Bill Blocher and daughter Katie welcome Nestor back to Red Brick Station with three decades of stories, brews and sandwiches on The Avenue in White Marsh
Bill Blocher and his daughter Katie discussed the evolution of Red Brick Station, which opened in 1997 with seven breweries in Maryland. Bill highlighted the growth to 160 breweries today and the success of their homemade beer. They reminisced about the early days, including Bill’s decision to make his own beer despite skepticism. Katie shared her experience of returning from New York to manage the family business, which includes a wine bar and deli. They also discussed the community’s transformation, the importance of family involvement, and the success of their unique concept, which combines a brewery, restaurant, and now a wine bar.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Red Brick Station, White Marsh, brewery, wine bar, Maryland lottery, crab cakes, family business, community, restaurant, beer, deli, wine shop, local breweries, business growth, customer service.
SPEAKERS
Katie Blocher Izzo, Nestor Aparicio, Bill Blocher
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive, and we are positively and little bit of a homeland. For me, I am no stranger to the bar here at Red Bridge station may have christened it back in the day when he had those cups with everybody’s name on it hanging over the bar. It’s all brought to you by the Maryland lottery, we have scratch offs from our friends at the we’re going to do the let’s make it deals. But I have the Back to the Future. This is my back to the future, because even in the movie, the whole town square here was kind of like out of the 88 car back in 1997 98 Bill blockers. Here is beautiful daughter, Katie’s here they have a fantastic wine bar. That’s an addition that I’m going to be very inquisitive about today. But we’re in White Marsh. We’re on the avenue bill as I drink a grown up beer made right here on the premise, I need to first cheers to you and all the years you’ve been here and to your daughter, but I am publicly apologizing to you, because I think I came in here 19 When did you open? What year? 97 All right, so the Ravens came in 96 when did you enter the Earth? Katie, I don’t want to real, okay, somewhere. Were you on the air, and were you on the earth at that point? So 1996, the Ravens came. And I lived right down the street here. I lived in Silver Spring station. And then I lived on spring house court backed by the Boomi temple King Avenue, or the duck farm behind the giant. And the only thing here was the mall. The giant Fritz was selling his liquor over here, White Marsh Plaza liquors. And they started to bring cranes in here, and they dug up all the dirt. And I guess all the rabbits were running around, because it’s a swamp, it’s a marsh, right? And remember when the mall was built in 81 and I came over here, and I met Bill blocker, B, L, O, C, H, E, R, I even had the pronunciation right? And I said to him, I’m Bucha wiser sponsored. I want to do my show here. I live in White Marsh, my Monday Night Live show. I want to do my show here. And this is when I was doing business with the barn over in Parkville. And you said to me, I don’t sell publizer. And I’m like, How in the hell is this ever gonna make it? How are you gonna make it here? You’re not the only one that said that, believe me. And you said to me, I make my own beer. And I’m like, who’s gonna drink that in America? I was so wrong. So funny, visionary. Well, I wasn’t. It
Bill Blocher 02:21
was, it was the industry was just was just starting, but in 97 there were seven breweries in Maryland. We were number seven. Hugh system was the only one I knew. He was the one ahead of me, as was brewers art and Duke law, that was it. And the others were basically contract brewers. But there were seven brewing licenses. We were the seven that could do food and booze and whatever. How
Nestor Aparicio 02:41
did you get it? How hard was it to get? Why did you want it was interesting. Now
Bill Blocher 02:45
it’s not nearly as hard because they deregulated in Maryland. Sure, there’s 160 breweries here. Now in 28 years, we’ve gone from seven to 160 and there’s like 32 in planning. So you’re gonna be over 200 breweries by the end of this year.
