The Point in Fells Point opened the last weekend of May in Miss Irene's space at the picturesque corner of Thames and Ann streets. At first glance, the space looks very much like it did as Miss Irene's and its short-lived follow-up restaurant, Poe Boys.
There have been changes, though, including a lighter paint job for the first-floor bar area and the removal of a few walls that formerly cordoned off the passage to the upstairs dining room. The new group of owners here are Edie and Jimmy Chin and their daughter, Erica Russo. The Chins will be dividing time between The Point and their Edie's Deli and Grill, in the 250 West Pratt Building, while Russo oversees the new restaurant full time.
The Point marks Russo's return to the restaurant business. After managing establishments like Lucille's at the Power Plant, she left to pursue an accounting degree. After graduating, and a few years in a cubicle, the hospitality bug bit her, and when Miss Irene's property looked as if it might become available, the family went for it.
For their chef, they hired Jacob Raitt, most recently the sous chef at Bistro Blanc in Glenelg. Raitt has also worked with Jason Ambrose at Salt and with Paul Hajewski at the Inn at Brookville Farms.
"I liked Jacob the minute he came in," Russo says. The chef came in with photographs of his work, she recalls, and a firm grasp of all aspects of kitchen management. But Raitt still had to beat out two other finalists for the job in a contest devised by Edie Chin. On three consecutive days, the applicants came in and prepared dishes from ingredients provided by the family — duck breast, steak and vacuum-packed tuna.
"He made beautiful ceviche from what was really not very wonderful tuna," Russo says. "That won us all over." For Raitt's part, the deciding factor in accepting the job was being able to put together his own staff.
His opening menu has an eye on the seasons and features the kind of " Maryland staple flavors" that Fells Point diners would expect, but not necessarily in their most familiar iterations. Crab shows up several times on the menu, but not in a crab cake. The cocktail sauce for the oysters is flavored with sesame and Sriracha sauce. The big sellers so far are ahi ceviche; the seafood pasta with shrimp, mussels and fresh fish; and Raitt's steak and eggs — Raitt is using the teres major cut for the steak and, at dinner, quail eggs.
Raitt and Russo are aware of the skepticism, or even outright negativity, surrounding this latest effort to make an upscale establishment work on a stretch of Thames Street. But they see the Point eventually working as a "bookend" for the caliber of restaurants that the Kali's group has installed on the street's west end with Meli, Mezze and the original Kali's Court.
They hope that guests will start to think of the Point as one-stop-for-the-evening destination, which would begin with dinner in the view-happy upstairs dining room, then move over to the adjacent lounge and end in the bar downstairs for live entertainment. Dislodging customers from the downstairs bar seemed to be the previous occupants' continuing challenge.
"This is a great space, a great concept and we're putting out a great product." Raitt says "We're not going anywhere."
The Point in Fells (1738 Thames St., 410-327-7264) is open now for dinner seven nights a week and during the afternoon on weekends. Weekday lunch is planned for the future.
Columbia Cazbar The Cazbar Kebap House is open for business in Columbia (10840 Little Patuxent Parkway, 410-730-7900, cazbarbaltimore.com). This will be the more casual, family-friendly sister restaurant of downtown's Cazbar, but with the same mezze, kebabs and the boat-shaped pizza called pides. Cazbar Kebap House is open seven days a week, from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Prominent on the amenities list is food delivery.