Eat and shop, shop and eat Italian at Baltimore’s Trinacria Cafe

I’m wild about little out-of-the-way places in Baltimore where I can eat and hang out. It’s a really European way of living! Depending on your job or perhaps, weekend schedule, you shouldn’t always eat lunch like I had to at Air Force OTS. When I was in Officer Training School at Texas’ Lackland AFB, we were given 15 minutes to eat. We had to sit at attention, look only straight ahead or down at our food, then chow, chow, chow. That’s not civilized!

Bring a little taste of Europe — specifically Italy — into your life at Baltimore’s Trinacria Cafe. I went there on a recent blustery day, but now that spring has really sprung, make it part of a day into Baltimore’s cultural district.

This cafe’ is the sit-down destination grown out of Trinacria’s, the Italian deli on Paca. At the cafe, you can purchase wines by the glass or one of their package goods bottles to drink on site with no corkage fee. They have Sunday sales, a real plus in Baltimore! There are also cans and bottles of Italian, as well as domestic beers. La Rossa Birra Moretti has a real dark cocoa-coffee flavor. There’s an overhead tv to follow whatever game’s on.

I’m very particular about pizza. If it’s not really terrific, with the thin, crispy crust that I love and with plenty of high quality ingredients, I just stop eating. Their white pizza with spinach is thin, crispy, has good olive oil, and fried fresh spinach, along with lots of cheese.

Their meaty house-made lasagna tastes like a grandma came to your house . . . it incorporates their own house-made sweet sausage. More irresistible touches include the freshly baked garlic bread.

The cafe has an abridged selection of Italian cupboard items and frozen meals from the deli, but certainly enough to make a simple dinner.

Here’s a cool thing . . . they’re open for breakfast, too!