Food *** (3 stars)
Service *** (3 stars)
Atmosphere *** (3 stars)
When restaurant owners open new places, I like to go back and see what's happening with the first restaurant. Sometimes it suffers from neglect. But the Carlyle Club, Baltimore's only upscale Lebanese restaurant, seems to be reinvigorated by the attention its new sibling, the Spice Company in the Colonnade, is getting.
The Carlyle is actually the second restaurant of brothers Kehar and Binda Singh. (The first is the nearby Ambassador.) In the almost five years since it opened, I've sometimes wondered how it has survived. Despite positive reviews in Zagat and other publications, the restaurant never seemed to catch on. Its biggest problem is the lack of parking. There is free valet parking, but Baltimoreans don't like to give up their car keys.
Poor:]