When Salt opened four years ago, I don't think anyone was surprised that a chef with Jason Ambrose's resume would be turning out excellent food. The unexpected thing about Salt was how thoroughly uncompromising its vision was from the start.
Here was a neighborhood tavern that refused to act like one. Right away, there were those amazing green lamps, fixtures from another planet that effectively announced a new way of looking at things. And the opening menu was impressively compact, robust, and driven by Ambrose's interests and tastes. Guests were welcome to climb aboard, but there was never an easy way out, a hamburger to order instead, or a crab cake to hide behind.
In a city that coddles its diners, this was taken by some as swagger, by others as cockiness. Also, when it opened, Salt had a no-reservations policy, which was rather hard cheese if you had just spent 20 minutes looking for a parking space in Upper Fells Point. Now, Salt's way of running things is much more commonplace, and many more diners have come to expect, and seek out, the pleasures of a chef-driven restaurant. Now, it all feels mellow.
Only three items remain from that opening menu — the ever-popular duck-fat fries with their aioli dipping trio; the kobe slider topped with foie gras, an instant signature item; and the coriander-and-pepper-encrusted tuna, served over seaweed, accompanied by two spicy tuna potstickers. This last one remains because it's perfect, and Salt's customers rightly insist that it stay forever. We couldn't pass it up, and it's still a winner.
Otherwise, the entire menu is overhauled about every 10 weeks or so. This keeps things exciting for customers and challenging for the staff, both in the kitchen and out front. The waiter we had on a recent visit was thoroughly engaged with the two-week-old menu, offering coherent and persuasive menu descriptions and taste points, nimbly balancing concern for the customer with support for the kitchen. Similarly, the rooms here look fresh and well-tended. The wine list remains affordable and without agenda, with about 20 wines by the glass.
The current menu has nine appetizers, including two salads and the duck fries, and nine entrees. The menu feels particularly well-balanced — of the entrees, four are fish, which feels right for summer, and there's one choice each of beef, chicken (an "airline cut" Amish chicken breast), pork and veal. The last entree, the Salt Vegetable Plate, is basically a gathering-up of the other entrees' featured side dishes.
Ultimately, if we managed to find things among our entrees to quibble about, we found only pleasure in the starters. For old time's sake, we ordered the intensely good slider, still at the $15 price it was on opening day, when it felt like an extravagance. Now it feels like a bargain. Dressed with truffle aioli and red-onion marmalade, it's spot-on. A Peruvian-style lobster ceviche not only brought out the best sweet flavors of the tricky shellfish, but also showed off, as a good appetizer should, the kitchen's prep skills, with its careful placement of evenly cut passion fruit, mango and yellow peppers.
A witty take on the classic chicken-and-waffle dish presented pieces of chicken-fried quail with a caramelized waffle "stick" — the wit works here because the quail is also prepared well, and delicious. But the surprise favorite among the starters was an eagerly recommended and rapturously received Bibb salad with watermelon (fresh tomatoes aren't starring in Salt's salads yet), dressed very simply with balsamic syrup and intensified by sea salt.
As I said, the entrees gave us more to talk about. Is rockfish the cilantro of the sea, or is it just hard to win with this fish? Everyone seems to taste and prefer it differently. Served with its skin on and crisped, a rockfish fillet tasted bland to a few of us, and the one person who discovered and enjoyed its wild flavors was disgruntled that the fat hadn't been filleted away. This was served over a pretty bed of gazpacho vegetables.
A grilled porterhouse veal chop shows off Ambrose's finesse with manicotti, now being stuffed with morels, and a very nice tomato-leek fondue — not a cheese thing, the waiter explains, but a sauce. The veal had fine flavor, but there's an odd Stroop effect in play — it turns out that a cut of meat that looks exactly like a porterhouse can seem odd when it's veal-white and not beef-pink.
Served in a bowl with amazingly flavorful hunks of andouille sausage, a Cuban pork shank gave plenty of falling-apart-at-the-touch pleasure. In the mix, along with a soffrito sauce and roasted poblanos are sweet plantains, which I alone found intrusive — I kept hitting sweet notes when I didn't want to.
Aja Cage is responsible for Salt's creative pastry list — a strawberry shortcake with crispy cornbread and honeycomb, goat cheese doughnuts, and the cake n' shake, which comes with a milkshake shot.
This was a good night out — it went by almost too quickly, as meals in summertime can tend to do. It's good to see Salt thriving.
Salt
Where: 2127 E Pratt St
Contact: 410-276-5480, http://www.salttavern.com
Hours: Dinner, Tuesday-Sunday
Appetizers: $7 - $15
Entrees: $18 - $26
Food: ✭✭✭1/2
Service: ✭✭✭1/2
Atmosphere: ✭✭✭1/2
[Key: ✭✭✭✭: Outstanding; ✭✭✭: Good; ✭✭: Fair or uneven; ✭: Poor]