Showing posts with label restaurant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label restaurant. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Sick. . .


(from http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/chipotle-linked-e-coli-outbreak-jump-cases-expected-n455556)
". . . Health officials expect the number of people sickened by an E. coli outbreak linked to Chipotle restaurants in Washington state and Oregon to grow while they investigate the cause of the infection.
As of Friday, three people in the Portland area and 19 people in western Washington had become sick from E. coli. Seventeen of them had eaten at a Chipotle restaurant during the past few weeks. . . "

E. co·li
ē ˈkōlī/
noun
a bacterium commonly found in the intestines of humans and other animals, where it usually causes no harm. Some strains can cause severe food poisoning, especially in old people and children.






What do you think?
Tell me at
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html  or at
http://www.ohomusic.com 


OHO's "Ocean City Ditty," the CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(check out the new Ocean City Ditty video at https://youtu.be/ZZSd1oe1GcI) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak.  Please Visit http://www.ohomusic.com 


My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak
(To Access all Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano music you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser:  http://http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/RayJozwiak)

Also, be sure to visit:
http://www.rayjozwiak.com



 PIANOGONZOLOGY - Blogged My 
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Sunday, October 25, 2015

And My Bridge . . .


. . . was recently stolen. . .


(from http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/5800-Bottle-of-Wine-Bordeaux-Stolen-from-Mystic-Restaurant-335858541.html)
". . . A nearly $5,000 bottle of Bordeaux disappeared from a Mystic restaurant and police have released surveillance video of the man they think stole it.
The surveillance video from the Octagon Steakhouse, at the Mystic Marriott, in Groton, taken around 2:15 p.m. on Monday, shows a man pace back and forth in the empty dining room a few times, then walk into the wine room. Staff later discovered that a bottle of 1990 Chateau Petrus was gone.
In 2014, a case containing 12 bottles of the wine sold at a Sotheby’s wine auction in New York for $45,938, according to Bloomberg. Police ask anyone with information about the wine theft to call Officer Wilczek at 860-441-6712 and refer to case 15-2921-OF or submit a tip online. . ."








What do you think?
Tell me at
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html  or at
http://www.ohomusic.com 


OHO's "Ocean City Ditty," the CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak.  Please Visit http://www.ohomusic.com 


My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak
(To Access all Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano music you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser:  http://http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/RayJozwiak)

Also, be sure to visit:
http://www.rayjozwiak.com



 PIANOGONZOLOGY - Blogged My 
Zimbio

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Prospectively . . .

. . . posthaste . . .


Ray Jozwiak provides the Piano Prelude playing a preposterously paced program to preclude any possible passivity on the part of the patrons . . .

. . . this Monday evening, August 24, 2015 @ 7:15PM at the Brewer’s Alley Songwriters Showcase

Brewer's Alley Restaurant & Brewery
(Songwriters Showcase-Upstairs)
124 North Market Street
Frederick, MD 21701

Telephone: 301-631-0089
Fax: 301-631-1874
http://www.brewers-alley.com/



Clarity
from Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak
©2007 & 2014 Raymond M. Jozwiak





What do you think?
Tell me at
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html  or at
http://www.ohomusic.com 


OHO's "Ocean City Ditty," the CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak.  Please Visit http://www.ohomusic.com 


My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak
(To Access all Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano music you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser:  http://http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/RayJozwiak)

Also, be sure to visit:
http://www.rayjozwiak.com



 PIANOGONZOLOGY - Blogged My 
Zimbio

Sunday, January 25, 2015

New Year . . .

. . . of performances . . .

. . . for me at Brewer's Alley . . .


Monday, January 26, 2015
Monday, February 23, 2015
Monday, March 23, 2015
Monday, April 20, 2015
Monday, May 25, 2015
Monday, June 22, 2015
Monday, July 20, 2015
Monday, August 24, 2015
Monday, September 21, 2015
Monday, October 19, 2015
Monday, November 23, 2015
Brewer's Alley Songwriters' Showcase, Monday @ Brewer's Alley Restaurant
124 North Market Street, Frederick, MD 21701 (United States) - Map
(301) 631-0089

Starting with January 26th-
       Piano: Ray Jozwiak
                       Feature:  ANDREW MCKNIGHT
                       3-Songs: Michelle Lockey
                                Kristin Rebecca
                                Doug Alan Wilcox

                       Poetry: John Holly & Rod Deacey






What do you think?
Tell me at
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html  or at
http://www.ohomusic.com 


OHO's "Ocean City Ditty," the CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak.  Please Visit http://www.ohomusic.com 


My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music will be released April 7, 2014  Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak
(To Access all Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano music you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser:  http://http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/RayJozwiak)

Also, be sure to visit:
http://www.rayjozwiak.com



 PIANOGONZOLOGY - Blogged My 
Zimbio

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Colorful. . .

