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<\/p>\nWhile the 800 block of 36th Street, aka Hampden\u2019s \u201cAvenue,\u201d is fairly packed with restaurants and shops, the 900 block seems a bit spartan by comparison. There are a couple of major contenders for your dining dollars, however. The first of these is Five and Dime Ale House, which bills itself as a \u201cnew take on the classic neighborhood tavern.\u201d I don\u2019t know about you, but when I was growing up in Fells Point, the neighborhood taverns were places where mostly drunks hung out and the only food available came in little plastic bags labeled \u201cpeanuts.\u201d I\u2019m thinking \u201cclassic\u201d doesn\u2019t mean \u201c1972.\u201d And even had the local watering hole offered something more substantial to absorb all the cheap hooch that was being consumed there, it wouldn\u2019t have included crispy brussels sprouts in a chipotle remoulade, tofu tacos, and it sure as heck wouldn\u2019t have had a salad with grilled salmon and wasabi vinaigrette. Of course, back in Baltimore circa 1972, brussels sprouts would have been boiled to death, tofu was for hippies. and tacos came in hard shells courtesy of Old El Paso. The concept of a salad made without iceberg lettuce and canned black olives would have blown minds. So thank goodness for progress! Also thank goodness for restaurants like Five and Dime Ale House that are owned by folks who also own craft breweries–in this case, Oliver Brewing Company–so the libations are also several notches above what was available in 1972. The rest of the menu involves stuff like burgers, pizza, customizable mac and cheese, but also entrees like roasted chicken, steak frites, and crab cakes (naturally). The place can get crowded and noisy, but that seems to be the norm these days.<\/p>\n
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![\"avenue](\"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/avenuehappyhour-632x762.jpg\")
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Avenue Kitchen and Bar is a couple doors down, and unlike a lot of places that involve ampersands or the word \u201cand,\u201d this place really does involve both a kitchen and a bar. The kitchen aspect is the main restaurant, which is open for dinner every day, and for Sunday brunch from 10am-3pm.<\/span><\/span> The bar, called \u201cSidebar,\u201d is open from noon<\/span><\/span> until late 7 days a week; Happy Hour starts at 2pm<\/span><\/span> and lasts until 7pm<\/span><\/span>, then starts up again at 10pm<\/span><\/span>, with specials during both sessions. For those of you more interested in eating than in how cheaply you can get a glass of ros\u00e9, the menu is what I would call eclectic, leaning somewhat vaguely toward Mexico. (Their recent Winter Restaurant Week offerings leaned hard in that direction, with choices involving sopes, huitlacoche, epazote, and tamales.) There are three tacos and a taquito available now, but also Korean BBQ Tofu Nuggets, Falafel Sliders, Greek Chicken, and the more Maryland-centric Eastern Shore Fried Chicken Basket and, drumroll please\u2026.crab cakes. (If you\u2019ve been reading this blog for the last year, you\u2019ve probably noticed that it would not be difficult to eat your body weight in crab cakes here in Charm City.)<\/p>\n \n Back in the day, or approximately three restaurants ago, Avenue\u2019s space was home to Mamie\u2019s, a place that served home-cookin\u2019-style foods in a setting that was a cross between granny\u2019s house and a flea market. Once a week they served whole lobsters at a ridiculously low price, so Avenue\u2019s Thursday special of $13 lobster feels like an homage. An homage au homard. There are specials on other nights, like the bargain $7 Sunday burger and buck-a-shuck oysters on Wednesday. If you want to see the rest of the menu, check out the restaurant\u2019s Facebook page, because their web site, though it has pretty pictures, is otherwise useless in that department.<\/p>\n Down the street a bit is Frazier\u2019s on the Avenue, the offshoot of a 1939 Hampden landmark that once sat a few blocks south on 33rd Street. There\u2019s nothing fancy or trendy about Frazier\u2019s, though they do serve the currently inexplicably popular tater tots (didn\u2019t like \u2018em in \u201872, don\u2019t like \u2018em now) and there are a couple of flatbreads on the menu. That\u2019s about as newfangled as they get. But if you\u2019re looking for an old-fashioned hot turkey or roast beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy or a tuna melt on an English muffin, this is the place. They also have burgers, wings, and of course lots of beer. In fact, Frazier\u2019s probably qualifies as the \u201cclassic neighborhood tavern\u201d that Five and Dime Ale House is reinventing.