“Dude-

“I'm a bit of a chef and a total food junkie. No I'm not fat or overweight. Just watched a clip on great restaurants serving famous Baltimore food and want to know if you've been to or know of these restaurants on your turf.

“- Jimmy's Famous Seafood (CrabCakes and Crab Sandwiches)

“- Clementines (Bacon wrapped meatloaf)

“My mouth is watering! Spare no details.”

-Ben Rumson

I can no longer afford to eat at either of these locations. I did go to Jimmy’s three times when I was making good money, and am treated to a meal at Clementines occasionally by my more successful son.

Jimmy’s Famous Seafood is a well-regarded restaurant by seafood lovers of my parent’s generation. Younger people have not taken to it as the food is on the bland side. Crab sandwiches are just plain disgusting. An entire soft-shelled crab, caught after shedding his shell, is eaten as a sandwich filler whole, eyes, guts, shit and all. I have never eaten one, anywhere. My mother assures me that Jimmy’s crab cakes, which I have never cared for enough to pay the steep prices, even when I had the cash, are among the area’s best. Honestly, the supermarket I work at sells store made crab cakes for $5 and they are as good as anything I’ve had out.

The service ay Jimmy’s Parkville location is excellent. The service at their old Dundalk location, just inside the city near the old GM plant, was horrible when I went there in 2009, with one half done appetizer taking 45 minutes to arrive at the table. My son and I walked out in disgust and grabbed a cheap burger. We were the only patrons in the joint at the time, at 4 in the afternoon.

Clementines is only a half mile from where I sit. A dead hoodrat was served up fresh this time last year right at their front door—killed by a .25 auto, I think. The owner of this joint is singlehandedly keeping the urban blight at bay by hiring a neighborhood janitor, and getting special police units walking a beat. He also owns the Green Onion snob grocery on the corner of Hamilton and Harford, thirty feet from where the White Vice Lords stabbed a predatory panhandler for beating up a crippled panhandler and taking his spot.

The atmosphere is excellent, with a mix of old furniture, couches to lounge on and books to read. This store front was once a furniture store where I bought the furnishing for my mistaken investment in Baltimore housing back in 1982. There is a small bar with microbrews on tap and imports in bottles, and a wine selection that my son actually approves of. The service is excellent and the portions are small. However, the quality is stellar. The best time to eat at Clementines is for breakfast.

The chef makes his own sausage, bacon and meatloaf, with sausage and cured meats hanging in a plexiglass walk in for the diners to see. The meatloaf dinner is too expensive for me. The only dinner I can afford is soft tacos. However, their ala carte breakfast selection is really the best example of lean cured meat I have eaten, and is not any more expensive than going to Denny’s. The meals are served with artisan bread and the restrooms are actually clean. Items that appeal to working class and lower class blacks are not placed on the menu. So the only clientele you get here is the hipster crowd, which means really nice polite black families, and a bunch of sissy white people who will not speak to anyone that they did not arrive with.