Restaurant review: Woodberry Kitchen - Baltimore, MD

Last Monday, September 27, was Janina's 21st birthday.  Her boyfriend came down from New York for a couple days.  Monday evening we went to Baltimore.  We went to eat at Woodberry Kitchen with our cousins Danae, Donna, and her husband, Brian.  Now, there is a little back-story to all of this.  A while back, before Donna was married, Glen and I went to Baltimore to spend the day with her.  The plan was for us three to do stuff in and around Baltimore, then go eat at Woodberry Kitchen with Danae.  The thing is, we didn't know when exactly what time we would go to Woodberry Kitchen, so we didn't make reservations.  We drove up there probably around 5:00 pm or something, and were told that without reservations we would have to wait 3 hours.  We didn't have that much time because Glen and I were planning to go to Sonar for a concert later on in the evening.  So we went to the harbor and ate at McCormick & Schmick's.  It was very good.  However, we were kinda bummed that we did not eat at Woodberry Kitchen.  So I made sure to make reservations for us Monday evening.  I think we were all impressed with the place.  It has a nice, casual vibe.  They have a big, open kitchen.  It was Monday evening and there was probably 8 chefs working, with about 5 other servers and baristas.  That was different to see, since I am not used to an open kitchen and at most we will have 4 chefs working the line on the busy weekends.  It was cool though to see how they all worked together.  Each one of them had their own specific task to do that made the whole process run smoothly.  The food was excellent.  Our server greeted us soon after we were seated and took our drink orders.  We were given complimentary water and bread before ordering.  The bread was excellent, by the way.  I ordered one of the specials, John the Butcher's Board.  It was a long, narrow board lined with several different cold cuts of meat, shaved hams, pepperoni, sausage, and such.  Oh, and there was some head cheese.  It was served with crusty bread, a bit of jam, mustard, and pickled veggies.  Was quite good.  Then for dessert I had something called Beer and Chocolate.  It was interesting, but very good.  There was some sort of house made cracker on the bottom, topped with a big chunk of milk chocolate, a bit of beer sorbet, a chocolate tuille, and sprinkled with caramel popcorn.  Quite good.  I don't know who would think of putting caramel popcorn with it, but it made the whole dessert better.  The crunch of the popcorn with the chocolate and the sorbet was very good.  They serve a wide variety of ice cream there.  Probably the most bizarre one was basil.  Brian asked the server if he had ever tried it.  He said that he had and that it had recently won an award for best dessert of something in the area.  When he brought out our other desserts he gave us a complimentary scoop of the basil ice cream for us to see what all the fuss is about.  I must say it was good.  Interesting, different, green of course, but very good.

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