Nestor Aparicio 02:57
Nobody thought it was a great idea. Nice to drink down at Hughes place, and I’ve had you on, yeah, he sees you citizen. Sissons. Was this play, a delicious he had these lemon pepper beer wings that I’m still grilled, that were still one
Bill Blocher 03:08
of the greatest Well, he was, he was actually the visionary. He’s the one that started the whole thing in Maryland when he was down. And it was just citizens. I was running the ship to clipper city, and I used to buy a raspberry lambic beer from him that nobody could even think of, and he was making these avant garde beers, and I thought, This is insane. I put it on the boat. He came to me a few years later and said, I’m getting rid of systems. Gonna build a bigger Brewer. I’m gonna call it clipper city. Do you mind if we use the name of the boat? I was like, I can’t trademark it. We stole the name from Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Hey, I want you to get out there and put a picture of a boat on your beard. That’s great for us. But he us. But he was the real visionary. He started it, and I adored him as a businessman, and when we opened here, he came in and just said, good on you. He was a mentor,
Katie Blocher Izzo 03:51
absolutely, yeah, but you’ll never take credit for anything. So Nah, I’m
03:55
just not that smart. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 03:57
I mean, give me the whole I don’t know your family background. I’ve known you forever. I know what your chicken tenders taste like. I now know your daughter in the business next door, but I I’ve never done this in this format, not even probably over a beer when I knew you and sat in your three days
Bill Blocher 04:11
a week, because we did have a couple of beers at a Christmas party you did here one year. See, he’s got memory, and people remember stuff I did. You had a Christmas party here way back, and we know that was here. It was right. Was
Nestor Aparicio 04:23
90. I was in your banquet room when I wrote Purple Rain one in 2001 Bruce 52 was here, yeah, and I signed books and did a show. I don’t know who is here. I must have had a player. Somebody was it? Todd, he person? I don’t know, but I did a show here with you one time because I was Bub wiser sponsored, and you didn’t sell Bub wiser, I remember, which really was a problem. I know for Windows,
Bill Blocher 04:49
no, we can make it work anyway. And I’m like, I really can’t, you know, it’s
Nestor Aparicio 04:53
just bring in a couple of cases and let me hang a sign blocker. Come on, man. You know. No, but you so you remember me throwing that Christmas party? Oh yeah, yeah. I remember it was fun. I so for me, I don’t know how the concept of this could work. Would happen here. I mean, de la roses has come and gone. Don Pablos is coming. Things have happened here the mall. You’re still here with the concept you had that a lot of people thought it’s that’s a little avant garde.
Bill Blocher 05:25
Avant Yeah, well worth I don’t know if it was avant garde. I think it was. At that time, brew pubs were starting to do really well nationwide. Tony, my business partner, I’ll go back when I met Hugh Sisson. I was running the boat in the Inner Harbor called the clipper city. We started that boat in 85 in 85 I went to work for them, and by 95 the boat had turned a corner and started making little money. And I had told the investment group, this is tourism boat, right? Oh, yeah. Okay, all right. It was a it was, it looked like the pride of Baltimore, but it was actually bigger, okay, it was, it large Girl Scouts. And we did Girl Scout troops, and we did everything, anything to get people on the boat. It held 150 people, and it sailed around the harbor, okay? We went out to the Key Bridge, or the Bay Bridge, and came back and did all kinds of stuff. Of stuff. But it was a very tough business to make any money. When they finally got to a point where they’re making a little bit of money, I said, I’m done. I can’t do this anymore. I want to build a brewing restaurant. The investment group were like, well, you know, we really need you to see and stay and see the boat. Well, Tony mioli, who is my real, true mentor. He owned a bunch of McDonald’s, and we were friends since back in 72 when I worked for McDonald’s and he owned a bunch of McDonald’s. So your background was in fast food, yeah? Oh, okay, that’s where I started that, in Athletic Club.
Nestor Aparicio 06:32
Everybody I ever knew my first job was at Geno’s or KFC or McDonald’s, or back when days, you know, I
Bill Blocher 06:37
worked at McDonald’s, you could actually the statistic was this, 10% of working America has worked at McDonald’s. This is back in the 80s, 70s, sure. First job, yeah, everybody had to start somewhere. And I make a point, honestly, if I can get employees that come from McDonald’s background, I hire them on the spot, because they know what they’re doing. They understand customers, and they keep working.
06:59
How often did McDonald’s run our labor,
07:03
God, hourly. How
07:05
often do you run your labor hourly?
Nestor Aparicio 07:08
Well, it never changes, right? I mean, it is a customer service. I mean, you’ve obviously you and your family and Katie you. I mean, you looked at me and I looked at you. You’re like, You look familiar. I’m like, You look familiar to me. And I’m like, you grew up in here,
07:22
right? Fully, fully, grew up in here.
Nestor Aparicio 07:24
Yes, that’s why you look familiar. Yeah,
Bill Blocher 07:26
I still have, I have a picture on my wall in my office where Katie was 11 or
Katie Blocher Izzo 07:30
12. Probably 11, because when I was 12, I bust tables, that’s right. So, yeah, he was
Bill Blocher 07:36
11 years old making bread in the kitchen at 5am Do you remember that? Yeah, we drove here in the snow.
