Josh Flynn

I first heard about Mobtown Studios on a piece that WYPR’s The Signal did on the owners and the studio, back in October of last year. One thing that makes them unique and noticeable among the many recording studios in the area is their website, which includes a blog. They put on monthly “microshows” where bands come in and play for a very small audience at the studio while simultaneously recording. They then post all the individual songs on their website with both links to stream the songs on their website as well as making available .mp3’s of all of the songs from the session.

Last week they had the band Secret Mountains in for a Microshow. It is definitely worth a listen, the Smokey Robinson cover is great.

I have finished the project for the most part, there are still a few minor things I want to touch up and add some audio of the interviews. Check it out and let me know what you think!

http://www.flynnfinity.com/greaterlauraville

This week one of the people I follow on Twitter posted a link to this blog that has recently been writing about Lauraville and Baltimore events. It is the accompanying blog of a website for Salamander Points, a Baltimore based website that has formulated a points system for a huge variety of things you eat and use and then at the end of the day you calculate your “salamander points”.

It is actually a pretty interesting idea, and they go pretty in depth into each category to where most things that you use in an average day would be able to be converted to points. They had some good blog posts about the Tuesday Market Connection, including their most recent post entitled “Tuesday: The New Friday”. They had some nice photos from the market in one of their older posts and got some reaction from people attending the market.

They look at things from a green perspective, trying to think about the carbon footprint and the effects that our actions have on the enviroment and community. I also liked their post and pictures from Artscape, I was there on a different day then whoever wrote the post so it was nice to see a different perspective

Jeff Smith grew up in a family of 10, where cooking was always a big deal. Since he was a kid, he had always wanted to be a cook and owning a restaurant. After learning some basics of cooking from his mother, Smith got into the restaurant business as soon as he was able to work, and has been in it for a little over 20 years and has some diverse experiences.

The Chameleon Cafe

“So I’d say I’m mostly self-trained because I had probably been cooking for six years before I went into culinary school; and then that just kind of refined things for me a little bit. Yeah, I’m kinda from the old school, before everybody was going to culinary school. Back when I started, nobody went to culinary school; it’s kind of a new thing.”

Chameleon Cafe is about to hit its eight year anniversary, but Smith also cooked at many restaurants around Baltimore, as well as spending some time in New Orleans. His time in Louisiana inspired him to try to come up with some local dishes using local ingredients for his Maryland Menu. It is the only menu he repeats every year because people love it and call the restaurant asking when it is coming back.

Jeff Smith (left) and his kitchen staff

Smith was taken by how much pride the New Orleans community had for their cuisine, and how the local dishes were “revered”, so he went and did a lot of research to dig up some old recipes; one of which is called “Chicken Maryland” out of a 100-year-old cookbook by Auguste Escoffier. The dish called for an ingredient that wouldn’t normally be associated with Baltimore, so Smith dug deeper.

“The Chicken Maryland had bananas, so I thought it was really odd that it was called Maryland. I thought maybe it was named after somebody that had the last name Maryland. We found out that Baltimore was a big banana port town at one time, like the second or third biggest banana importer in the country; so he must have came right when that was happening and bananas just must have been everywhere in Baltimore at that point.”

Smith brings a lot of traditional methods and recipes to the table at Chameleon Cafe, which is a converted rowhome on the corner of Montebello Terrace and Harford Road. I am working on editing the audio to put up the whole interview so check back!

Tomorrow (Friday, July 25th) there is a pretty decent sized festival in the area bordering Lauraville to the north, Hamilton. The Hamilton Festival is going to feature two stages with over 10 bands, live performing arts, local foods, arts and crafts, classic cars, and for the first time patrons of age can get a wristband and enjoy beer from local brewers:  The Brewer’s Art and Flying Dog.

I posted the band schedule below. I am definitely going to check it out, but I didn’t really know too much about the bands, so I thought I would share these recommendations I came across from Wendy Ward of City Paper:

“Highlights include beer from Brewer’s Art and Flying Dog, a pie-eating contest, the performing antics of aminibigcircus, and classic cars, natch. Dancing in the street provided by non-stop line-ups on two stages. Don’t miss ms. ellen cherry at 1 p.m. and Lafayette Gilchrist at 7 p.m. on the Hamilton Stage and a strong finish by T.T. Tucker, the Beltways, and Rodney Henry hour by hour starting after 5 on the Gibbons Stage.”

