Gunther & Co.

Gunther & Co. has occupied the historic Gunther Boiler Building at 3650 Toone Street in Brewers Hill since May 2016 — a decade of modern American cooking with global influences in a room built inside a former brewery's plant. Executive chef and co-owner Jerry Trice is a Culinary Institute of America graduate whose route here was unusual: he pioneered ChefDriven, the first restaurant-style food truck in Washington DC, which both Washingtonian and The Washington Post named the city's top food truck in 2012, and before that led kitchens at Yin Yankee in Annapolis and Bethesda and Sam's on the Waterfront. His standard is stated plainly — pretty much everything is made in house, including the ice cream, the burger buns and the brunch biscuits. The menu runs a butter-poached Maine lobster roll at $48, wood-oven roasted oysters with Thai chilli butter at $15, a dry-aged burger at $18 and hanger steak frites at $39. Parking is free, which in this part of Baltimore is worth noting.

The zero-proof section is short, cheap and made from scratch, which is a better combination than long and bought-in. The Amalfi Spritz ($12) is built on a house-made zero-proof Amalfi aperitif with Lyre's non-alcoholic sparkling wine, soda and orange. Spa Water ($9) uses a house cantaloupe-pandan shrub with coconut water, lemon and soda. Rose of Althea, at just $6, is a house hibiscus shrub with lime and soda — the cheapest properly built drink on any menu in this guide, and the shrub base means it has real acidity rather than sweetness. Behind them sits an unusually good non-alcoholic beer list of five: Go Brewing's New School Sour, Ceria's Grainwave Belgian wit, Athletic's Upside Dawn, New Trail's Broken Heels hazy IPA and Estrella Galicia 0.0, plus Fever-Tree and Q Drinks sodas at $5. The Baltimore Banner's line about the programme is the one worth quoting: style and substance combine in zero-proof creations that would make Chappell Roan drool. Note the list rotates seasonally.