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re only in the market for a refreshing and trendy beverage, QQ Boba is newly opened across the street. They specialize in Taiwanese bubble teas, smoothies, and juices. But if you want something a bit stronger, try Holy Frijoles. I can remember going there fairly regularly after it opened in 1996. Back then, the restaurant was so narrow, I felt like I was eating my chiles rellenos on a bus. Over the years, they expanded into a third building and recently underwent a complete overhaul–after an electrical fire shuttered the place for close to a year–so it almost feels like a new restaurant. However, Holy Frijoles is a Hampden institution at this point, with its own collection of quirky regulars who come in to hang at the bar, eat, and to play pinball. The menu is all Mexican street food\/Tex-Mex classics like hard shell tacos, taco salads, enchiladas, burritos, and nachos, which of course pair wonderfully with drinks like prickly pear margaritas, Palomas, and Jarritos Mexican sodas.<\/p>\n Asian Taste is a few doors down, a no-frills American-style Chinese restaurant where they serve chicken chop suey and chow mein but also pad Thai, sushi, and chicken katsu. But if it\u2019s fried chicken you\u2019re craving, look no further than the Royal Farms store on the corner. This Baltimore-based convenience store chain is probably more famous for their made-to-order sandwiches, freshly fried chicken, and western fries than they are for being a place to grab a soda and some lottery tickets. Baltimore Magazine recently reviewed all 30+ Royal Farms stores in the Baltimore area (they\u2019re also in Delaware, Virginia, and Pennsylvania) and the Hampden outpost came in at #3. Referring to it as the \u201cTaj Mahal\u201d of RoFos, the magazine cited the store\u2019s huge selection of everything from ice cream to chips and the second floor dining room as selling points. If you\u2019re in a fast food mood, grab a chicken box, a stack of napkins, and a milkshake from the F\u2019real milkshake machine, and forget about the colonel.<\/b><\/p>\n Note to shoppers: Don\u2019t skip popping into Trohv, a gift-giver\u2019s paradise, to browse their selection of housewares, gourmet products, cookbooks, and other nifty goodies.<\/b><\/p>\n There are still tons more fine places to dine in Hampden. We\u2019ll look at a few more next time.<\/p>\n Minxeats Baltimore food blogger and Co-author of the new book,\u00a0Maryland\u2019s Chesapeake: How the Bay and its Bounty Shaped a Cuisine<\/a>, plus\u00a0Food Lovers\u2019 Guide to Baltimore<\/a>, and\u00a0Baltimore Chef\u2019s Table<\/a>.<\/p>\n Editors Note:\u00a0One thing we like to do when launching in a\u00a0city is to partner with local writers. This is a key part to the City Walker experience, we don\u2019t only want our app (iOS<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Android<\/a>) to have a local prospective, we want our blog to have it too! This gives the authentic personal prospective that no one other than a local can offer. We are honored to have\u00a0MINXEATS\u00a0be a guest writer<\/a>\u00a0for City Walker in Baltimore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While the 800 block of 36th Street, aka Hampden\u2019s \u201cAvenue,\u201d is fairly packed with restaurants and shops, the 900 block seems a bit spartan by comparison. There are a couple of major contenders for your dining dollars, however. The first of these is Five and Dime Ale House, which bills itself as a \u201cnew take […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[166,732,243,245],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-baltimore","category-hampden","category-local-pov","category-minxeats"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/avenuehappyhour.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9buia-Dg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2434"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2798,"href":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2434\/revisions\/2798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"avenue](\"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/avenuecocktail-500x500.jpg\")
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