Eating Baltimore, featuring the Scooch

The Scooch is a sandwich served by Luigi’s Italian Deli in the Hampden neighborhood of Baltimore, MD. The Wikipedia list from which we take our inspiration normally concerns itself with types or styles of sandwiches, rather than individual examples served by specific vendors. However, this entry managed to hang on for a while, and caught my attention enough that when it was removed from the Wikipedia page, I kept it on our list here. At the time, I didn’t really have a plan, but as time went on it became more obvious to me that, rather than attempt to reconstruct this sandwich at home, I’d need to travel to Baltimore and try the real thing.

Baltimore! Charm City. Bawlmer. Visions of the boarded-up row homes and corner boys from The Wire are the first thing that come to my mind when thinking of Baltimore, followed shortly after by pit beef sandwiches, crab cakes, and Natty Boh beer. I’m not alone–The Wire is among the first things many Baltimoreans report people asking them about when learning where they’re from. I’m sure that’s frustrating–there have been similar stereotypes about Chicago.

So we went to Baltimore without cultural preconceptions, but with some culinary ones. After all, there are some well-known things to eat in Baltimore. The PBS article linked in the previous paragraph talks about some things The Wire got right and wrong about Baltimore, and compares them to a recent documentary called Charm City, which I’m now watching on Amazon Prime. The food is among those things, the article claims, that The Wire got right.

Meanwhile, on more trivial details, like what Baltimoreans eat, The Wire is always dead on. When West’s Jimmy McNulty needs to convince a couple of uniformed officers to do him a favor, he brings them beer and crab cakes. But not just any crab cakes—Faidley’s crab cakes, because that’s how you bribe someone. And when drug enforcer Wee-Bay says he’ll confess to a few more murders if someone will bring him another pit beef (the city’s indigenous barbecue variant) with extra horseradish, it might be the most Baltimore thing ever.

Pit beef! For some bizarre reason, this well-known Baltimore sandwich is not on the Wikipedia list, so of course I’m going to take this opportunity to try one! And crab cakes are of course a given. Spoiler alert: Mindy and I ate a lot of really good things in Baltimore last weekend. This is a brag post.

Friday

We landed in Baltimore sometime before 10am and took the light rail downtown. Our hotel was in the Inner Harbor area, and the Camden Yards stop got us within a couple of blocks. We often like to use public transit when visiting a new city, at least when the goals of the trip and the transit options available will support it. I think that taking buses and trains around a new city help you get to know it in a different way than driving around it, makes you feel more local, at least for a time. Also, I’m cheap.

After checking in, we immediately took a bus to the Hampden neighborhood, where Luigi’s Deli is located. Hampden centers around a short stretch of 36th Street called The Avenue, where a few blocks’ worth of row houses have been converted into storefronts.

Luigi’s is located in one of these row houses, tree-shaded, a little difficult to find save for the sign in front and the picnic table on the porch.

Out back is the Luigi’s “BYO Patio,” a slightly larger outdoor seating area bounded by flowerpots and conveniently located across the alley from an upscale liquor store called The Wine Source.

Luigi’s uses a chalkboard-style menu behind the ordering counter, where the sandwiches are split into two sections–“Deli Sandwiches” and “Paninis.” According to the staff there, the sandwiches in each section are listed according to their popularity, with the most in-demand sandwiches at the top. The Scooch was the first Panini listed. Mindy ordered the “Italian Cold Cut” from the top of the Deli Sandwiches section. We took a table on the patio and waited for our names to be called.

I hadn’t been in Baltimore 2 hours yet and I was already about to dig in to the sandwich that brought me there. That’s efficiency, folks!

The Scooch consists of capocollo, soppressata, and Prima Donna cheese, a Dutch cheese with the texture of a Gouda but the flavor of Parmesan. It’s served in a section of a good baguette with roasted red peppers, cherry pepper relish, and field greens dressed with balsamic, then crisped up in a panini press until heated through. When I looked at it, my first thought was, “Why is the meat all squished over to one side? Is that why it’s called the scooch?” Then I took a look at the Italian Cold Cut sub that Mindy ordered.