Nestor Aparicio 07:41
Yep. So Paul weinecke is your general manager. I met him last year at the Oyster recovery partnership. So oysters are another thing that all you know, I do this crazy crab cake tour, and Dami brought Damian fadleys brought me fried oysters about three years ago. And like, while I’m doing the show, and I’m picking from it and eating and being a pig. And I’m like, God, they’re good. And I’m like, I never get fried oysters because they’re always so far down the menu. For me as a menu item, always something else I want to get ahead of them. And they were so delicious. And she said, oyster oxygen ate the bay, and without the bay, you don’t have any crabs. Without any crabs, you don’t have any crap. And I’m like, All right, I’ll take that under advisement. That goes with beer too. So last summer, I did 30 oysters in 30 days in the month of August. This year, I’m doing our fit, my favorite foods in August, and I went around, and the oyster recovery partnership was part of this. And I met and I saw Paul, and I said, How’s bill and what’s going on? He’s like, daughters, open thing next door. You got to come see and I’m like, Well, I’ve been through the avenue and I saw it, but I didn’t even associate that with you. I’m like, that’s cute. I saw something like that in Manhattan once, and I saw something like that in Florida once, the wine and cheese, the whole thing deli shop. I’ll
Bill Blocher 08:52
give you an abbreviated version, and you can chime in. Katie came back from New York. Have you lived there seven years? Yeah, about seven years in Manhattan, she graduated from SCAD with an illustration degree and went to work for what’s the rush? What was his camera, machine, camera sheet. You
Nestor Aparicio 09:07
graduated beyond making bread in the kitchen. Well,
Bill Blocher 09:09
wait a minute. I’ll give you a part of that in your back. Part of that is she graduated in three years because she managed a pizza shop for somebody during the summer and got out of college early because you ran a pizza shop and a tea room and a tea room. That’s right. So we gonna do all that. Why not do it for your old man? That’s exactly right. Well, she would. She went to Manhattan, back home to
Nestor Aparicio 09:27
family business. Yeah, we got family.
09:29
They always come back to red brick. They do
Bill Blocher 09:33
even have gone to Manhattan and actually had some really cool jobs with an artist and in tea room. No, not team room up there was, what was the Society of Illustrators? Yeah, I
Katie Blocher Izzo 09:44
no matter what always worked in a restaurant, yeah, doesn’t matter what I was doing.
Nestor Aparicio 09:49
Skinny, working in a restaurant always worries me. Man, if I lived here, you’re moving. Yeah, you are
Bill Blocher 09:53
moving. You move all the time. So anyway, when Katie met her husband, Dan, who was a chef, worked for Mario Batali in Manhattan, yeah. They decided to get married, and when they finally were having a family, she said, I can’t stay in Manhattan. I can’t stay in Manhattan. So she came back and said, I said, Look, I’ll put you to work right away. I need somebody in the office to take over for Pat to sell banquets, to manage. She became a manager on the floor. She did pretty much everything I do. When she came back, it was just like,
10:21
I don’t fix the
10:22
toilets. I know that’s true.
Nestor Aparicio 10:24
I do. That’s why it’s very nice. Though. I saw one there. I saw the specials. Yeah, see what you’re doing for barks. I see the stuff you’re doing
Bill Blocher 10:30
here. But anyway, she came back, and about five, six years in to being back here, she said our banker room was just killing me. We’re wasting space. We were only doing it was probably between 400 $500,000
Katie Blocher Izzo 10:44
a year in that whole room, right? And it was empty five days a week, because there’s a million other restaurants here now.
