From the NYT, a very positive article about Baltimore's Cindy Wolf:
She cooks in Charleston’s kitchen nearly every night, as she has since the restaurant opened 24 years ago. Her decades-long mission to refine her blend of French and Southern cuisine has earned her nine nominations for the James Beard award for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic, a record for a chef (tied with Peter Pastan) in a category they have not won. “Just give it to her already,” Tom Sietsema, the Washington Post food critic, wrote in 2017, after she received her sixth nomination.
Charleston is among the relatively few still-thriving restaurants from the 1990s that helped spur the explosion of innovative New Southern cooking in the 2000s.
But after a turbulent year that has brought into question what the future will look like for restaurants catering to affluent diners, Charleston, with its Bernardaud china, cheese cart, tasting menu and long-cellared wines, feels like a throwback to a fading era.
Something similar can be said of Ms. Wolf. At 56, she is the rare chef-owner of her skill level and accomplishment who is mainly focused on her flagship, on traditional fine dining and on the daily task of cooking — something she insists will never change.
“When Tony told me he wanted to open more and more restaurants, we agreed that I would not leave Charleston,” Ms. Wolf said during one of several recent conversations in Baltimore. “Every restaurant since then really has been his dream, because I’m quite happy with this one.”
Three of the Foreman Wolf company’s restaurants are within walking distance of Charleston: Bar Vasquez, an Argentine tapas bar and steakhouse; Cinghiale, an Italian restaurant; and Cindy Lou’s Fish House, a Southern seafood restaurant that opened in October. The other two, Petit Louis Bistro and Johnny’s, a casual seafood place, are in the Roland Park neighborhood. (Mr. Foreman, who is responsible for the wine programs at all the restaurants, owns two wine shops separately from Ms. Wolf.)
The two partners don’t own the real estate for any of their businesses. As revenues shrank during the pandemic, the lease arrangements, particularly in the booming areas around Charleston, in Harbor East, made them uneasy. They decided to buy the Milton Inn, a restaurant in an 18th-century building 20 miles north of Baltimore, to give them more control over their financial future. Chris Scanga, the executive chef at Petit Louis, will be chef of the inn, as well as a business partner, the first such arrangement for Ms. Wolf and Mr. Foreman.
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