Jul 19, 2009
A little food cart and a big hotel beefing over downtown Baltimore turf
This new downtown Baltimore food cart is popular, but not with the nearby Residence Inn.
Story by MELODY SIMMONS, Photos by JOHN BLOCH
At the corner of Light and Redwood Streets, lunchtime has taken on a whole new meaning.
The smell of grilled lamb and pit beef emanating from a silver food cart blast through the mid-town fizz. For five hours each weekday, beginning at 11 a.m., hungry patrons line up for unique street meat on a Kaiser roll at the recession-buster price of about $5 per sandwich.
But the cart is causing major indigestion for some. Managers at the Residence Inn, whose front door is located steps away from the shiny food stand, are engaged in a foodie turf war because they say the cart threatens the safety of its guests and cuts into the business of its new restaurant, 17 Light.
“This corner is not big enough for both of us to be here,” Patrick Miner, general manager of the Residence Inn, said he told the cart’s owner Maria Kaimakis. “My number one concern is safety. I told her ‘your cart causes problems with sight.’”
Miner insists he has not launched a vendetta against the food cart. Yet Kaimakis said that over a two-week period he has summoned a steady stream of official visitors to inspect her operation.
Among the visitors: Baltimore police officials, health department inspectors, city license and permits inspectors and Downtown Partnership mediators have all stopped by. Kaimakis said that the second day the cart was there, July 8, Miner sent a hotel employee outside right before the lunch hour to power wash the sidewalk – just as her grill was starting to smoke with lamb and beef for sale.
“I think they are trying to bully us,” she said in an iterview last week. “They are a big corporation trying to bully the little guy.”
Maria Kaimakis serves pit beef and lamb from her cart at the corner of Light and Redwood streets.
Kaimakis has owned a city vendor’s permit for the cart since January 1991. The permit was originally for the corner at Water and Light Streets, but city officials relocated the permit and cart to Light and Redwood in the spring of 1992 because of traffic. At the time, there was no hotel located at the corner, only a string of small businesses that have since disappeared in the city’s effort to revitalize downtown.
In the 1990s, from that corner, Kaimakis and her husband, Vassos Yiannouris, sold felafel and chicken souvlaki from the food cart for two years. Their Greek chow became so popular, they opened a restaurant, Cypriana, in 1993, at 105 E. Baltimore Street. The restaurant is now located at the corner of Calvert and Baltimore Streets.
Kaimakis said she decided to return to her corner roots a couple of weeks ago because she noticed that lunchtime customers were hit by the recession and demanded a cheaper lunch alternative.
“These are good working people looking for an excellent lunch value,” she said, on Thursday while working the cart in the lunchtime crush. “This is what people want – to eat a good lunch for $5.”
Miner, who said he has enjoyed a grilled lamb sandwich from Kaimakis’ cart, said the business outside his front door has cut into the lunchtime orders of the hotel’s restaurant.
A sandwich board boasting parts of the menu sits next to the food cart listing daily specials: Little Italy burger for $10.95, chicken cheese steak for $7.95 and Baltimore fish and chips for $12.95.
“She’s right in front of my restaurant that I just opened in March and right now I’m getting three or four customers for lunch. This week was horrible,” Miner said. “She told me initially I was going to get more business. It hasn’t panned out. She is very busy.”
In addition, Miner said the food cart also hampers the hotel’s handicap entrance and blocks valet parking efforts and the stop for the Johns Hopkins Hospital commuter bus, which makes regular stops at the corner.
Kirby Fowler, president of the Downtown Partnership, said he is working on solving the culinary street clash. He has requested officials in the city department that issues vendor permits relocate Kaimakis and her cart to a nearby spot and issue a new vendor permit.
He offered soothing words in hopes of a sweet resolution.
“Cypriana is an institution downtown and we love its story about how them moved from grassroots to the restaurant at Baltimore and Calvert Streets,” Fowler said. “They were acting on a permit that was given out when there was not a hotel there. Now there is. Times have changed.”
AHEM? The cart came first. Nothing has changed.
“She’s right in front of my restaurant that I just opened in March and right now I’m getting three or four customers for lunch. This week was horrible,” Miner said.
Perhaps if Miner wasn’t banking on people eating overpriced food, he would see his business pick up. $12.95 for fish and chips at lunch? Really?
The fact that the food cart is doing a terrific business, and his restaurant isn’t — that should be a wake-up call.
Every single person in front of the food cart is either already amply endowed or on the verge of stepping into the kingdom of the fat. Maria Kaimakis is in great shape. Look at her arms and that smile. She’s raking it in at the expense of the fat people of Baltimore whose nasal passages can always smell out a place that will give them more of what will kill them for less money. Miner’s minor skirmish with Kaimakis will be his major defeat unless he’s quick on the uptake. His menu sounds just as genocidal as hers and at a higher price he stands no chance of roping in the willing victims faster than she can. To survive he should demolish his restaurant and replace it with a giant food cart, halve the prices of all his offerings and call his enterprise, “The Gallows”. Then there is a small chance Maria (and her stunning bare arms) will return to Cypriana.
U Nellore
I can see the arguments of both sides, but I’ve got to side with the hotel if the permit can be transferred to another suitable location. There are plenty of good locations nearby. It’s current location is quite close to the entrance of the hotel, and the fact that there was no cart there when the hotel was built and there was no hotel there when the cart permit was issued justifies changing the terms.
I had assumed that the cart was in some way associated with the hotel until reading this very interesting article.
I’ve noticed a sudden increase in the number of lunch carts/hot dog stands downtown and wasn’t sure if this was due to a change in permit laws, an influx of entrepreneurs, or just the state of the general economy and demand for cheaper food. Any ideas? Might make a good story.