Bill Blocher 10:49
Well, not only that, it’s the hotels they build. You know, we have seven hotels in the region now where the work too. Those hotels give the world away to keep people in house and selling food and beverage. Sure, they give it away. So I can’t get banquets anymore, and I got 100 empty seats back there five nights a week. She said, I really want to convert the banquet room. So she convinced me when she invited the avenue higher ups. Well, some
Nestor Aparicio 11:09
things that were good idea in 1997 like am radio become, you know, you evolve. She invited the
Bill Blocher 11:17
girls from the avenue and the management from the avenue and the sales people from the Avenue, and said, I want to convert this space to a kind of a high end deli, a quality deli and a wine shop, wine bar. Now, where’s the inspiration
Nestor Aparicio 11:30
for this? Where’d you see that hadn’t
Katie Blocher Izzo 11:33
I mean Manhattan, but Italy, like a little little bit of everything. I mean, even like so in the shop. We serve all of our sandwiches on Old China, right? And so like little, little things like that, that came from the tea room that I work. It’s an old
Nestor Aparicio 11:48
fashioned, kind of old fashioned, half modern. It’s I just
Katie Blocher Izzo 11:53
pulled from, pulled from a lot of different places. I’ve been a lot of different places I’ve worked. I always said it was kind of an organic process, and it really has been, because we started with nothing on the shelves, and now there’s all kinds of fun stuff. People bring us old stuff that they think would look good up there. I’ve had winemakers come and sign bottles. They go up on the shelves. How many years? It’ll be five this month? Wow,
Nestor Aparicio 12:12
five. Five Year Old. Cheers to that. Is that a Chardonnay? What is that? No, this is the Prosecco. Just checking. I’m a stout guy, even on an 80 degree I roll around here. So the concept of doing that, I’ve seen very similar, even in a in a strip outdoor mall in Florida, I’ve seen that sort of concept where it becomes, I don’t want to say Starbucks, because you got one of those across, but Starbucks was designed, if you read, you know, any of you know Howard’s books back in the day, to be this gathering place, right? Like, like that upscale library with Wi Fi, right? In the modern era, your things kind of a hang. I mean, it’s kind of a place to gather and grab a sandwich and grab some wine that’s not a restaurant sit down, but more open and airy. I mean, I can see why it’s working. I was in there for lunch. It’s
Katie Blocher Izzo 13:04
packed, it’s casual, but it’s it’s classy, like, well, it’s also the quality of what you’re doing. You’re gonna get really good quality food, really good quality wine, but so casual you can come your gym clothes, I don’t care,
Nestor Aparicio 13:15
deli. I mean, in regard, I mean, I went in there and I saw, at first off, you smell the cheese. Yeah, you smell like I’m in Naples or something, but the big cheese logs and really, the different kinds of meats that looked it’s not what I see in wise markets. It’s a little different than that. So this is very, I mean, and Billy said you should get sandwiches. Get the I always got the French dip. So I’m thinking to myself, where’s the roast beef? And then I see your deli, and I’m like, this is going to be really special if I get a roast beef sandwich. One of
Bill Blocher 13:45
the things that was interesting when we started this whole process, it was just going to be pretty simple. We interviewed people for meats and cheeses and all this stuff, and then we realized roast beef, corned beef, pastrami and Turkey. We can make it all here. So why are we gonna buy lunch meat? And we didn’t buy any. So there’s no processed meats here, with the exception of the Italian meats that we bring in from Parma. And they’re not processed. They’re cured like
Katie Blocher Izzo 14:09
we do salami mordells, right? And but everything, I
Nestor Aparicio 14:13
just want to say that, because not on the avenue, White Marsh, Katie and Bill blocker here. What is your married last name? So I give you a real name, Izzo.
Katie Blocher Izzo 14:25
I’m a Katie Izzo. See producers around
Nestor Aparicio 14:29
here. I don’t even get my lottery tickets in front of me. I’ll get that out. We’re at red brick station. We’re in White Marsh. We’re on the avenue. I said it would never work, and here I am staring at the mall, which looks like it never did work. But it worked because I was over there white marshes. I mean, just undergone, just the fact that Bandidos, there’s just this thing here, but this transition of White Marsh and everything that was built back here, you’re shaking your head. I
Bill Blocher 14:54
just, I can’t even believe it’s still here. Honestly, I never had an end game doing this. Business. I didn’t think when I was 42 that I’d be turning 70 in the same spot I stood when we opened. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 15:07
what were you, what was the actual Did you have an exit? No, the exit was, like, beer and it’s gonna be great. We’re gonna make money, and it’s getting lost. I like working. I’m gonna build an iconic restaurant in a in a community. Now,
Bill Blocher 15:20
originally, I grew up in Baltimore. I mean, I lived in Catonsville. I was six years old and then moved to Harford County. But I’ve been a local guy
Nestor Aparicio 15:27
forever. This is why I would ask you this, because I’m a Dundalk guy. I lived on the other side of Perry Hall when the mall was humping early, mid 90s. I didn’t smell or sense the need for any of this right that time, and I lived here. I lived here, and I thought, Ma’s got everything I need inside, but if you would want to go outside and shop, What a dumb concept.
