*Sigh*
This post is about the passing of an institution in Northwest Baltimore.
You didn't come to The Roost for its ambience.
The carryout on Reisterstown Road in Northwest Baltimore still had the same shabby hut-shaped building from its days as a burger joint in the 1970s. The staff was a little surly, the neighborhood not the plushest and the wait for food almost always long.
What you did come for were the fish sandwiches, fried golden brown and served on white bread with a little hot sauce. Or the fish dinner with two sides. The fish was so popular that just about everyone knew the carryout not as "The Roost," but simply as "Lake Trout."
But Lake Trout, which had become a local institution, with lines that stretched out the door even in the middle of the night, is no more.
The owner of the restaurant, Doris Williams, died of ovarian cancer at age 69 in September. Her only child, a prominent doctor in Washington, closed the carryout for good last month and has decided to sell the family business.
"I kept the business open for a while just because I couldn't imagine it being closed," said Dr. Deborah Williams, chief of the division of cardiology at Howard University Hospital. "But after a while it didn't smell the same, it didn't look the same. And when I realized it wasn't her anymore, I knew it was time to get out. It wasn't her dream anymore."
I had no idea.
It has been years since I have been to Lake Trout. What the writer stated about the lines is 100% truth.
On Friday evenings, in the late spring thru early fall when the weather was nice, there would be a line around the building. That was NO JOKE, NO EXAGGERATION, NO LIE.
Man...
All you had to do was slap some hot sauce on that fried fish and go to TOWN.
But if you had to deal with some of the Negroes that came to that joint, you'd have a little bit of a surle to you as well. :-)
Man...
To North West Baltimore, that joint was like Ben's Chilli Bowl in D.C. I think Avery would have appreciated this joint.
It will be missed. I haven't been there for years like I said, and I feel a bit empty. :-(
God Bless you Miss Doris.
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