{"id":906,"date":"2017-02-13T08:30:06","date_gmt":"2017-02-13T13:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.citywalkerapp.com\/?p=906"},"modified":"2017-09-12T12:40:28","modified_gmt":"2017-09-12T12:40:28","slug":"baltimores-fells-point-neighborhood-journey-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/baltimores-fells-point-neighborhood-journey-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Baltimore’s Fells Point, a Neighborhood Journey Through Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent the first 19 years of my life in Fells Point on the diversely populated 500 block of South Ann Street. At the time, there was a smattering of elderly Polish and Ukrainian immigrants living there, several families from Puerto Rico, and a good handful of folks who had moved up from West Virginia to find jobs. Some of them had their own homes, but the majority lived in a large multi-family dwelling with shared bathrooms and kitchens in the middle of the block. There were also a couple of random businesses: a tank cleaning company, a furniture warehouse, a florist, and a used appliance store. There was also a bar into which I\u2019d occasionally wander for a bag of peanuts or chips. One of my classmates lived upstairs, so it didn\u2019t seem particularly odd for a 4th grader to be in there. At least not to me.<\/p>\n

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Thirty years later, the block has changed quite a lot. I can\u2019t vouch for the ethnic makeup of the residents, but I would imagine that \u00a0it\u2019s still pretty diverse. The florist is still on the corner, and the bar is still next door. Only now it\u2019s Peter\u2019s Inn<\/a>, and it\u2019s better known for its food than anything. You might find tuna pok\u00e9 or halibut with black lentils and celery root on the menu at Bud and Karin Tiffany\u2019s unapologetically-quirky restaurant, but you won\u2019t find wings or other typical bar food. Or, I\u2019m betting, 25-cent bags of peanuts.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Continue walking down Ann toward Thames and you\u2019ll pass now-retired Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski\u2019s old house, a former branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library (now Education Based Latino Outreach), and what was once St Stanislaus Kostka Church and grade school. The church is currently a gym (with stained glass windows intact), and there are some cute rowhomes where the rectory and school used to be–signs that Fells Point is definitely a neighborhood that has been changing over time to meet the needs of its residents.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Once you get to Thames Street, that\u2019s where the fun begins. The north side of the 1700 block of Thames is pretty much wall-to-wall bars and restaurants. There\u2019s the Point in Fells<\/a>, the venerable Cat\u2019s Eye Pub, the Thames Street Oyster House<\/a>, Riptide by the Bay<\/a>, the Waterfront Hotel (which appeared in the NBC series, Homicide: Life on the Streets as the bar owned by Detectives Munch, Bayliss, and Lewis), and my favorites, Kooper\u2019s Tavern<\/a> and Slainte<\/a>. While the word \u201csl\u00e1inte\u201d is a Gaelic toast to one\u2019s health, this predominately Irish pub serves up the best gumbo in Baltimore<\/a>. I know you don\u2019t believe me, so you\u2019ll just have to go and try for yourself. If you\u2019re not into soccer (it\u2019s \u201creligion\u201d at Slainte) or Irish grub<\/a>, go next door to Kooper\u2019s and get yourself one of their sizeable burgers, like the lamb with feta.<\/p>\n

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\"gumbo
Photo Credit Minxeats<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Just around the corner and across the street, on Broadway, is 8Ball Meatball<\/a>. As the name suggests, they specialize in meatballs, but they also have square Detroit-style pizzas. While that might seem to be an odd thing to tout, there\u2019s not really a Baltimore-style pizza. Yet. And while balls are the draw at 8Ball, I\u2019m a fan of the bar area. It\u2019s attractive, and I\u2019ve had some mighty fine specialty cocktails<\/a> there. Still more booze and balls can be found at Sticky Rice<\/a>, near the corner of Broadway and Aliceanna. The place looks like a bar and it smells like a bar, so therefore it must be a bar. They have 15+ brews on tap, including local microbrews, tasty Charm City Meadworks mead, and cheapy Natty Boh, and their bottled beer collection includes a couple varieties of not-so-local Asahi, Hitachino Nest, and Kirin among more familiar brands. Why? Because Sticky Rice is also a sushi restaurant with some damn inventive rolls and whatnot. Try the \u201cDrawn-n-Buttered\u201d monster roll stuffed with crunchy shrimp, crab, and cucumber and served with melted garlic butter. Because you and I both know that garlic butter + seafood is a match made in heaven. Oh yeah, and those balls I mentioned several sentences back are tofu skin pockets overstuffed with veg and\/or seafood, tempura fried, and topped with various sauces and garnishes.<\/p>\n

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\"cocktail
Photo Credit Minxeats<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Needless to say, the places mentioned above weren\u2019t around in the years I lived in Fells Point. The Cat\u2019s Eye Pub<\/a> was open, but they\u2019ve always been known more for their live music than anything. But there are plenty of other bars with good food (if you like a nosh with your drink) and restaurants with great bars (if you need something to wash down your eats) in Fells Point. Just walk around and you can\u2019t miss them.<\/p>\n

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Minxeats Baltimore food blogger and Co-author of the new book,\u00a0Maryland\u2019s Chesapeake: How the Bay and its Bounty Shaped a Cuisine<\/a><\/em>, plus\u00a0Food Lovers\u2019 Guide to Baltimore<\/i><\/a>, and\u00a0Baltimore Chef\u2019s Table<\/a><\/i>.<\/p>\n

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Editors Note:<\/em> One 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’t only want our app (iOS<\/a> and Android<\/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 for City Walker in Baltimore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent the first 19 years of my life in Fells Point on the diversely populated 500 block of South Ann Street. At the time, there was a smattering of elderly Polish and Ukrainian immigrants living there, several families from Puerto Rico, and a good handful of folks who had moved up from West Virginia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":909,"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":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_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":[166,156,244,158,243,241,245],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-baltimore","category-drink","category-fells-point-baltimore","category-food","category-local-pov","category-maryland","category-minxeats"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9buia-eC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906","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=906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1976,"href":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions\/1976"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citywalkerapp.com\/cw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}