Bill Blocher 15:52
Beginning of this, a guy named Doug dollenberg started Nottingham properties. He went to the Campbell family and said, This is a perfect spot, right off 95 to build a Lifestyle Center. This was a, this was also a visionary guy
Nestor Aparicio 16:05
Lifestyle Center. That’s what he’s called it. That’s what it’s amazing. This is where I want to get. There’s no Main Street to White Marsh. See, I have these Back to the Future scratch offs. And if you know that scene in the movie with the clock, that’s what it looked like, especially when it was a dirt road and you were the only thing open. Here. It was like building, half a building, dirt road, some parking, and the tower, you know? And it looked like that scene, right? Yeah,
Katie Blocher Izzo 16:30
a lot of people don’t know that the avenue was supposed to be like a main street, right? And you were the firehouse.
Bill Blocher 16:36
Well, I was the first one to open. So when they told me, it started like this, Tony mealy, who was a brilliant businessman, we were we said we really like the idea of putting our brewery here, because we were friends with these guys, because I had an office I rented from them a while back for clipper city, when they showed us the drawing of what they wanted to do on the avenue, nothing had been started yet, and they said, we’ve got a lease with the movies. At that time was Lowe’s theaters. We’ve got a lease here. And Tony said, Well, when you leave Lowe’s theaters and you get onto that street, what’s on the right hand side? And they said, Nothing yet. He said, Well, that’s our building.
Katie Blocher Izzo 17:09
People always go right. They always turn right. That’s why we’re Disney. Wanted to go left, yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 17:13
so you did the research on this back in 95
Bill Blocher 17:16
right? So when we decided we would do this space, the avenue came up with all their drawings for their pro forma, what they want to see. And they were building a main street, this building. We didn’t call ourselves red brick station. When Tony and I incorporated, we were White Marsh Brewing Company. We were here to make beer and food and build a brew pub. When they showed us the building, and it was the only brick building on the entire Avenue, and they showed us the next one that was supposed to look like a post office. The next one down at the end was the library. This end was the capital, or the office building for the for the now, at
Nestor Aparicio 17:48
this time, we’re 25 years removed from rouse building Columbia. Oh, yeah. This was all best practices. And this had been done in other places, yeah, but nobody here had ever seen anything like this, right? Like I had been to California 901, to where the malls were built outdoor. If you ever been to San Diego, the malls are all outdoor because of the weather in Miami. Now, this was never like that. This was its own. I keep saying Back to the Future because I got these crazy scratch offs, but that’s literally when you say Town Square and the end in the library and the post, like, Well, that was the idea. And now I was, this was going to be downtown White Marsh. I remember,
Katie Blocher Izzo 18:27
like, 10 years in, you being like, I’m the only one that stuck to the theme. You know,
Bill Blocher 18:31
why? Because I was the first one in, and I decided to follow the thing nobody else did. What they did after that was that took a backseat to getting this place rented, because they had put out, you know, $60 million to get it done. So now they’re thinking, Oh, my God, we got all these beautiful buildings built. We just got to fill them so nobody else actually. I take that back, when Bayou blues was built, they had doc Crawford’s barbecue and breads a rising. They wanted to be part of a main street thing, unfortunately,
Nestor Aparicio 18:59
bakery and he was doing barbecue and blues, right? Yeah. So they
Bill Blocher 19:02
really wanted to be part of a main street thing. They were the only other ones that followed everybody else was like, it’s a good spot. Let’s just rent it. We don’t care. We actually named ourselves after the building. The building was built as a red brick fire station, so we called all the local fire companies at that time. Was White Marsh volunteer, cowentins.
Nestor Aparicio 19:19
So the idea would be, if I came here, it may to a young person, you’d say was, this did this used to be exactly this. Used to be
Bill Blocher 19:27
a fire. Right above us, there’s a hose tower. This tower that’s outside was designed to look like a hose tower, which, back in the day, firehouses had one big tower. They pulled their hoses up on lines to drain them so they wouldn’t rot, and this is a host tower above us. So it really made sense. And when Tony said, Well, what are we going to name this place? We can’t just be White Marsh Brewing Company. We’re going to be in a red brick firehouse. And I said, Well, we got to figure it out. So we did a contest with some of the employees, we were hiring early and some of the managers, and then we actually we went up to New England and. And hired this girl. Last name was Lapidus, I can’t remember, to come up with some ideas of a logo and all that, and we, and finally it just became, I think, was Don macaque actually said red
Nestor Aparicio 20:10
bricks all these years later, it’s still, it’s still the firehouse, yeah, hand
Katie Blocher Izzo 20:13
painted the logo. He did, yeah. I mean, like, and painted the logo. Like, that was, this is, like, pre Photoshop, yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 20:19
yeah. And then all of a sudden you have a brand, yeah?
