Sole Cardinale
Atlantic, The, October, 2002 by Corby Kummer
Other than Maine lobster, it's hard to think of a seafood as closely linked to a state as crab is to Maryland—just ask anyone who has been to a waterside Baltimore crab boil or had crab cakes packed with freshly picked Chesapeake blue crab. But I recently discovered another, equally hallowed Baltimore seafood legend at its birthplace—Maison Marconi, a restaurant that occupies a grand old brownstone and is hardly changed from the 1920s, when H.
L. Mencken held forth over the lamb chops. Any change in the décor or management elicits comment from the Baltimore Sun , Mencken's paper; the death of a veteran waiter last year prompted a regular diner to tell the Sun , "He had a flair when he poured the chocolate sauce over the ice cream." The dish with which Marconi is synonymous is lobster cardinale, a big lobster whose meat has been mixed with a ...