Dear Charles - Baltimore, Maryland
Parmesan, bacon, balsamic, oh my!
Back at it again—this time with some work colleagues in Charm City. We stopped by Dear Charles, an upscale American restaurant in the Charles Village neighborhood of Baltimore. The dish of the night was a plate of fried Brussels sprouts topped with crispy bacon pieces, big flakes of parmesan, and a drizzle of balsamic glaze. They were cooked rather well, browned all over without a hint of char1, and the toppings were solid. I mean, who could get mad about bacon and cheese?
That said, the dish was a bit… uninspired? There wasn’t a bad flavor on the plate, but it didn’t really live up to the promise of its ingredients. Which brings me to my personal philosophy on bacon and Brussels sprouts:
Bacon is always going to taste good on Brussels sprouts because bacon tastes good. Bacon will also taste good on pizza, pasta, broccoli, a bloody mary, airplane food, stale bread, an ice cube, you get the point. On Brussels sprouts, I won’t deduct any points for adding bacon, but you aren’t going to get points for creativity either. In this case, the soft bacon had a similar texture to the sprouts so it didn’t really add anything on that front either2. And there’s the crux of the issue, the sprouts didn’t have a crunchy ingredient. Similar dishes might add some pomegranate seeds or crushed peanuts to add variety to the dish.
Let’s talk about cheese. Need I remind the reader that I’m from America’s Dairyland? In this dish, flaky parmesan was definitely the way to go3. The flaky bits on top look great and add a bit of dryness to a forkful, a nice contrast to the standard oily fried sprouts and dressing/glaze. This is probably a better strategy than just melting some strands on top that will get totally lost in the sprouts. Now that I think of it, broiling cheese on top of sprouts might work out pretty well…someone should try that.
And the balsamic glaze? Solid. A little savory with some added flavor.
Where does that leave us? At this point I’ve given 3-stars to an interesting dish that didn’t really pay off and 4-stars to a couple of great dishes that were super creative and a step shy of a home run. So, what to give a dish with ingredients that taste good but lack a spark of creativity? To settle this sticky wicket, I turned to my work colleagues at the table, four of the smartest people I know. There’s a concept known as wisdom of the crowd that simply suggests that a group of people guessing at an answer are more likely right than a single person. So we put it to the table: how many stars out of 5 would you give this dish?
We had two 4-stars (including myself) who didn’t find anything wrong with it, two 3-star ratings that thought it was good but nothing special, and one 2-star rating from someone brought up in New York4. Average it all out and we get to 3.2 stars: somewhere between “Totally fine” and “Yum!!” That feels like the right answer to me, or at least a right answer. I would probably get these again if I’m back at Dear Charles, but I would at least skim the rest of the appetizers too. Try them out and let me know what you think!
I seriously need to figure out how to do that at home.
Come to think of it, overcooked bacon might be the way to go if you’re set on bacon, just to separate the texture.
And should probably be the standard choice for cheese on Brussels sprouts.
We get it, food is better in New York. Eye roll.