What's Up Magazines

Dining with Gilles and Kathy

Sputnik Café
1397 Generals Highway, Crownsville
410-923-3775

No, the name has nothing to do with the Soviet satellite. You won't be eating Borscht, beluga or other kinds of northern specialties. But if you do visit Sputnik Café in Crownsville, you'll be seated and eating in a totally different, and I mean different, environment. If Jane Fonda had her vinyl go-go boots on, I'd be reliving Barbarella. The interior décor is turquoise blue with an orange ceiling, corrugated white plastic on the walls, award-winning designer plastic chairs, white tiger-patterned curtains for private tables and a very special "lounge" wrapped in a plush orange vinyl… and more.

Call it eclectic, colorful, or funky… I call it Different.

Food-wise, Sputnik offers a menu designed to shake up your taste buds: fusion cooking from the Pacific Rim with a twist of Filipino, Hispanic and European. Due to the time of the year, the current menu is a little shorter than the one listed on the web site, but the Café's offerings are still very interesting.

The appetizers were tantalizing preview of Sputnik's global range. To begin, our friend Has decided on a carrot bisque topped with a ginger crème fraiche and a five-spices shrimp, and it was delectable: silky and tasty. Cathy ordered a Duck Confit salad, tossed with Napa cabbage, sprouts, pine nuts and goat cheese in honey ginger vinaigrette-good, but well, different than expected. Kathy chose Korean BBQ Kobe beef over buckwheat and sesame noodles. I opted for Thai grilled chicken with a spicy dipping sauce. Although the chicken was somewhat bland, the dipping sauce made up for it.

For entreés, our ladies picked the Caribbean spicy chicken and the wasabi and sesame encrusted salmon. The chicken was served with black beans and sautéed spinach laced in a mango and coconut rum sauce-very good, according to Cathy. The salmon was also well presented: moist and tasty, surrounded with sushi rolls and traditional accompaniments.

The male contingent went with the special: seared sea bass over broken potatoes (fried) with onions and shitake mushrooms in a cream and caviar sauce. This was succulent, with nothing left on the plate.

An outstanding homemade pumpkin cheesecake and carrot cake put a big smile on the ladies' faces for the final course, while Has and I scraped up every bit of our subtle chocolate soufflés. All in all, a job well done by Chef Chris Boehme, who's from Seattle and a graduate from the CIA in New York.

We chatted with Bill Buszinski, one of the three owners (Maria Buszinski and David Brown are the other two), who told us more about Sputnik. The restaurant opened in 2001, taking over Trifles catering. Maria is into the decorating, Bill takes care of the front of the house and David at this time is fathering a new baby. When spring comes, the garden will open and outdoor dining will be available, as will a more substantial menu. Sputnik regularly offers wine dinners, and on St. Patrick's Day, Halloween and during October, beer tasting dinners, just to be………Different.