Baltimore’s Best Restaurants 2022

THE BEGINNING, that is to say, somewhere around mid-March 2020, this whole cooking-at-home thing didn’t seem so bad. In fact, for a moment there, as the pandemic shut down restaurants for indoor dining and I found myself boiling dough for bagels, investing in online cooking classes (thank you Alice Waters for your “MasterClass” extolling the
wonders of California cuisine), indulging in to-go cocktails, and scrolling foodie accounts on Instagram for inspiration, it was actually novel.

But as spring became summer and faded into fall, and another six
months went by, I had to accept that I’d never perfect the five basic sauces.
And as the exhaustion of the daily grind—that is, the making of every
meal—took its toll, I started to dream about dining out again.

Of course, even dining out was no easy feat this year, least of all for
those who struggled to keep restaurants afloat. Now, more than ever, I’m in
absolute awe of the folks—that’s the chefs, the sous-chefs, the servers, the
dishwashers, the busboys, the bartenders, the hosts—who have made their
livelihood by working in restaurants. A career in hospitality has never been
easy, but for the past two years, it’s been brutal, and many have abandoned
it altogether.

When the pandemic hit, and then wore on, I secretly feared that I’d
never eat out again, or that I’d forget what the experience was even like.
But restaurants adjusted, and so did I. At press time, as life has entered the
third or fourth “new normal” phase, I’ve eaten many a meal in plywood
parklets decorated with festive flowers and vines, in elaborately erected
tents, and in elegant dining rooms, albeit ones with new HVAC and hand
sanitation systems installed.

It turns out that eating out is a lot like riding a bike. Once you learn how
to do it, you never forget. But I had forgotten the pure pleasure of not only
having a professional cook my food, but having someone to serve it. I had
forgotten the joy of having an actual sommelier (that is, someone other
than my son grabbing a bottle from the basement when I shout, “Can you
bring up a bottle of red?”) properly pair a Cabernet with my filet. I had
forgotten what a delight it is to have someone else do the clearing and the
cleaning and what hard work it is to scrape my old cast-iron skillets and
scrub the grease from my oven after setting off the smoke detector.

Fortunately, as pivot after pivot has proven, Baltimore’s restaurant
scene is not going anywhere. Yes, it has staggered and stumbled and
gasped for survival—but it never stopped. In addition to the tried-and-trues
that have, against all odds, endured, amazingly, there have been numerous
notable newcomers that have had the chutzpah to open for the first time at
the height of the pandemic.

These days, restaurants have a renewed sense of purpose,
optimism, and more spirit and spunk than ever.
They have never been more inviting, not only because
I, and everyone I know, have missed them, but because
the restaurants missed us, too, and reopened with fresh
resolve. They have created lush, landscaped, outdoor
oases, upped their sanitation game, jettisoned menus
for QR codes, and raised wages to create more equitable
places to work. In these unprecedented times, menus
have been pared down due to sourcing issues, rising food
costs, and labor shortages, though in some instances
that’s also helped raise the quality of everything we eat
with the focus on hyper-local.

Yes, restaurateurs have tacked on surcharges at
the bottom of the bill to defray pandemic losses and
enforced stricter cancellation policies. And yet, even
as the pandemic waxes and wanes (and waxes again),
diners are turning out in droves, and getting a Saturday
night reservation on OpenTable at certain hotspots can
be challenging.