. . . Music
by Ray Jozwiak- Gonzo Piano
This Monday
June 17, 2013
7:30PM

At the Monday Night Songwriters Showcase at Brewer's Alley Restaurant & Brewery (take the elevator on the right to the 2nd floor) 
124 North Market Street Frederick, MD 21701
Telephone:
301-631-0089 Fax: 301-631-1874 http://www.brewers-alley.com/





What do you think?
Tell me at  
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html

My latest release, Black & White Then Back,
can be downloaded digitally at:
Ray Jozwiak: Black & White Then Back

(or you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser:  http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/rayjozwiak3)

Also, be sure to visit:
http://www.rayjozwiak.com

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Saturday, May 18, 2013

Race. . .


. . . on over to Brewer's Alley Restaurant & Brewery
Monday
May 20, 2013
@ 7:30PM
to hear Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano
open the Brewer's Alley Songwriters Showcase

Monday Night Songwriters' Showcase (now in its eighth year!) is held on Monday evenings in beautiful downtown Frederick, MD, except during December (when we are closed after the first Monday). The program starts at 7:30 pm with a piano prelude, followed by three or four songwriters doing three songs each (lots of variety). The featured songwriter for the evening goes on around 9 pm for around 45 minutes to an hour, followed by two or three more three-song performers. Somewhere in the mix we throw in some poetry from our resident poet, John Holly. Our MCs are Ron Goad, Todd C. Walker and Tomy Wright, frequently interrupted by Rod Deacey on sound. Most of you know all this, but this mailing is going out to some people who may be unfamiliar with our format, so please bear with me.... Our shows are FREE – we collect tips for the featured songwriter, but there is no door charge, so come and support LIVE MUSIC!

(take the elevator on the right to the 2nd floor)
124 North Market Street Frederick, MD 21701

Telephone: 301-631-0089 Fax: 301-631-1874
 http://www.brewers-alley.com/





What do you think?
Tell me at  
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html

My latest release, Black & White Then Back,
can be downloaded digitally at:
Ray Jozwiak: Black & White Then Back

(or you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser:  http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/rayjozwiak3)

Also, be sure to visit:
http://www.rayjozwiak.com

PIANOGONZOLOGY - Blogged My 
Zimbio
blog search directory Blog Directory


Sunday, October 21, 2012

DROP. . .


. . . by this Monday evening, October 22, 2012 at 7:30PM for the. . . 

Monday Night Songwriters Showcase
at Brewer's Alley Restaurant & Brewery
(take the elevator on the right to the 2nd floor)
124 North Market Street Frederick, MD 21701
Telephone: 301-631-0089 Fax: 301-631-1874
  http://www.brewers-alley.com/

where you'll hear
Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano
open the show This Week
with 30 minutes of solo, Gonzo, Fractured Jazz and Improvisational Terror Tactics at the Piano


NUMBER ONE (from AMBIENCE & WINE)
©2011 Raymond M. Jozwiak



What do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html

You can NOW download your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE


Ray Jozwiak: Ambience & Wine
Please visit
http://www.rayjozwiak.com

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Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Truly an original. . .

. . . and a BALTIMORE original at that!!

(from the Baltimore CityPaper)
Mobtown Beat

Morris Martick 1923-2011

"What I took from him was to not be scared of being unique. He just did things the way he wanted"

Photo: Katie Brennan, License: N/A
Katie Brennan
Morris Martick outside Martick’S Restaurant Fran�ais On Mulberry Street.
Photo: Courtesy Alex Martick, License: N/A
Courtesy Alex Martick
A Martick’s menu circa 2008