Bill Blocher 20:22
And we stuck to it, and we did it, and we, you know, the one thing that was difficult, because, just like you said, Anheuser Busch and all the big breweries, all the big companies, were coming in and saying, we need to sell you this. It’s the hottest thing in the market, and it’s hottest thing in the market. It’s very hard sticking to your guns and say, No, I make beer. I make beer. I’m sorry. Did you ever sell
Nestor Aparicio 20:40
a Zima in this joint? Nope, nope. I didn’t know. You know, we
20:44
will sell a few. High news now
Bill Blocher 20:46
we do sell some high news. You white claws. White
Nestor Aparicio 20:49
claws are gone, but you have never served a beer in here. That’s not your beer. We
Bill Blocher 20:54
have three guest taps that we other brewers that are friends of Arizona. Mike McDonald is sitting on the other side of the bar my Z Mike was keep brewing. Yeah, that’s done. Doc over there. Where is he? He’s sitting at the bar and lunch. Former guest of mine. Well, Mike, Mike opened this brewery. He put all this equipment that you see here. He did everything to build this brewery. He worked here for 20 years before he started key when Mike left, we decided we would create taps for keys. We have three key taps and one other guest tap that right now. We have monument on who’s also in bed with key down in Holland town, right? So they now Dundalk in Highland town. I mean, yeah, forever. Same thing, same thing. But anyways, we kept those taps, but that’s the only other beer we’ve sold local breweries and us nothing else.
Nestor Aparicio 21:37
I said it would never work, and we’re here, you and everybody else, yeah, well, I don’t know. I was wrong, and everybody else is wrong. And he’s drinking to that, Bill blockers here, Katie’s here. The name of your place is andos.
Katie Blocher Izzo 21:49
And those markets, why and those, well, Tony Mio, you mentioned several times now business partners. And in Italian, Tony is Ando.
Bill Blocher 21:59
Tony was born in 1938 he was born in the US. His parents both were from Italy. When he was born, his father and mother spoke broken English, and when he was christened, you know, he’s a Catholic, he was Anthony Joseph meioli, and his father said he’s Ando. That’s Ando, and that was his name as he grew up, when he became a school teacher and then a salesperson, then a McDonald’s franchise and all that, he became Anthony or Tony, but growing up and his sisters and cousins and everybody still know him only as Ando, well, what
Nestor Aparicio 22:33
a wonderful tribute to to his name, the homage it is. Yeah, now, what am I getting over at your place? You know, I, I know enough that the menu over here. I mean, I almost got the shepherd’s pie, the bangers, all those old school I didn’t know what the hell Bangers and Mash was till I met him 30 years ago. And now I’ve been to London, so I know better. But for your place and for sandwiches, what am I getting over there? Because everything looks
22:57
so delicious. Well, classics. We’ve got four, four or five
Nestor Aparicio 22:59
classic he’s bringing me some classics, but go ahead. So
Katie Blocher Izzo 23:03
we’ve got probably the very first sandwich we ever made is called the Figgy piggy. To me, it was like a classic combo that I’ve had a few times in New York and in some cities. It’s a prosciutto de Parma. We hand slice it on a crank machine, fig jam, goat cheese, arugula, balsamic on a baguette. Yes, only a few ingredients, literally, like, what is sweet this song, he’s bringing
Nestor Aparicio 23:26
her. This is some sort of Chesapeake sort of club.
23:28
But that’s it. That’s exactly what it’s called.
Nestor Aparicio 23:30
Is my head. How did you name? Look at how big that’s my head. And this is how big it is. That’s a big sandwich. All right, that’s we’re doing the crab cake tour. You’re making. You’re turning this into something. Well, this is,
Bill Blocher 23:40
this is a fried Maryland crab cake, shrimp salad, Swiss cheese and bacon. So this is, this is, this is, that’s just a that’s how I yeah, that’s broiled. And that’s how I eat a crab. We can serve it a lot of ways that crab cake is a broiled Maryland crab cake with crackers and we need yellow mustard and coleslaw. That’s it. There’s no sandwich. There’s another. Your west side, your
Nestor Aparicio 24:02
catons will go Catonsville guy. Oh yeah, some Dundalk guy. So we’re gonna have it. We’re gonna have at it now. Yeah, so I’ve had a lot. I’ve had a hot crab cakes the last five years. Oh yeah, the tour. Well, you did a big tour with I have not done yours, and I’m looking so I’ve had this argument from the beginning about fried and
Katie Blocher Izzo 24:18
Broy. I’m curious. So, Kate, this is Catonsville, yeah,
24:21
oh yeah, this is West Side.
