BaltimOregon to Maine

I was surprised to find a STYLE: Smart Living in Baltimore magazine forwarded to my Corvallis address. A wave of longing for my favorite Baltimore restaurants hit me when I read its piece on former City Paper (and now Baltimore Sun) restaurant critic Richard Gorelick. sorry, there’s no link to it online. But it mentions the One World Cafe (see photo above) and Golden West, two Baltimore institutions for which we have yet to find replacements.

 I met Laura Wexler, the STYLE article’s author, at a spirited Day of the Dead dinner at Cafe Azafran on Johns Hopkins’ Homewood campus, just about this time last year. Little did we then know where we’d be for Dia de los Muertos in 2008! Oh, and how I miss the Stoop Storytelling series that Wexler co-currates at Centerstage Theater in Baltimore. It hurts to miss the Stoop Holiday Hoopla, with its line-up of prime Baltimore musicians like Abby Mott and Caleb Stine. The Real Geniuses (Abby Mott is lead female vocalist) played at our wedding, and Hannah and I were just becoming groupies for the alt-country yet genre-defying Caleb Stine. But live where you are, right, and there is much to love here.