Danny's Restaurant, Charles and Biddle streets; open Monday through Friday for lunch and dinner; Saturday, dinner only; closed Sunday.Major credit cards accepted.
Any restaurant that offers fresh caviar as a first course for $14 should have freshly ground pepper on the table. Danny's Restaurant at Charles and Biddle Streets is good, but never quite lives up to its pretensions.
It's hard not to there with high expectations. This is the restaurant that won four stars in Mobil Travel Guide and the Holiday Award for Distinctive Dining.
It's also the only restaurant in Baltimore recommended by "Gourmet" magazine (of course, "Gourmet" only recommends those restaurants outside of New York City that advertise in its pages).
Still, if you ask someone what he knows about Danny's, he probably won't mention the marvelous food, but the fact that it's the most expensive restaurant in town.
It is the only restaurant I've ever been in where I overheard someone ask the price of a cup of coffee before he ordered it.
It's no good approaching Danny's that way, naturally. If you go, plan to spend a lot of money and expect, on the whole, elegant if not superb food.
Danny's Escoffier Room manages to be subdued and slightly gaudy at the same time, with crystal chandeliers, red plush, and gilt. A large portrait of French chef Georges Escoffier broods down over businessmen on expense accounts and couples celebrating anniversaries.
The nicest part of the surrounding is the food: smoked scotch salmon beautifully displayed on marble slab, or a house specialty, Caesar salad, prepared (with many flourishes) by Danny's son Stuart at someone's table.
One of the innumerable waiters or waitresses will leave an odd--but good--combination of things for you to munch on while you ponder the elaborate menu: kosher dills and wonderful pickled tomatoes, cottage cheese with chives, garlic melba toast, and irresistible pumpernickel and salt rolls.
It's hard not to fill up on the great bread at Danny's. When you've ordered, a waiter rushes up and deposits a popover on your butter plate. They're delicious, but it's too bad they can't be kept hot.
All of the hors d'oeuvres were appealing, but I finally decided on les huitres a la Rockefeller: oysters on the half shell topped with pureed spinach seasoned with chevril, tarragon, white wine, and Pernod.
They were served wonderfully hot because they were nestled in a bowl of heated rock salt. It was a controversial dish. I like the taste of the highly seasoned spinach, but I felt the oysters were lost in it. On the other hand, I could barely keep one of my friends from devouring them all.
My two friends began with crevette Provencale (shrimp in garlic butter flavored with herbs) and a tossed salad with the house dressing: oil and vinegar and not much else. The shrimp were small, but tender and cooked perfectly, and the lettuce in the salad was crisp and fresh. But both dishes were disappointing: they weren't just subtly seasoned, they were bland.
The emphasis is on continental dishes at Danny's, but the restaurant offers almost anything in the way of a main course you might want. The entrees begin at $7.50 and work their way up. While that doesn't seem extraordinarily expensive to me for beef Wellington or lobster, I have to admit I was shocked at the sight of crab cakes a la Maryland (2), cole slaw, and homefried potatoes for $8.
The waitresses all wear "The run is on" buttons, and I found myself feeling faintly guilty for not ordering shad.
One of my friends decided on steak Diane flambee, a house specialty. Stuart prepared the sauce of mushrooms, chives, shallots, madeira, and cognac at our table, and cooked the medallions of beef in it.
Danny's beef is marvelous: incredibly tender and more flavorful than filet mignon often is. The dish was served with wild rice and the most successful of the entrees we ordered.
My other friend chose filets de sole Bretonne: filets of Dover sole in a sauce of butter, shrimp, and mushrooms. The fish itself was excellent, but he complained that it was drowned in butter.
This is a common fault at Danny's. My escalopes de veau a la francaise with pommes anglaises was served with what the menu called lemon sauce. The overpowering impression was that the veal was swimming in butter--not a rich sauce, just butter all over the plate.
That was especially unfortunate because the veal was so good: young and white and tender, with a nice outer crust and (probably) delicately sauteed. Neat slices of lemon carefully arranged made the dish pleasing to the eye as well. The boiled potatoes, however, were overcooked and slightly mealy.
Once before at Danny's, when I ordered the best frog legs I've ever eaten, I was tempted to drain them on my napkin first.
My friends complained that the wine list is somewhat sparse for a restaurant of Danny's calibre. The dessert menu, however, is not.
You can have a Grand Marnier souffle (for $8) or bananas flambee or innumerable parfaits or Danny's famous cheesecake. One of my friends chose peach melba, in honor of its inventor Escoffier.
He could barely stagger through it. The peach half and vanilla ice cream (with not enough raspberry sauce) was smothered hopelessly in whipped cream.
My choice was much better: macedoine of fruit. The mixture of fresh strawberries, oranges, apples, and grapefruit in kirsch, in not too large a portion, was a refreshing way to end a rich meal.
My other friend decided to make do with the cookies and assorted mints that Danny's serves automatically with your coffee.
I have had Danny's chocolate pie before. Although it sounds like a prosaic, if you have any room for it, order it. It's like a delicate, rich, not too sweet chocolate mousse, with whipped cream and a crumb crust.
Danny's magnificent service can't be faulted (unless too many waiters around makes you nervous). Even though we were there on a not particularly slow evening, we were served quickly without being rushed and with a minimum of fuss.
It was all good--it just wasn't unforgettable: except for the dime Stuart gave us for our telephone reservation. Somehow, since our check came to about $50, that seemed a little superfluous.