B'more and the DIY culture #3

The Dogwood restaurant is a hip place in Hampden, on "The Avenue," 36th Street. Hampden Village is a creative commercial district near the Johns Hopkins Campus, south of Roland Park and The Rotunda, not too far from Penn Station and downtown.

The daytime restaurant is less expensive, more deli oriented. The nighttime restaurant is not cheap, uses locally sourced produce and is a hiply designed place. It was great. For a "neighborhood" restaurant, it's definitely better than most places I can think of in DC neighborhoods (not necessarily Georgetown, Downtown, or Dupont Circle, but those places are neighborhoods that are also regional destinations).

Hampden Village and Federal Hill are definitely interesting commercial districts.

Dogwood is interesting too because the chef has created a companion culinary school (not unlike what DC Central Kitchen does) that is a scholarship-based program "for those recovering from addiction, homelessness, and incarceration." The restaurant is top notch.

For years, I have suggested that culinary-school-based restaurant-education programs could be a way to bring restaurants to underserved areas in the city.

Dogwood's doing it, and the food is awesome--one of the best meals I've had the past year, including better than my b-day meal at the lamented, now closed, Colorado Kitchen. (Maybe not better than the first night of service meal at Dr. Granville Moore's on H Street NE, but in my opinion, every meal after the first night has never compared to that initial experience...)