This is the same bread as what was used in the Scooch, and the meat is arranged much the same way. However, you can see that the bread took on a different shape after its time in the panini press-flatter, wider. The meat and cheese retained their original arrangement and didn’t spread themselves out the way the bread did. It’s not a deal breaker, just something I noticed.

So how about the taste? Well, capocollo and soppressata are a classic combination, the combination of sweet and spicy peppers is great, and the balsamic dressing works well with the greenery. These things are all present, even prominent, in the flavor of the final product. The cheese, though, is the star.

That Prima Donna cheese is a puzzler for sure. Soft enough to melt well, but with the more aggressive and savory flavor of a hard cheese, it stood up to all the other big flavors in this sandwich and gathered them around, centering them on itself, the contrast of the sweet and spicy flavors of the peppers, the sweet and sour and bitter flavors of the balsamic vinegar and greens, the salty, smoky, and deep flavors of the salumi. All these flavors existed, and each of them seemed to interact more with the cheese than they did with each other. It was an astounding sandwich to be sure.

Worth flying to Baltimore for? Maybe, maybe not. There’s a lot more to eat in Baltimore though.

After another bus ride back to the hotel and an afternoon spent exploring the Inner Harbor of Baltimore, we took another bus ride, out to the eastern outskirts, to visit Chaps Pit Beef.

Chaps is likely the most well-known purveyor of this well-known Baltimore specialty. Pit beef sandwiches are often called Baltimore-style BBQ, but this is a roast beef, mildly smoky from being cooked over charcoal but not fully smoked or slow-cooked. Pit beef is rare on the inside, sliced thin and served in hamburger buns with horseradish, onions, and/or a variety of sauces. Chaps has franchised, and has several locations in other cities in Maryland, Delaware, and soon in Pennsylvania as well, but this small shack in Baltimore is the original.

Mindy and I each ordered these gravy fries. They were good, but I wished I’d had a second pit beef sandwich instead.

I brought my sandwich to the table uncondimented, but with an array of small tubs of barbecue sauce, tiger sauce, horseradish, pickles, onions, and red pepper relish to try out. Unsurprisingly, the plain prepared horseradish was fantastic with what is essentially a rare roast beef sandwich. Perhaps more surprisingly, I found that the house barbecue sauce tasted fairly similar to Arby’s sauce, and the Tiger sauce was essentially a horseradish cream sauce similar to Arby’s Horsey sauce. I won’t compare the sandwiches themselves, as they are leagues apart–the Chaps beef is real, with the texture, the muscle fibers and the irregular bits one expects from a real roast beef sandwich. But the combination of barbecue sauce and Tiger sauce on the sandwich was a very familiar flavor.

Saturday

We awoke early on Saturday and made our way directly to Lexington Market.

Lexington Market is an indoor market made up of 67 independent vendors–bakeries, fishmongers, butchers, produce, deli, grocery, all types of food vendors, along with various wireless providers, a computer sales and repair store, a cobbler, and any number of other businesses. They open at 6am, 6 days a week, closed on Sundays. Not every business opens right at 6am, as we found out when we found Faidley’s Seafood gated and locked on our arrival. We had a backup plan, but before we left, I picked up a “half-smoke” at vendor Konstant’s Gourmet Hot Dogs.

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The half-smoke was fine, a coarsely-textured cured and lightly smoked sausage, like a hot dog that was not emulsified. I ordered it with mustard and sauerkraut and it tided us over to our next spot.

Attman’s Deli, I had read, still served something that at one time was claimed to be the Baltimore style of hot dog. None of the vendors I spoke to at Lexington Market still served them, but all of them referred me here. I’m not sure if it can be a city’s style when only one place serves it. It was on my list of items to try though, so we found ourselves here.

The “Baltimore-style” hot dog consists of an all-beef frank topped with a slice of fried beef bologna, with whatever toppings one chooses to add, mustard, onions, and sauerkraut being among the more popular. I chose mustard and onions.

I’m not sure what the bologna adds in this situation. It was a good dog though, and the shrimp salad Mindy ordered was quite special, almost entirely made up of large shrimp, lightly glazed with a mayonnaise-based dressing, studded by the occasional piece of finely-diced celery.

Our breakfast seen to, it was time for Faidley’s to open, so we made our way back to Lexington Market.

