Fadensonnen is one of the most engaging restaurants to emerge in Baltimore in the past several years. With a beer garden downstairs and a natural-wine and sake bar upstairs, it forms part of a collective of independently owned enterprises that includes a take-out lunch place, café, wine boutique, record shop and an artist residency. The latest project by Lane Harland and Matthew Pierce, co-owners of Clavel Mezcaleria and W.C. Harlan, the space mingles mid-Atlantic and minimalist sensibilities, both Japanese and Scandanavian, to create a spare but warm atmosphere to linger over the drinks list. Zack Genin’s selections are both affordable and compelling: Amber wines outnumber whites, including rarities such as Hinterland L’Imparfait Macération from Ontario and the Zibibbo Bianco by Pantelleria’s Gabrio Bini; sakes veer toward savory styles like Yamahai and Kimoto. Chef Helena del Pesco, a member of the collective, responds with small plates designed to accentuate both sakes and wines. She is a master of fermentations, a skill expressed through her cured sardines and tuna ventresca, lacto-fermented pickles and tofu misozuke, cured for more than a year in miso from Pennsylvania’s White Rose Miso company. Other ingredients are sourced from local producers, as close as Fadensonnen’s rooftop garden.
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3 W 23rd St. Baltimore, MD, 21218
Wine Bar
Jamal Rayyis is a NYC-based writer, editor and educator—and copy editor for this magazine. A pioneer in covering Middle Eastern wine, he is at work on a book on the politics of wine in the Middle East and occasionally updates his blog at palatesavvy.com.
This story appears in the print issue of February 2020.
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