Chicken, a new millennium version of the fast-food chain founded in Baltimore in 1957 by Colts football greats Alan Ameche and Gino Marchetti, opened its doors Wednesday morning in Towson.

More than 100 people lined up waiting for as long as four hours for the restaurant to open, which occurred shortly after 11 a.m.

Investigative Voice has the whole story here.

Grab-N-Go, an Aberdeen restaurant, is being sued for infringement by California-based In-N-Out Burger.

From the source:

The popular West Coast burger chain In-N-Out is suing a Maryland restaurant claiming its name, logo and menu is too close to its own.

The Irvine, Calif.-based chain filed an infringement lawsuit this week in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. The chain claims customers could be led to believe that the Aberdeen, Md., burger joint Grab-N-Go is related to In-N-Out, and is seeking a permanent injunction and unspecified damages.

Read the full story here.

Maryland recently passed a bill legalizing direct shipping of wine to residents. Julie Bykowicz at the Sun looks at where the program stands.

From the source:

"This week, Maryland wine lovers will be able to get their favorite bottles delivered directly to their homes -- so long as they're interested in buying from one of the 11 wineries that have applied for a shipping permit.

Since the state made the applications available on June 10, just eight Maryland wineries have returned the forms, according to the office of the state comptroller. Three more from out of state have also applied."

Read the whole story.

Popular Baltimore Sun blog Dining@Large -- first helmed by Elizabeth Large and now the domain of Richard Gorelick -- is rebranding as "Baltimore Diner".

Read the full story.

As "Ace of Cakes" comes to an end, Duff Goldman sat down to chat about what's next for him and Charm City Bakery.

Here's the story.

No one needs to explain to us why Maryland blue crabs are great, but it's always interesting to hear someone else's take. This time it's Chef John Shields, owner of Gertrude's, who shares his wisdom.

Here's an excerpt:

"So what sorts of foods does a chef personally like to eat? Shields answers that he's a big fan of seafood stews, packed with shrimp, muscles, clams and crabs. And if you ask him if he has any other favorites, he'll add (and energetically at that), 'Crabcakes!'"

Here's the story.

Baltimore's "Ace of Cakes" and the Food Network are parting ways, but Baltimore baker and star of the show Duff Goldman tells the Associated Press that he has three other shows in development that will hopefully get picked up by the Food Network.

Goldman and his team at Charm City Cakes are known for creating elaborate sugar concoctions using a blowtorch, saw, and other instruments you might use to build a house rather than a cake. The show's 10th season will begin airing in January.

You can read the rest of the story, featured in the San Jose Mercury News, here.

One of the country's top five new pie shops to open in 2010 was started by none other than Baltimore's Rodney Henry, according to Budget Travel magazine.

Henry is the owner of Dangerously Delicious Pies, long known among Baltimoreans. Last year, Henry opened a Washington, D.C. store.

The November issue of Budget Travel magazine recognizes the DC shop along with others in Chicago, Portland, Ore., San Francisco and New York. You can read the entire story here.

Slowly but surely, word is getting out that Baltimore is more than a compendium of competing images from "The Wire" and John Waters' films. The most recent convert is a journalist from the Bay Area Reporter who's spreading the good news -- Baltimore's got charm!

Here's an excerpt:

"It may not seem like it at first, but Baltimore � known as "Charm City," among other nicknames � does indeed have some charm to it.

There's more to the Maryland city, settled in the early 17th century, than the scenery that filmmaker John Waters made famous in camp favorites like Pink Flamingos and Hairspray .

Among the brick row houses and restaurants serving crab cakes, visitors can also find an art museum where a giant pink poodle is the star, and a cafe that celebrates women in beehives and leopard print jackets."

Read the entire article here.

Some people travel the world creating art. Others take their talents on the road to design buildings. Still others study different cultures to bring new zing to their culinary creations. For Baltimore resident Brian Strumke, it's all about beer.

Here's an excerpt:

"Love & Regret, which Strumke brewed at the 'Hofbrouwerijke brewery in Beerzel, Belgium, in February, is a saison (farmhouse-style ale) spiced with heather, chamomile, lavender and dandelion. It accompanied the first course of a beer dinner at Pizzeria Paradiso two weeks ago. (Stillwater is expanding its market to encompass 18 cities nationwide, and I caught up with Strumke in the midst of a road trip that had already taken him to Vermont, Boston and New York City.)

None of the unusual ingredients stands out by itself, but Love & Regret has a delightful floral perfume that wafts up the back of one's throat and fills the sinuses. It measures 7.2 percent alcohol by volume (reasonable by the standards of today's high-octane "imperial" beers) and offers a crisp aftertaste that perks up the appetite."

Read the entire article.

Baltimore natives don't bat an eyelash when a heaping bowl of sauerkraut is placed among other goodies on the Thanksgiving table. For transplants or visitors, however, the tangy side dish causes more than a few raised eyebrows. Ever wonder how the German staple became a Bmore tradition?

Here's an excerpt:

"Growing up, I had no idea that sauerkraut is not, to most Americans, a traditional Thanksgiving dish. It was always there, on the sideboard, as inevitable as turkey. That's part of the condition of being a kid: Your family, no matter the oddities or inconsistencies, still seems perfectly normal. Adulthood came late for me, because it was only five years ago when I learned that my family's sauerkraut could be considered weird, when the man who is now my husband spent his first holiday with us staring in puzzlement at the bowl of it.

I didn't know what to say that day to explain our tradition, but I've since done some research, and I now know where it comes from: Baltimore. Serving sauerkraut at Thanksgiving is an old tradition there, rooted in the homes of the city's German immigrants. In 1863, when Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday, about a quarter of Baltimore's population was German. Sauerkraut was a given on their celebratory table..."

Read the entire article.