Baltimore has certainly enjoyed its share of eccentric eateries over the years, but perhaps none so endearing—certainly none so enduring—as Martick’s Restaurant Français. Patrons had to ring a bell to gain admittance to the dimly lit and eclectically furnished dining room, where mismatched silver and china topped the tables and a multifarious array of works by local artists graced the walls. It was funky and shabby and utterly unlike anywhere else.
The restaurant’s inimitable founder and chef, Morris Martick, died Dec. 16 of lung cancer at the age of 88, having literally spent his life there. He was born in the building—214 W. Mulberry St.—and grew up working with his parents, two brothers, and two sisters in various enterprises operated there by the Martick family: a grocery store and then a speakeasy during the Prohibition years. (Rumor has it a gin still remains in the building’s basement.)
Martick’s own first incarnation of the family business was running a bar/jazz nightclub during the 1960s. By all accounts, it was an island of Bohemian refuge in an otherwise conservative city. Painter Raoul Middleman used to hang out there, and Martick gave him his first show—hanging his paintings above the bar. “This was when segregation laws were still in effect,” Middleman recalls. “And I had a friend I really wanted to have see this show, my first show, but he was black, and it was against the law for him to enter the bar. But Morris just said, ‘Bring him on in.’ He could’ve gotten in a lot of trouble for doing that. He thought segregation laws were stupid and he lived by his beliefs. I always respected him for that.”
Former Martick’s employee Steve Pampinelli says Martick used to recount how Billie Holiday once sang there in the nightclub days. “It was actually against the law of segregation, but he would let black folks in anyway,” Pampinelli says. “So when Billie Holiday sang there, she was actually there as a patron. When people realized she was there everyone got really excited and asked if she would sing, and of course she did.”
“Morris really only left Baltimore twice in his whole life,” recalls Scotty Stevenson, who worked at Martick’s from 1977 through the mid-’80s and off and on for several years after that. “He was gone briefly during WWII while he was in the Air Force—he was in Alaska, according to him because ‘That was where they sent all the fuck-ups.’ But then he came back and took care of his mother until she died in 1959, and ran the jazz club until, he said, he got tired of the drunks and the musicians. So he closed down in 1967 and went bumming around France for a couple years really learning how to cook. He had always liked to cook, he was a natural at it, but that was when he really educated himself in formal technique. Then when he came back, he fixed the place up and reopened as a French restaurant.”
That was in 1970, when Martick’s Restaurant Français had two dining rooms on two floors, a maitre’d, tuxedoed waiters, and a genuine French chef from Paris. According to Alex Martick, who survives his brother at the age of 83, “I don’t know where he found that chef, but the man was a goddamn drunk. He’d call downstairs for bottles of brandy, supposedly to cook with, but he’d be drinking it himself. Then when he was good and drunk he’d come after my brother.”
Stevenson recalls hearing the tale as follows: “One night the chef came after Morris with a knife, and that was that. Morris was left with a French restaurant but no French chef, and that was when he started running the kitchen himself. Then the monkey suits and the maitre’d evaporated, and it all became the artists and the musicians.”
It was a natural evolution, Stevenson explains, because “almost everything in that restaurant Morris had done himself anyway—the stained glass, the painted tile, the albino rattlesnake skin wallpaper. He was an artist himself, he drew and painted, so he was always at home with artists and musicians.”
Anna Oldfield, who put herself through college working in Martick’s kitchen from 1985 until 1991, says, “Nobody worked harder than Morris himself. He was simply always there, cooking and doing anything that needed to be done. So anyone who worked for him got into that same zone, that you just did everything necessary to make it work. That 75 people were going to come in and somehow, in this little kitchen at the top of these impossibly steep stairs in this crazy little house with a bunch of crazy people, you were somehow going to get it together and make these amazing French meals.
“The way it worked was inexplicable, but transformative for the people who worked there—the ones that stayed, anyway,” continues Oldfield, who went on to get her doctorate and now teaches at Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina. “I was there for five years, and in that time at least 50 people came in who had been hired and they’d run screaming their first night. Literally run out the door in the middle of their shift.”
“I always thought there was a little roulette wheel running in Morris’ head, and when he met you the ball either landed on ‘family’ and he treated you like family, or ‘intruder’ and he would chase you away,” Stevenson says. “It makes sense because everything in that building was his childhood—if you were banging the pots in the kitchen he’d yell at you, ‘Stop hitting the pots!’ which is exactly what his mother had yelled at him. Anything he yelled at you had been yelled at him growing up.”
“Morris was challenging and irritable and he yelled at everybody all the time. But you could yell right back,” says Katie Brennan, who began her Martick’s career in 1985, at the age of 16—and began a friendship with Martick himself that carried through the next 26 years.
“We’d get these Culinary Institute kids who’d be like, Oh I’m gonna work at Martick’s and be a chef apprentice, and the first question he’d always ask them is, ‘How long do you cook this piece of fish?’” Brennan recalls. “And they’d start this analysis of what kind it was and how thick and blah blah, and Morris would just shout, ‘Till it’s done, damn it, till it’s done!’”