I came across this blog called Harford Road, Hon about the neighborhood of Westfield in Baltimore, which is slightly northeast of Lauraville. It talks about a lot of things going on in the same general area and links to a lot of the businesses in Lauraville, including all of the places I did stories on and mentions of the Lauraville Tuesday Market Connection.

It has a lot of good links to relevant organizations, businesses, blogs and gardening tips, a pretty diverse range of information. It doesn’t get updated a whole lot, but it could be a good starting point for somebody that wants to learn more about the area. One of the links is for a blog called Adventures in Baltimore Restaurants which has some cool posts about good deals and free food around Baltimore. They also use a Google Map to show a lot of the restaurants that are featured in the blog.

Another link is to a blog called Bmore Tunes that has some pretty interesting posts about local artists as well as mainstream and big name acts. I particularly liked the interview with Slug from Atmosphere. I would have never seen the blog had I not visited Harford Road, Hon; definitely glad I came across it.

Earlier this week I sat down with Thomas Rhodes, the founder and owner of Lauraville’s Zeke’s Coffee, to talk to him about his experience owning a roastery. As we sat in front of their warehouse location drinking iced coffee, Rhodes talked about how he got started with Zeke’s and how the company got its name.

Rhodes said that he is really glad he chose the location in Lauraville, partly because he lives down the street, but he also really appreciates the Lauraville community and their strong support for local businesses. He said there hasn’t been any problems with crime or vandalism other than one or two very small incidents.

I asked Rhodes what his favorites were of their offerings, and he said his favorite blend is Armistead’s Blend and as a varietal Sumatra Mandheling, but of course his tastes change over time.

Zeke's Coff

“I have been into for probably a decade at least, dark coffee. Just liking the rich, smoky taste. But a couple of weeks ago I put some Sumatra Mandheling in a pot and it was like ‘wow’ i mean like (insert explosion noise), so I have been going back to drinking lighter roasted coffees.”

Rhodes was a very down to earth guy and you can tell he really cares about his company and his community from talking with him. I was glad I was able to sit down with him this week and get a glimpse behind the scenes at Zeke’s.

After my Interview with Thomas from Zeke’s, he suggested that I talk to Jeff Smith, the owner and head chef of Lauraville’s Chameleon Cafe. There isn’t really a recent article about the cafe, but they have been reviewed several times so I read through a few of them to get an idea of what Smith does at his restaurant.

Smith is a Maryland native that grew up in Parkville, and went to Baltimore International College to study culinary arts. When he opened Chameleon in 2001, he really wanted to try to represent Maryland cuisine with local meats, seafood, vegetables, fruit and recipes. The article in Baltimore Style Magaine starts out by talking about how Smith has a garden behind the restaurant in which he grows fresh herbs to use in his cooking. It is actually a really interesting article and was a good intro for me as I didn’t really know anything about Smith or Chameleon before this week. I just wish the article didn’t have a bunch of bogus random links. There are just random words highlighted throughout the article linking to unrelated advertisements; so annoying.

Anyway, it seems like Smith has quite unique ideas for dishes and really does provide his patrons with a truly Maryland dining experience. I am going to be talking to him later today and will have some more details in next week’s interview post.

Chowhound is pretty much a discussion about food and drink through message board conversations. I was brought to the website after searching for recent media coverage about Zeke’s Coffee. There was a short mention about Zeke’s attendance at the Greenbelt Farmer’s Market, which is a smaller market closer to D.C., but Zeke’s seemed to be the main attraction [the post is titled Greenbelt Farmer's Market (featuring Zeke's Coffee)].

Zeke’s is also mentioned in the discussion about the best cup of coffee in Baltimore. While there wasn’t any article or blog post in particular that I think would help out the story about Zeke’s, I was thinking that I could try to either join some of the conversations or contact the posters that think Zeke’s is the best (as well as some that have another opinion).

There was also a mention about Red Canoe, which serves Zeke’s coffee, which would also tie into my project as I do my module about the Lauraville Bookstore. The Baltimore Sun mentioned that Chowhound was debating the best food in Baltimore, and Lauraville/Hamilton was one of the suggestions mentioned by the Sun’s Elizabeth Large. The debate through the comments definitely has a lot of opinions, but there are definitely some people that think Lauraville/Hamilton has the best places to grab a bite or a cup of coffee.