Baltimore Has One Of Best New Restaurants In U.S.: Esquire

BALTIMORE, MD — Esquire Magazine recently published a list of 2019's best new restaurants in the country. One Baltimore business was on the list.

Esquire's Best New Restaurants in America f0r 2019 includes 22 eateries across the United States. A Latin restaurant in Washington, D.C. — Seven Reasons — topped the list.

Ranked at No. 18 is Baltimore's new French eatery Le Comptoir du Vin. Equire called it the "sexiest third-date spot in America." This isn't its first accolade — the restaurant was also ranked among the top 10 best new eateries in the United States for 2019 by Bon Appétit, which put Le Comptoir du Vin on its "Hot 10" list.

Related:

• Baltimore Restaurant Among Top 10 New Eateries In US: Bon Appétit
• 4 Baltimore Restaurants Nominated For Bon Appétit's 'Hot 10' List

To come up with its list, Esquire's food and drinks editor Jeff Gordinier crisscrossed the country for the past year searching for the best eats and the best drinks.

Here's what Esquire said about Le Comptoir du Vin, located at 1729 Maryland Avenue:

If you have grown weary of “gastronomy” and its countless pretenses, this chill, female-fronted hangout might be your end-of-the-decade antidote. Natural wines get generous pours. Chewy sourdough, baked in-house and drenched obscenely in olive oil, begs for a schmear of chicken livers tickled with Madeira. Celery (yeah, celery) will be ignored no longer after it takes a tumble with dates, pistachios, and the pheromonal fish sauce called colatura. Baltimore (yeah, Baltimore) can now make rightful claim to having the sexiest third-date spot in America.

Le Comptoir du Vin means "the wine counter," and the restaurant has an ever-changing, handwritten menu.

In addition to highlighting the city for having one of the best new restaurants, Esquire deemed Baltimore's Chelsea Gregoire of True Chesapeake Oyster Co. at 3300 Clipper Mill Road as beverage director of the year in the United States not just for her beverage-mixing skills but also for her "radical, generous-spirited approach to inclusiveness."

See Esquire's list of the 22 best new restaurants in America for 2019.

— By Patch editors Max Bennett, Kristina Houck and Elizabeth Janney