Josh Flynn

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!

Food enthusiast Jeffrey Webber (a.k.a. Jeff W. on Yelp) got into online restaurant reviewing after trying to find restaurants in the D.C. and always stumbling upon Yelp listings. When finding lesser known places with good food, Webber wanted to shar his experiences with others, so he started reviewing a lot of restaurants on the review site Yelp.

He said he used to have a job with a lot of down time, and used that to write reviews of the restaurants he had recently been to. Just posting his 400th review recently, Webber said he has less time to share his dining experiences with his job now.

I saw Webber’s review for the Chameleon Cafe, so I decided to ask him some more questions about his experience there. He said that he was not expecting the food and atmosphere that Chameleon could offer based on the still developing Lauraville area.

“…it’s really intimate and unexpected given the area.  It’s basically just a rowhouse turned into a restaurant and it has a great community feel.  The food was really surprising since it has a heavy french influence and I wouldn’t expect to find that outside of a more affluent neighborhood.  I wasn’t particularly impressed with the surrounding area, but that’s not going to stand in my way of eating good food.”

He said the people he was with enjoyed themselves and the food was great, with a homey atmosphere that still had an upscale feel. Webber said he would definitely go back to Chameleon Cafe again for a special occasion as their food is a bit pricey to go very often.

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.

Ellen Reich started her company Three Stone Steps in 2006 after being frustrated about not being able to find fairly made, attractive and functional accessories from foreign countries. Her passion for social justice prompted her to try to provide these kinds of items to the community while keeping their source in mind.

Ellen (background) shows her products to some customers

Originally Reich was not going to go the retail route with her products, but is having more success with that then trying to wholesale these types of items.

“before this economic slowdown, I was more focused on wholesaling my products, something that dropped off a great deal around the end of last year.  I made the decision then to focus more on direct retailing, at places like the Tuesday Market, and have had pretty good results.”

Reich has 15 years of experience in the U.S. labor movement and expresses on her website that she is not trying to use “green” or “fair-trade” as terms for marketing, but really takes a personal interest and responsibility for everything that Three Stone Steps sells.

Until earlier this year, all of her products were from Cambodia, but she recently expanded to include items from Vietnam, Philippines and Haiti and hopes to have even more selection by the fall.

This week I interviewed Michael Clark of Common Seed, a T-shirt company based out of Hamilton, a community adjacent to Lauraville, and his partner operates out of his own shop in Oakland, Ca. Michael attends the Tuesday Market Connection in Lauraville every week as a vendor and really enjoys the market and the Lauraville community.

The idea for Common Seed started with a cross-country road trip with the co-owner Brett Benner. They talked about wearable art and spreading “positive vibrations in T-shirt form” and got a bunch of tees, printing under the name Babylon Born, setting up stands at festivals. In 2006, Benner ended up moving out to Oakland, and Clark explained how they decided to change the name and the plan up a bit,

“we decided to change our name to Common Seed, because it is more of a meditation on the unity of all things, and Babylon Born is more reflective of the struggle against “the system” with apocalyptic overtones, a worm-hole down which we became less interested in traveling.”

Michael Clark of Common Seed

So Clark opened up shop here in Baltimore at a place in Hamilton, just north of Lauraville; Benner is printing out of his basement in Oakland. When I asked Clark what sets Common Seed apart from conventional T-shirt companies, he talked about a the company’s values in both the designs they put on the shirts as well as the materials and inks that are used in productions.

“From the beginning we knew it is not enough to just put positive artwork on t-shirts, but that the end product needs to wholistically reflect the higher ideals and vision to which we aspire. This awareness led us to using fair trade and/or American made organically grown cotton t-shirts, and printing with water-based inks.”

Clark also told me about the inspirations for the designs. They are definitely different than your typical T-shirt company, which usually focuses their design on sports teams, some fashion trend or some kind of gimmick or saying. They definitely fit in at the Lauraville market with their D.I.Y attitude and focus on properly acquired and produced materials.

While Clark is not a Lauraville resident, he does live in Hamilton and really likes the neighborhood and the community as well as the Tuesday Market Connection. I know this next quote is kind of a lot, but it wouldn’t have near the impact if I didn’t include the whole quote.

“Coming from the center of the city, the first thing that struck me was that there is some space to breathe. There are backyards, and space between houses, but we are still in the city. And from the time I moved in to now and for the foreseeable future the process of the neighborhood has been one of becoming what it is. What I mean by that is that it does not have a well-worn reputation as a neigborhood, which gives the community tremendous creative leeway in creating this place to be the ideal place for us to live, work, play, and grow. So things like the Connection happen, which is an absolute embodyment of the love, adaptability and creative spirit that is expressing itself in our community. And the more this expression unfolds the more rewarding the experience will be for everyone involved. And for those not involved, and other communities we can stand with wisdom and dignity, representing what is possible.”

People like Michael are what make this area of Baltimore so much different from the bad connotation that Baltimore citizens have received over the years. The attitude that community is so crucial, and that people that live in common areas should help each other to grow and strive is something rarely found in today’s society. Common Seed has some very different ideals and some stand-out designs and you can catch Michael and his T-shirts at the Lauraville Tuesday Market Connection this summer.

Danielle demonstrating her hoops

This week I interviewed Danielle Weissman, a local hula hoop maker that demonstrates, sells and allows trials of her hula hoops at the Lauraville Tuesday Market Connection. She just got into making them about a month ago, and has been hooping for about six months now.

Hula hooping is definitely a hit at the Tuesday market. The kids love to test our her homemade hoops and practice as they try to emulate Danielle’s moves.

She uses very high grade tubing as well as durable grip tape to make the designs and ensure that the hoops are of higher quality than something one could pick up at K-Mart or a toy store. She also makes two sizes to accommodate to adults as well as children; the size of the hoop also affects the hoop user’s control. The larger ones are easier and go slower.

Some kids try different hoop sizes

Danielle was inspired by her friend that did fire hoop performances in Los Angeles and thought that it would be something fun and interesting to do and has now turned it into her own small business. She hoops with the local kids and tries to help them to become better hoopers themselves and adds a nice dimension to the Tuesday Market.

This week I unfortunately do not have any actual reporting to document. I have made several contacts and set up tentative appointments to have interviews, but did not conduct any of them since last week when I interviewed Todd Brizzi of Zeke’s Coffee.

I made several efforts to make progress, scheduled interviews and meetings, and have a very good foundation for the future of the project. I am confident that missing this week’s post will not set me back.

In the interest of making this not sound like a string of excuses, I will leave it at that. Sorry to disappoint all of my many faithful blog followers!

Check back next week…

Today I sat down with Zeke’s Coffee’s Todd Brizzi, who is the company’s graphic designer and quality control guy. He is very involved in the roasting process from beginning to end, but given both my time constraints and Zeke’s busy day, today I just went over some of the basics with him as the company is preparing for this weekend’s 2nd annual Lauraville Block Party.

He explained that the idea to start Zeke’s came from the past experiences of founder Thomas Rhodes, who worked for a different roastery that moved their operations out of Maryland. Rhodes decided to use his years of roasting knowledge and love of coffee to start Zeke’s in 2005 with his wife Amy; eventually moving to their current Harford Road location in Lauraville in 2006.

Brizzi talked with me about what makes Zeke’s different from the national brands, and he made the comparison of bakery bread to store bought national brands.

“If you want bread, you can go in the grocery store and buy a loaf of Arnold’s and it will probably be OK. But you could also go to a bakery and get fresher, better quality bread; it’s the same thing with coffee.”

Basically Zeke’s offers something that it’s national counterpart cannot. Since they are a smaller operation, a lot of care goes into making sure everything is fresh and of good quality. Some may call them a “gourmet” coffee roastery, but Brizzi says its just plain better coffee or as he put it, “fiercely independent coffee”.

When it comes to advertising, Zeke’s has avoided traditional avenues (i.e. radio, television) to promote their coffee. They do put ads in local magazines and publications (City Paper, Baltimore Magazine), but they mostly rely on word of mouth to get recognition, which has definitely worked in their favor thus far.

The economy has definitely affected local area businesses, but for some reason Zeke’s has been able to . Coffee is a necessity for a lot of people these days, and consumers are still willing to pay for the taste and quality of Zeke’s coffee. They offer some more exotic premium coffees that are upwards of $40 a pound, but people are still coming in to purchase these unique beans despite the price and the suffering economy.

Brizzi lives just outside of the Lauraville area in Arcadia, but has spent a lot of time around Lauraville working at Zeke’s. He said his favorite thing about the community was the do-it-yourself, grassroots attitude. He pointed out there has recently been a lot of “positive motion towards becoming a viable commercial district” as well as building a strong fellowship among the community.

I was left with this anecdote about the affect of Zeke’s on the community. One of their customers was broken down on the side of the road with a Fueled by Zeke’s bumper sticker on their van and somebody stopped to give them a hand. As the person finished helping get the van going again, he said to the van driver, “I too, am fueled by Zeke’s”.

- – -

I am looking forward to learning more about Zeke’s roasting process as well as talking with company President Thomas Rhodes about how it all got started. Check back for updates or subscribe to my RSS feed.

This week I interviewed Malkia McLeod via e-mail; she is the Marketing and Media Relations Manager of the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks. I just asked her some basic questions about what the department has been doing lately as well as her opinions about parks and citizen use in general.

When I asked McLeod about the general public’s knowledge of and involvement in the parks and areas around their communities, she explained that the department is constantly developing ways to promote Baltimoreans to get active and go green.

“We host several tree plantings through TreeBaltimore; offer trainings as well as volunteer cleanups, invasive removals (weeds) through our Park Conservation and Community Outreach Office; and establish partnerships with community organizations, non-profits and corporations through our Partnership Office. Our “Friends Groups” are organized to preserve the trees, foliage, and other natural resources of the parks as well as for charitable and educational purposes.”

McLeod stressed that urban green space is a necessity because it promotes a healthier city and gives a sense of cohesion.

She also provided me with some statistics from the National Park and Recreation Association about the nation’s park availability and usage.

• Research shows that 75% of Americans live within two miles of a public park.
• More than 75% of the population takes advantage of their local parks.
• This amounts to a staggering 192 million people visiting parks annually.

I was not able to find similar statistics for Baltimore, but I would like to investigate this further and see what people in the community think about the parks.