Nestor Aparicio 24:22
No. This is No, no. This is an argument about fried and broiled and filler and slurry, yeah, and profile and mustard. You’ve already thrown mustard at me. That’s such a west side thing. Oh yeah. East Side thing is more obey, more salt, more more cocktail sauce. Now I will tell you that this is the part that blew me away. I did crab cakes everywhere in the state. I did every county, three summers ago in August on the crab cake tour. 95% of the places that brought me a crab cake brought me tartar sauce. I. Yeah,
Bill Blocher 25:01
no, if you have to add that much to it, something’s wrong. I
Nestor Aparicio 25:06
couldn’t believe that. Like tartar. Tartar comes with fish sticks and Dundalk, you know what? I know? Yeah. Now cocktail sauce, you know, make a thing for that, maybe. But fried versus broil? Well, I’ll tell you, I’ve never had a broil crab cake in my life until I got Gucci. Gucci, Gucci in my 20s. No, you’re right. In Dundalk, we were poor. We took special meat my mom bread crumbs, mustard Mayo was shot. There you go, right, Old Bay, little celery seed, maybe in there and in the fryer, little hockey pucks.
Bill Blocher 25:41
I still want a fried crab cake more than I want a broiled, fried crab cake.
Nestor Aparicio 25:44
See? Okay, you’re alright with that. You’re You’re all right with me. Because I’m serious, I
Bill Blocher 25:48
like a crab fluff. He’s even better because we do a beer better that we make with our beer that’s got,
Nestor Aparicio 25:54
nobody knows about crab fluff. They don’t make those most places. Just so, you know, I know where. I don’t know about crap. I got a place for you with a crab fluff. That’s phenomenal. There is some people that
Bill Blocher 26:01
still make it. Where is it. Where is it? Schultz is in Essex. I know where it is. Schultz’s, I gotta try. I went
Nestor Aparicio 26:06
in there with my family on the crab cakes. We’re just moving around. And I had been there since I was a boy, and it was on the menu. And I, I’m telling you, there aren’t five or 10 places in town. The thing
Bill Blocher 26:16
I like about a crab fluff is when you batter it and fry it, okay, and it hardens like a shell. When you open it up, the crab cake cannot dry out like they do broiled or fried. It can’t dry. Stays moist. It’s inside the whole thing. Tell me about a crab fluff,
Nestor Aparicio 26:31
but don’t hush puppy. Me with it. I don’t want Poppy. Don’t what’s in a crab
Bill Blocher 26:35
fluff? Crab fluff is a good batter to fry. It in any kind of good batter, something has a little flavor. We do with beer because it’s crabby. A little flavor. We do with beer batteries, batter and fry it. To us, you had
Katie Blocher Izzo 26:48
me thinking like we were like marshmallowing. Oh no, no, no, no, no, it’s
Nestor Aparicio 26:52
getting old. Let’s have a drink over this and talk about crab cakes. We’re a red brick station, Bill blockers. Here is beautiful daughter, Katie’s here. Come by and those come by red brick. It’s all brought to you by the Maryland lottery. I have the Back to the Future, and this is a great scratch off for me, because I feel like I am back to the future here, because I sat in this bar three days a week when she was much younger and I was a little younger back. You know, I used to come in here for lunch when I was nationally syndicated 99 2002 1001 I was on the air two o’clock and at a sporting news in Northbrook, Illinois. So I would have a meeting, a conference call in the morning on the phone lines. I had a broadcast phone line in my house back here by Essex Community College. And about 1030 in the morning, 11 in the morning, I’d run out and get lunch and run back to get ready for this show. Maybe 1212, 30. So I was in here when you opened a lot, I mean, you and Chili’s, and later, Don Pablos were my the places I could get too quickly and eat, yeah, and so I would come up here all the time and have lunch. So this is back to the future for me, still here. Why has this worked?