Martick was famous for his pâté, profiteroles, and, above all else, bouillabaisse. “That bouillabaisse took literally days to make,” Oldfield recalls. “You’d have to bone the fish and make the stock in all these stages, sometimes boiling, sometimes barely simmering it, and add all these different things at just the right times. It was a kind of cooking that hardly anyone does anymore, because it takes so long and is based entirely on instinct. He was such a master of that, and he never used a recipe. He always improvised, which is why if you went there twice and got the same dish, it would not be exactly the same.”
Jeff Smith, the Baltimore-born chef-owner of Chameleon Cafe in Lauraville, worked briefly in Martick’s kitchen. “Even in a short time, I learned a lot working there,” Smith says. “He definitely did things differently from anywhere else I had ever worked.”
The brutal working conditions at Martick’s were famous among employees—Brennan and Oldfield both recall a thermometer in the kitchen that routinely pegged out at its top reading of 115 degrees F—and over the years there were many tales of Martick working in his underpants, if he bothered wearing them at all. “I worked there with a guy who had been with Martick on and off over the years,” Smith recalls, “who told me that Morris would be in the shower—his bathroom was between the front and back kitchens—and customers would come in, and Martick would just step out of the shower, put an apron on, and start cooking, his wrinkly old ass hanging out while he was cooking this amazing food. I never saw it with my own two eyes, but this was the legend.”
After a heyday running from its 1970 opening to the mid-’80s, Martick’s Restaurant Français began to slowly fade from its original eminence. Stevenson says that the opening of Harborplace in 1982 drew diners downtown, away from Martick’s, as did the subsequent opening on nearby North Charles Street of Louie’s Bookstore Cafe by Jimmy Rouse, who had waited tables at Martick’s. “Louie’s drew a lot of clientele away from Martick’s, but Morris never held a grudge,” Stevenson says. “He would actually go and eat there almost every night. He used to sit there at the bar, telling Jimmy everything he was doing wrong.”
“What I took from him was to not be scared of being unique,” Smith says. “The way he just did things the way he wanted and didn’t care what anybody else thought. The guy just had a lot of guts, and held out to the end. I know what it’s like when it’s slow in your restaurant. It’s scary and hard to come to work, day after day when it’s slow like that, and he did it for years. I have a lot of respect for him.”
Martick ran his eponymous restaurant for 35 years, closing to the public in 2008. He remained there, living in the building where he was born, and carrying on the friendships he’d made over eight decades of life, many of them at the center of Baltimore’s creative circles. “There are so many people in Baltimore whose early networks and friendships were made by working at Martick’s over the years,” Stevenson says. In his later years, according to Brennan, Martick kept busy going to the movies and Pimlico race track. As late as 2010, according to Pampinelli, he was still “running a business hauling people’s trash out of their basements or helping them move house. We’d make a few extra bucks hauling stuff to the city dump in that board truck of his.”
In October, however, he collapsed while walking down Howard Street and was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. “It went pretty quickly there, at the end,” Brennan says. “A lot of people didn’t even realize he was sick. I didn’t know literally until the night before he died. I got [to the hospital] just in time. I got to give him a hug and a kiss and tuck him in when he fell asleep.”
Memorial plans are still tentative, but Alex Martick says that a celebration of his brother’s life is in the works for January. In a Facebook tribute to Martick, amid a plethora of reminiscences both affectionate and profane, Oldfield wrote:
I am overwhelmed with a combination of terrible sadness and memories that range from ridiculous to hilarious to truly tender. We were so very very very lucky to know Morris, he was like a planet that made an alternate gravity where people like us could thrive. He defied every law of physics [and] lousy boring stuff that people are supposed to do and I’ll bet y’all don’t know how close you were to having that walkin [refrigerator] fall in on your heads when you were having dinner. . . . Now that we’re all 50 or whatever we can maybe start to appreciate his absolute refusal to give in to all the thousands of things that drag people into those small compromises that destroy your soul. Morris never gave up. I’m only just beginning to get everything that he was saying to me all that time


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Saturday, April 23, 2011

Taking in. . .

. . . my daily sustenance down at my local Scottish restaurant when I noticed that my entree was more than I bargained for. Look what I got. The manager said there was compensation coming my way. But not today. Don't call us. Don't call us. Don't call us, we'll call you.

Auntie Lynn said it would be a sin to waste my precious vocal expertise. So I took me to audition down at the prestigious theatre called the Ritz. Producer man was nice as he could be. He said I was fine, but not this time. Don't call us. Don't call us. Don't call us, we'll call you.

Seems I've been hearing the same thing since I don't know when. Some with a little less confidence might just give in. I'm no one's fool unless I want to be. Life can be cruel. Won't someone please just CALL ME!?

At the end of what had seemed to be a perfect evening, just what did I do? Could it be something I said or didn't follow-through? I wish I knew. We danced and dined. I even kissed your hand. Under a twinkling sky I said goodbye when you cried don't call us. Don't call us. Don't call us, we'll call you.

©1997 Raymond M. Jozwiak


Download your
very own copy of
ANOTHER SHOT
by Ray Jozwiak
Ray Jozwiak: Another Shot