The ringing of the dinner bell typically means that the meal is ready to be served.

But, in this case, not quite. It seems an overdone bird may have flown the coop (or oven) over a cooked deal.

Then again, the county is well known for its cuisine of meals covered in "grease" … well, you know what I mean. Now according to a Sun article dated August 19, 2014, Vanguard stated that three restaurant chains—Chipotle, Panera, and Five Guys—are among the tenants looking to call the North Point Government Center home.

The article went further with the following quote: "Chipotle, Panera and Five Guys are negotiating letters of intent to locate in the development at Merritt Boulevard and Wise Avenue, according to county officials and Vanguard."

Now, with that being said, the butler has a different story. Not that I'm saying that the butler gave me a morsel of a tip. Rather, I actually called said restaurants based on actual scuttlebutt from a well-known community leader who fell in love and moved to Middle River.

Before I could finish my coffee, I received the following emails from the corporate headquarters of Chipotle: "A couple of things on this. First, we don't franchise (all of our restaurants are company owned and operated), so we don't have franchises going anywhere.

With regard to Dundalk, we don't discuss plans for specific locations until we have space under lease and construction scheduled. At this time, I don't see anything in that location that meets those criteria.

To be clear, that isn't to say that a landlord is misrepresenting anything. It's only to say that there isn't anything there that meets the criteria that are required before we will talk about plans for a specific location."

Chris

Chris Arnold | Communications Director

Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc.

1401 Wynkoop Street, Suite 500, Denver CO 80202

direct 303.222.5912 That's when I decided to make another inquiry, after which I received this email reply. After all, I had to be sure that my ducks were in a row, or in the oven, as the case may be: