An unusual turn in our daily schedule had us heading uptown in the early afternoon yesterday, and it finally afforded us a chance to grab lunch at Land of Kush. It was pretty good, by the way. Good vegan food and big portions of it for reasonable prices. It was very much like the Yabba Pot...

We’ve always been of the opinion that Mount Vernon’s City Cafe is as consistently good as it is underrated. So when we heard that their chef Chad Gauss was opening a new restaurant in Hampden we had pretty high hopes. New restaurants open up all the time. Hell, new restaurants open...

As a lifelong Orioles fan and a big league bon vivant, we were incredibly excited to hear that former 3rd baseman and long-beloved legend politely tolerated player Melvin Mora would be opening his own restaurant here in Baltimore. We were sad ambivalent about seeing Mora leave the Orioles,...

We’re loathe to admit that New York City has ever done anything better than Baltimore. Sure, they do everything bigger, but that’s not necessarily better. It almost killed us when we were forced to admit that they’ve outdone us for happy hour, and it hurts us again when we...

If traffic has seemed to move faster and parking spaces have become more available in the last 24 hours, it might be because Baltimore City sent some obscure bureaucrat out onto the streets at lunchtime yesterday, a day after this article was published, to shut down the ever-growing fleet of...

Today is Saint Patrick’s day, Baltimore. It’s that most drunk and sloppy of meaningless phony holidays which are completely insignificant and thoroughly unenjoyable. We’re already on record as being against drinking holidays and the rabble they produce as a matter of...

The Chop is not typically given over to gambling. We used to frequent Pimlico when the horses were running, and we’re loathe to back out of a bar bet if we’re absolutely sure that it was Paul Rodriguez who co-starred in DC Cab and not George Lopez. Aside from that though, we tend...

We don’t usually embrace curmudgeonly rants on this blog. Even though we’ve got a category for rants, only a couple of those entries could actually properly qualify as one, and even so they’re not the sort of rants that are full of expletives and exclamations. It is Baltimore...

Getting a table at your favorite restaurant is seldom a pressing problem in the Baltimore restaurant scene. The only place that ever seems to have much of a wait is the interminable, befuddling Cheesecake Factory at Harborplace. They might as well call that place the Waiting Factory. We never...

For some people a new year can also mean a new business venture. Whether you’re a national bank or restaurant chain buying up properties in a new market or a little guy opening a humble shop on a main street corner, your first instinct might be to hire a PR firm and an ad agency, build a...

You don’t need us to tell you about the food at Bluegrass. There are already plenty of reviews out there in the Sun, The Citypaper, Baltimore Magazine and elsewhere. Baltimore is very much a city in which restaurants are their reputations, and when a place like Bluegrass opens up,...

An interesting incident occurred earlier this week. The Chop went to dinner in a certain North Baltimore establishment. It’s a small place, but it does a good trade and is usually more full than empty. As soon as we walked in though, we were greeted like old personal friends. More than...

Well, it’s finally happened. The Chop has officially run out of things to say about bar trivia. Fortunately for us, a trivia pro is stepping in to help. Today we’re happy to present you with a guest post written by Final Score Trivia MC Bruce Voge III. This will be the final...

When we decided to write about the Baltimore area’s bar trivia nights in part one and part two of this series, we had no idea just how many trivia nights there were to choose from locally. The Chop is nothing if not your humble public servant, and in furtherance of that service we are...

You might be surprised to hear it, but the Chop fully approves of hotel bars. Most often we find ourselves in one when we’re overseas. Many times hotel bars are the cream of the crop, and some countries’ bars are found to be so wanting that the hotel bar with the western visitors...

On Tuesday, the Baltimore Chop took a look at the burgeoning pub quiz industry in Maryland. Being fun and free for bar patrons, and profitable for tavern owners and trivia producers alike, the popularity of bar trivia shows no signs of abating any time soon. The Chop had only played live...

Here’s a question for you: When did trivia nights completely take over Maryland’s bars and restaurants? When it comes to weeknight recreation, it seems to us that our fathers’ generation used to take part in all manner of pub-related activities; everything from league bowling...

No trip to Oriole Park is complete without a pre-game beer for happy hour, and between the Inner Harbor, Pickles and Sliders’, Pratt Street Ale House and the Chop’s favorite, California Tortilla there’s no shortage of options near the park. Unfortunately, this is not the case...

It’s Mothers’ Day in Charm City, and that could only mean one thing; its time to sit down to brunch. At this very moment, cooks all over Baltimore are scrambling massive quantities of eggs, bartenders are making sure the Champagne is well-chilled, and servers are already...

Ahem. This is one of those topics that has been done to death on the internet, radio, TV… just about everywhere. Asking who should pay on the first date is pretty much like saying “Please beat me over the head with your reactionary and ill-considered opinions until I never want to...

Brace yourselves Baltimore, for the Chop is about to take another potentially unpopular position. Today we’re coming out against food. Did you know that your own humble Chop has been a vegetarian lo these 15 years? Of course you didn’t. We never mentioned it because we’re...

Whew! After last night Baltimore, the Chop sure as hell needs a drink! Fortunately, we’re in luck, because there’s not one but two great groups of folks we’re out to drink with tonight. First we’ll be heading out to Blue Hill Tavern for Planned Parenthood of...

Well, today it’s all about what we’re not doing tonight. Namely, We’re not going to the Walters’ for Ignite Baltimore #5. Mainly because we were in Europe and couldn’t put ourselves on the RSVP list in time. We got the wait list, but standing around Charles Street...