Baltimore Magazine
February 2008 Issue
Patrick's of Cockeysville : Off The Eaten Path

There was a certain amount of déjà vu as I walked into Patrick’s of Cockeysville on a recent visit. The familiar shamrocks are still on the door, and the traditional décor hasn’t changed much since I was last there nine years ago. But behind the scenes, there are big differences.

Carole M. Brosso, a Culinary Institute of America grad, is in the kitchen now, and she and her mother, Mary Lou Brosso, have owned the restaurant since April 2006. The mother-daughter duo is adding an imprint in subtle ways.

Many of the restaurant’s signature seafood and beef dishes are still on the menu, probably a comfort to regular customers at this neighborhood spot in a suburban strip-shopping center. There is also a nod to former chef Tomas Sanz, a Tio Pepe alum who died two years ago, with Spanish themed weekends every other month and menu items like shrimp in garlic sauce and pine-nut rolls. Diners also will find pub grub in the lively bar area—at least, it was rockin’ the night we were there with an older clientele. Read More>

Click here to read the full Baltimore Magazine - Off the Eaten Path article.

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(Colby Ware/Special to the Sun)

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Patrick’s of Cockeysville has many of the same characteristics it did when I reviewed it 11 years ago; but the new owners, Mary Lou and Carole Brosso (new as of last year) have tweaked the menu in small ways.

As was true before the Brossos took over, classic Maryland seafood dishes are still the star, while the house specialty is
a very good sangria and the Spanish pine nut roll rivals Tio Pepe’s (not surprisingly, given that the executive chef was for years Tomas Sanz, formerly of Tio Pepe). The daily specials are where Chef Carole shows what she can do. You’ll find my review of Patrick’s in next Sunday’s Modern Life section.

- Posted by Elizabeth Large on July 1, 2007 at 7:17 AM

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Mary Lou Brosso and daughter Carole Brosso bought Patrick's of Cockeysville last year.
(Sun photo by Colby Ware)

Familiar favorites await at Patrick's

By Elizabeth Large
Sun Restaurant Critic
Originally published on July 8, 2007

I last ate at Patrick's of Cockeysville 11 years ago, but I still remember that one of the Lite Fare dishes was sour beef and dumplings.

Amazingly enough, it still is. Which says something about the rest of the menu. The more things change, the more things stay the same at Patrick's.

This is -- how shall I put it tactfully? -- a sedate restaurant. At least it was on the weeknight we were there. The maitre d' told us he had made 55 orders of bananas Foster flambe at table sides the Saturday night before, so clearly things are sometimes rocking at Patrick's.

It was once an Irish restaurant and pub, as evidenced by the shamrock on the door, but Patrick is long gone. The place was bought in 1995 by Bill Graul, who had owned the Golden Arm restaurant after Johnny Unitas. He brought along Tomas Sanz as executive chef.

Sanz had been a chef at Tio Pepe, and added many of Tio Pepe's signature dishes to Patrick's menu, from the shrimp in garlic sauce to the pine nut roll cake. He had also owned Thompson's Sea Girt House in the early '90s, and some of his seafood specialties there are still on the Patrick's menu.

Last year, a year after Sanz died, Patrick's was sold to Mary Lou Brosso and her daughter, Carole Brosso, who had owned Buddies Pub & Jazz Club on North Charles Street. (Carole is now Patrick's executive chef.) Their culinary heritage is Italian.

The point of bringing up all this is that after all this change sour beef and dumplings are still on the Lite Fare menu.

Portions are still enormous. Order the crab skins, and you'll get four baked potato halves with very little of the potato scooped out, topped with crab imperial and Monterey Jack cheese. In what universe is this an appetizer?

The pleasant chicken liver pate is served by the large ice cream scoopful, with grapes, grilled ciabatta and other condiments on the side.

If the "combination filet mignon and crab cake" is under entrees on the specials menu, it probably won't surprise you that it costs $26.99. The tender filet mignon isn't enormous, but it's the amount of meat I would normally eat by itself. The fat crab cake is made with large lumps and has so little binding it needs the smooth hollandaise that comes on the side. You'll still have room for the two vegetables that are included, perhaps succotash and a large serving of creamy mashed potatoes.

What might surprise you is that the combination entree comes with a hot fudge sundae.

The Brossos seem to have kept as much of the old menu as they could, which makes sense. Why alienate customers who have been coming there regularly for years?

But the specials menu seems to be where chef Brosso struts her stuff a bit, with dishes like "explosive shrimp and Andouille sausage over bowtie pasta." The jumbo shrimp are arranged in a "tower" of garlic bread stuck in the pasta, and are so spicy that they will set your hair on fire; but if heat and carbs are your thing, you'll like this dish.

I preferred the veal francaise, fixed the old-fashioned way with a light egg batter and a white wine, lemon and butter sauce. The kitchen had run out of coconut- breaded tilapia with Caribbean pepper jelly, and maybe that was just as well. The substitution, grouper with artichokes, tomatoes and fresh basil, was as substantial as we had come to expect, and the fish was very fresh, cooked to perfection, and given some pizzazz with its vegetable topping.

About the only out-and-out failure among our dishes was the shrimp in garlic sauce. The sauce, so addictive at some Spanish restaurants, was acid-tasting and too salty.

The best of our appetizers were fried red tomatoes, not an easy feat to pull off. Even though the thick slices were perfectly ripe, they didn't fall apart. Fried in olive oil and arranged with grated Romano and fresh basil, they were the hit of the evening.

No, wait, the hit would have to be the bananas Foster, created at our table with butter, brown sugar, rum, banana liqueur and fresh orange juice. They were prepared with such flamboyance and Latin charm that I was reminded of another restaurant, Tio Pepe.

Ratings:
Food: ** 1/2
Service: *** 1/2
Atmosphere: ** 1/2