Blue Agave Restaurant Review

Order Food to Share at Fun, Festive Blue Agave
By Elizabeth Large,
Sun Restaurant Critic
Originally published on January 29, 2006

When Michael Marx opened Blue Agave Restaurante y Tequileria six years ago, he introduced Baltimore to upscale Mexican cuisine and the joys of good tequila, a liquor made from the blue agave plant. (At the time, his bar stocked 60 different kinds. The number has increased since then.)
The restaurant has been a success, but Marx found that being a chef-owner isn't the best way to see much of your family, so last fall he sold Blue Agave to Elizabeth and Chuck Atwood, a couple who wanted to get into the restaurant business. She was someone who loved to cook; he was a businessman. Neither had been involved with an eatery before.

So far, the new owners haven't made many changes, either in the staff or the food. "We're taking baby steps," Elizabeth Atwood told me over the phone. Atwood -- not to be to confused with former Sun food editor Liz Atwood -- wants to create some lighter dishes for the dinner menu, and a bar menu will be introduced soon. There are also plans to improve Blue Agave's exterior this spring -- with an awning and perhaps some planters - to add more curb appeal.

In contrast to the easy-to-miss exterior, Blue Agave's dining room and bar are inviting and festive. Laid out on two levels, the room glows with warm, earthy colors. Exposed brick walls are the backdrop for authentic decorative accessories from the former owners' trips to Mexico. Candles illuminate the scene, and the restaurant's handsome blue-rimmed stemware, filled with colorful margaritas, can be found on almost every tile-covered table. It's a fun place.

You should order food to share at Blue Agave; it somehow seems like the right thing to do. That might mean getting the sensuous guacamole, freshly made with cilantro and lime and served with red corn chips, or one of the combination appetizer platters. The assortment from the grill has a couple of different and wonderful sausages, bits of tender grilled skirt steak in a fiery chile sauce, and grilled quail with a complex mole sauce. Its meat melts off its little bones. Warm tortillas and salsas come with the platter.
If you prefer an appetizer all to yourself, the house specialty is fat shrimp, spicy with chipotle and stacked on small, warm corn cakes. Salsa acts as a refreshing counterpoint.

Dishes that are fiery tend to be quite fiery. Our waiter told us they have been modulated for American tastes, but you could have fooled me. He convinced me to try the shrimp entree with a Veracruz-style sauce instead of the chipotle cream it's paired with on the menu. The flavors of cilantro, lime and olives shone through the chunky tomato sauce in spite of the fire.

Slices of tender duck breast were alluring, showcasing a dried-fruit mole, more subtly sweet than the mango sauce that covered the restaurant's signature dish, plantain-encrusted sea bass. The crisp crust kept the light, fresh fish moist, but the fruit sauce belonged on dessert.
In fact, my only serious complaint was with too-sweet dishes. Carnitas Uruapan, juicy pieces of pork with flavorful edges of fat, would have been wonderful if it hadn't been sugary sweet from being marinated in cola. Yes, as in Coke. Still, salsa fresca, fresh cilantro, refried beans and warm tortillas help tone the sugar down.

If you still haven't gotten your sugar fix, there is a tres leches cake made with three kinds of milk (whole, evaporated and sweetened condensed). It wasn't as moist as it should have been. None of the desserts we tried was memorable, although I wouldn't turn down another serving of the pumpkin flan, but maybe that's because we had overindulged in what had come before.

Blue Agave was a labor of love for Marx, so he did time-consuming things like change the menu seasonally four times a year. The Atwoods are approaching the business more pragmatically. There are a few seasonal specialties, for instance, but the menu stays basically the same -- made up predominantly of best-sellers. I can live with that, and I imagine Blue Agave's loyal customer base can, too.
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elizabeth.large@baltsun.com
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Ratings:
Food: ***
Service: ***
Atmosphere: ***

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