Have you ever looked at something 1000 times, and the noticed something new on the 1001st time? Like when you notice a building or restaurant on your commute that you never noticed before. Or when you notice a feature of your house that you have probably looked at many times, but never seen. Or when you ask your significant other about a new article of clothing or jewelry they are wearing, only to find out they have had it for years.

That is how I feel about Downtown Baltimore. Honestly, it even feels odd having a post that is featuring Downtown because it doesn’t really feel like a neighborhood. Downtown goes from President St to Paca St, and Lombard to Orleans. It does not include things like the Inner Harbor, Camden Yards, M&T Bank Stadium, University of Maryland Baltimore, or even the Washington Monument. For me, it has basically been fly-over country, as I use Pratt/Lombard/Orleans as my east-west routes, and sometimes use Howard/Charles/Light/Eutaw/Calvert as my north-south routes. I probably spend a good portion of my travel time in Downtown.

But I rarely do anything there. Sure, I have been to Rams Head and Fogo de Chao, but those really are extensions of the Inner Harbor, even though they are technically in Downtown. Other than that, Downtown might as well have been miles away, for as much non-travel time as I have spent there.

It was remarkably easy to plan a really fun evening Downtown though! Drinks at B&O American Brasserie, Turkish food at Cazbar, and then an outdoor movie in the Centere Plaza. And these were all within a couple blocks of each other.

B&O American Brasserie

Inside the Hotel Monaco, a hotel built in the aftermath of the Great Baltimore Fire of 1906, is the B&O American Brasserie. It is apparently an amazing restaurant that offers a fine dining experience. In my inaugural visit to Downtown, I had to spread out my visit, and came only for pre-dinner drinks. I can’t spend my whole time in one place!

When going out for drinks, there are different levels of bars:

Dive bar: stick with either beer or two ingredient drinks that are hard to mess up. Rum and Coke; gin and tonic if you are feeling adventurous; vodka cranberry.

Mid-range bar: You might be able to go with something more complicated, like a bloody mary, or a Manhattan at an establishment like this, depending on the bartender. You want to feel them out to find out if they know what you are talking about before getting too exotic. You also risk them saying they know how to make something, and then making it completely differently. This is a wide range of bars.

Upper end bar: Order almost any standard drink with confidence. There should be a bar tender who knows what they are doing, and has the ingredients on hand to do it properly.

But then there is a bar a step above that. These are the places where the bartender treats cocktails as a craft. They understand what each ingredient is, and how they play together. They know how flavors play together, and when to use them. It is the place where you don’t have to ask for a specific drink, but can describe what you are looking for.

B&O fell into that top category, and I got remarkably lucky with my bartender. A recent episode of the Baltimore Sun’s Roughly Speaking podcast featured B&O bartender Brendan Dorr discussing different kinds of alcohol. That signaled to me that this was the kind of bar where you walk in and trust the professional to work their magic. Little did I know that I would be treated to Brendan himself as our bartender.

My alcohol of choice is whiskey; specifically burbons and scotches. I asked for something that was lightly sweet, but featuring whiskey as the main liquor. I wanted something a little smokey, without being peaty. And I wanted a touch of citrus in it, as that is my favorite kind of sweetness in a drink. Brendan thought for a moment, and then got started.

What I got was a drink that started with a campfire taste, then featured orange, and then had the liquor and sweetness roll over my mouth. I asked him what kind of whiskey he used, because it was mellower than I expected.

“That is a cognac based drink, actually.”

This was surprising, as I have had a bottle of cognac in my bar for a few years. Every once in a while, I will pull it out and have a bit of it, neat, but its mainly a change of pace drink for me. Not only that, but he completely made it up on the spot. I tried to get him to tell me what all was in it, but he kept getting interrupted while describing it as he was the only bartender, and was busy making magic for others.

Maureen’s drink was equally well done, and was a light gin-based, summery, fresh and bright drink. It had a cucumber on the rim, and refreshing like biting into a slice of cucumber.

Thank you Brendan. That was amazing.

Cazbar

The feature of the evening was the Turkish restaurant, Cazbar. We have heard about this place because they have belly dancing every Friday and Saturday evening at 9 or 10pm. We went to a place in DC called Marrakesh that did a similar thing a few years ago, and enjoyed it and wanted to see a similar thing in Baltimore. Because we were going to the outdoor movie, we were not able to stay for the belly dancing, but we still to experience the food.

We sat down at the bar (we usually prefer eating at the bar instead of tables for some reason; there were plenty of tables) and were greeted by the waitress. She had a thick accent, which I assume was Turkish. I took this as a good sign, but I am not sure I could pick a Turkish accent out of most other southeastern European accents. As I always do for these excursions, I asked if they had a drink that was very Turkish. She recommended Yeni Raki for me, and Turkish Fruit Wine for Maureen.

The Yeni Raki reminded me a lot of the arak drink I had in our week 2 journey for Lebanese food in Fed Hill, which makes sense when you realize that Turkey and Lebanon are only separated by part of the Mediterranean sea, and a small strip of Syrian coast. You add water to Yeni Raki to cut the strength a bit, which turns it a light milky color. The flavor is a very strong anise flavor, like with the Lebanese Arak. Marueen’s Turkish Fruit Wine was Turkish wine, made into a sangria, which was very sweet (although they did warn us that it was sangria).

We then moved on to cold meze, which are small kinds of dishes that you put on small pieces of bread. We had:

Not a great picture, but it was a little dim in there

Baba Ganush — my favorite one, which was good because Maureen didn’t like it as much. It has a smoky, almost peaty flavor that worked really well. It was also sneaky spicy. The kind of thing that has lots of flavor to start, and then ends with a nice, low spice that wakes your mouth up without burning. Not that I am against a good burn.

Hummus — this was the most standard one, and paled in comparison to the other options. It was still very good though.

Yoğurtlu Patlıcan- yogurt based meze with eggplant and garlic, which combined together for a very good spiced flavor.

Ezme — almost a salsa, this was a tomato based spicy meze that did well to bring out a fresh tomato flavor with the spice.

Şakşuka — this was an eggplant based meze with potatoes and a garlic flavor.

Haydari — its a dill yogurt dip that was light, fresh, but still had a really good flavor. It might not have been a strong contender by itself, but it rounded out the set of dips well, as it was a great compliment to some of the spice of the others, like the baba ganush

For a second course, we had a dish of Lamb, Beef, Chicken, Kofte, Chicken adana, Salmon, & Shrimp served with rice & salad. The salad was fine and the rice was good, but lets get to talking about how amazing these meats were. Before even talking about how well they were spiced, we have to talk about what an amazing platter this was with five different kinds of meat.

They all have a certain type of flavor and consistency that makes them uniquely Turkish. The mouth-feel is almost a little drier, and the spices are much more pronounced. Its the kind of mix that is hard to describe, but is easy to know when you see it. They come with lemons, because a squeeze of lemon goes really well with the spices. But its also different, because I don’t think lemon would do the same thing for a steak that I grilled up at home. Its a very Mediterranean thing.

The third course was a baklava and coffee. I have had baklava many times, and its usually ‘ok’ for me. But you could tell that this was freshly made, so the phyllo dough was especially crispy, while the honey had not been absorbed yet, so the flavors were a bit more pronounced and distinct.