Faidley’s, of course, is the home of what has been voted many years to be the best crab cake in Baltimore. So of course that is what I ordered, along with a bowl of Maryland Crab Soup.

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The crabcake was all that was promised, enormous, with large lumps of fresh crab meat, bound together with egg, mayonnaise, and cracker crumbs, tangy from mustard and a bit of hot sauce. It was served with a small salad, helpful for a small, crisp, brightly-flavored break between bites of the rich and savory crabcake. The crab soup, redolent of Old Bay seasoning, had stringy bits of crab meat with beans, vegetables, and larger chunks of meat still in the shell. It was good, but… That crabcake though. Damn.

Mindy, ever adventurous, ordered clams from the raw bar. Perhaps she was afraid to share a hotel room with me after an order of raw oysters, given the outrageous claims on the signs hung around the place.

With a little horseradish, lemon juice, and a dash of hot sauce, I found these enjoyable enough, though occasionally found a bit of grit. We finished our Faidley’s seafood adventure and headed back to the Inner Harbor for another kind of adventure.

Directly across from our hotel was a Ripley’s “Odditorium,” a museum of the strange, part of the now-empire born of Robert L. Ripley’s once-humble comic strip.

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It was an interesting collection, and not a bad way to spend an hour or two, full of interesting cultural artifacts, unique art, kinetic and interactive displays, and multimedia exhibits about some of the more interesting subjects that Mr. Ripley drew in his strip.

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Mindy was on a mission though–we needed to get to the Fell’s Point neighborhood and get some Almond gelato from Pitango’s before they ran out.

Sadly, they were already out when we got there. Apparently it is a very popular flavor and they run out frequently. This was lucky for me, as I got to try their pistachio instead (my favorite!), along with some strawberry sorbet.

Having killed a sufficient amount of time, we made our way toward what would become another centerpiece of our weekend in Baltimore. As it happened, our stay coincided with the second annual edition of a festival featuring a coalition of Asian and other ethnic vendors from around the Baltimore and Washington, DC areas called Charm City Night Market.

The market was several blocks long, wound its way around a small park and a city plaza, and had booths featuring more vendors and types of vendors than I can relate. We arrived shortly after things got rolling, and already the smell of Filipino roast pork was in the air.

We had no plan for the market, no way of knowing what to try and what to skip, how to spend our precious calories, which we had already been squandering extravagantly this day. But the sight of the suckling pig led me to this stand right away, where I ordered a grilled pork skewer (and photographed a roast pork slider, which they made by mistake, but I did not eat. Self-control, folks)

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The pork skewer was fine, with a lightly-sweet barbecue sauce brushed onto the meat but not overwhelming it. Mindy got herself a boba tea and, having broken the seal, we began to wander the market. I saw a vendor, Ida B’s Table, that did not appear to be serving yet and asked them what they had.

“Yaka mein,” he told me, and explained that it was a Creole-Chinese-American dish from New Orleans, and that they put their own spin on it. They were ready to go, but didn’t have a cash box yet so couldn’t give change. I had the right amount of cash on hand and they were happy to oblige.

Ida B’s Yaka main was surprising–I began eating it disappointed in the noodles, which appeared to be standard spaghetti, but ended by scooping every bit of okra, crawfish, and shrimp I could into my mouth with chopsticks, then drinking the broth straight out of the paper carton.

It was around this time that I lost Mindy–I stopped to sample some ginger/ginseng tea, and when I looked up she was gone. I made my way to the end of the market where we began, then realized the market was larger than I’d originally thought and found myself entranced by a Filipino rolled pork belly roast, similar to an Italian porchetta.

Kuya Ja’s served both meat and skin from the roast with white rice, papaya salad, greens, spicy vinegar sauce and a sweet gravy. I parked myself nearby and entreated Mindy to join me via text message.

When Mindy joined me, another nearby stand drew her eye and she found what were probably our favorite bites of the market, at (I believe, as the stand did not have any logos apparent–I reconstructed this from a list of vendors after-the-fact) Masarap.

These peanuts were roasted hard, very crisp, and scattered amongst them were bits of crisp brown garlic–not burnt, not bitter, just garlic that had been roasted or fried or otherwise cooked just enough to turn them brown and crisp without turning them brown and acrid. These were great.

They also served pork adobo, something we make at home all the time, but this version differed from ours in the use of onions, as well as using a different vinegar–apple cider, perhaps?–that lent a slight impression of sweetness.

The absolute best thing I ate at the market, probably, was this dish of charred brussels sprouts, lightly-glazed with a sauce reminiscent of teriyaki, interspersed with cubes of fried tofu. I found myself evangelizing this dish to strangers, who looked at me like a crazy person. Who would eat brussels sprouts and tofu with all that delicious roast pork around? I would. I’d do it again.

On our way out of the market, making our way back to the hotel, we happened upon a martial arts demonstration in the plaza. There was a whole schedule of events, including concerts, that we were going to miss. But we’d had enough and needed a rest.

Late that night, hours after leaving the market, having lazed exhausted in our room the remainder of the evening, enjoying the view out over the harbor and the free TV and wifi provided by the hotel, we ordered some food, from the type of place where you can get food delivered after midnight to a hotel in downtown Baltimore. We got a crab pizza and a crabcake sandwich. Neither was worthy of extensive discussion, and I was too tired and too full of bourbon to get good photos of them. However, if you are hungry for crab pizza, that is a thing you can get in Baltimore. They do like their crabs.

Sunday

Sunday morning was when we learned that Lexington Market was closed on Sundays. It was also when we learned that Baltimore’s Chinatown, at least the one Google Maps led us to, consisted of an Asian market (closed), a Chinese restaurant (closed), and two Ethiopian restaurants (also closed). Reaching the end of our patience, hangry and wandering, we made our way back to Fell’s Point and picked a brunch place that looked like it wouldn’t have a wait for a table.

It turns out Jimmy’s is a “relic of old Baltimore” that changed owners a few years ago but we did not know that at the time. We only knew that we needed something to eat and there were empty chairs there. I asked our waiter what he would recommend to someone visiting Baltimore. He pointed out a shrimp omelette and the “Chesapeake Benedict” that I’d already had my eye on.

This was Eggs Benedict with a twist–the Canadian Bacon was replaced by crabcakes. I liked it–the English muffin wasn’t toasted too aggressively, the eggs were poached well, and the Hollandaise sauce had a nice hit of cayenne pepper. The crabcakes were good, and while they did not provide the same chew that a slice of Canadian bacon would, they were substantial, soft and savory. It was a good breakfast. We followed it up with another trip to Pitango’s. Still no almond gelato.

With 8 or more hours to go before our plane left, we decided to visit the National Aquarium, clearly visible from our hotel astride a few piers farther down the harbor.

I know there are legitimate criticisms to be made of aquariums and of zoos, but National Aquarium seems to be one of the good ones, working to return the dolphins they’ve trained to an ocean refuge. We spent hours in the aquarium, rapt with all the colorful creatures, the spooky shark alley, the colorful reef exhibits, the jellies and the poison dart frogs, the beautiful but incomplete tropical rain forest exhibit. We lost ourselves for hours, and didn’t even have time to visit every section.

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As the time approached for us to make our way to the airport, we found ourselves ruing the missed opportunity of the two closed Ethiopian restaurants from earlier. One of our favorite restaurant memories, from early in our marriage, was the evening we spent at a forgotten Ethiopian restaurant in Seattle, 9 month old baby in tow, and how welcomed we’d been, how the owner’s tween daughter, our waitress, had carried our son Damian around on her hip while we ate, and of the amazing food, the soft and tart injera bread, the steamed cabbage, yellow from turmeric, the fiery red doro wat. We found an open Ethiopian restaurant called Dukem, right near a light rail station, and had one last quick meal before leaving town.

There were lentils in multiple varieties, along with chicken and lamb. There were greens and cabbages and cheese and tomato salad. There was injera bread, and plenty of it, including that upon which the meal was served, soaking up its juices. It was a happy time, and a fantastic way to end our trip.

We barely scratched the surface of Baltimore, but what we found was an abundance of good things to eat and enjoyable times to be had. Heading back to work on Monday was a shock, but we look forward to discovering more sandwiches in more places in the future. Thanks for reading, and stick around, we’ve got more to eat in October!