Katie Blocher Izzo 27:59
It’s, you know? Well, can I answer that one? Go ahead, I’d actually like to, because he’s here every day, because he’s here. It’s a family business, and the family is still here. It’s a lot of other reasons, but that’s, you know, what? If you want to be
Bill Blocher 28:13
in the restaurant business, everybody says it’s so hard, not if you accept the fact that you have to show up. Show up. People respect it. Your employees respect it. And a lot of this is babysitting, but you got to show up.
Nestor Aparicio 28:28
I just try to get the best business advice. If that’s that’s what you got, that’s what you got show up. After 30 years, that’s what you got
Bill Blocher 28:35
show up. It’s really not that hard. It’s honestly, the business has gotten easier for me, because I show up.
Nestor Aparicio 28:41
What about this community and this incredible kid spate? I mean, so many things have been done. You mentioned the doc, and by the way, you absolutely should have stolen his peach muffin. Oh, dude, those peach muffins. You should have put that on the minute he disappeared over there. But I remember, did the Bread Company over there, yeah. But the rethinking of movies when this went to IMAX, right? Yeah, the fact that hibachi grill showed up, the fact that Tony De La Rose, I went in there a couple weeks ago. It’s a Jamaican joint. It was bumping it. I mean, times change, Chase change, things change. Chili’s hadn’t changed. You haven’t changed. But there really is something about this community. I lived here on two different sides. My kid went to high school at the hall, Perry Hall, and when I come back here now, everything from the mall has been sucked out into this, the I fly. I mean, all the Texas thing back here, all the things that are back here. Yeah, I It could not have been envisioned by the people, because you saw the original blueprints here.
Bill Blocher 29:42
Malls ran their course. Malls became a great gathering place for a lot of years, but when you were locked to inside, compared to something like this, people get these ideas from Miami, from California, from all over the place. It works in any environment, as long as you adapt here in the wintertime. Yeah, this kid’s space. It’s out here. Now we have an ice skating rink who does that in the shopping and they
30:04
love it. And when they when they say this
Nestor Aparicio 30:06
idea to you, and you’re hearing this, this makes you want to put an andos Next. Just makes you want to stay, not leave, because they’re so listen, I talked to business owners who have left downtown to go here. People talk about leaving the state. I’m about to get Nick Stewart on. He wants to run Baltimore County. We’re gonna talk to him about zoning and different stuff. But different stuff. But like, the fact that this worked, and that I lived here and was a part of the tax base and paying first for my apartment, then my home, I moved over there in early 98 right after you open, maybe known each other all these years, like this warm thing, I walk into your new space and there’s a hug, and I haven’t seen you in years, but it’s changed. But like, I come out of here and there’s still an incredible Vibrance. I mean, I pulled up thinking, well, parking is going to be easy. No, there were a lot of cars here. I pulled up thinking, Well, I hope they’re doing okay. It’s middle of the week, and I try to come when it’s a little bit quiet. On a Wednesday, you’re bang. I didn’t think you’d be over here to be able to do the show, because your little place is banging.
30:58
Actually an extra person
Katie Blocher Izzo 31:00
coming. I’ve got a good staff that came in for God help. But
Nestor Aparicio 31:03
that’s part of running a good business, but that’s also part of all of these businesses. And it’s not easy. Competition. Different things comes online. Somebody wants an ice skating rink. Somebody wants to turn it into a show Palace. I mean, people want some things that I remember, Tony De La Rose wanted to do the midget wrestling matches out here. We did that a couple times. I know he did it, but I know they weren’t happy about it, because I was gonna brought I was gonna broadcast from out here. They didn’t want me out here. So, like he thought that was a great idea. You think the ice rink, so doing all of that, but this is still a really vibrant place, and it’s a place, it’s a destination, not just because the movies are there. It still
Bill Blocher 31:40
is what Doug dollenberg and the Campbell brothers, what they brought to this was they invented a main street that made sense. It’s not big enough. In my eyes. I think this could have been three times bigger and been three times more successful. Well, this was the space they had,
Nestor Aparicio 31:56
but it spread to the other side of Campbell Boulevard, as it really happened, and the mall will be rethought at some point. Oh, yeah, I’m a mall. Rad, from East Point Mall. So you
Bill Blocher 32:05
know what the mall is already rethought. The Sears part is going to become housing. And you talk more than to the people that are sure that, yeah, that’s going to be housing. It’s sold, it’s done, that’s going to be housing. So you’ve got this one big corner of the mall coming out as high end condos and apartments.
Katie Blocher Izzo 32:21
They need sandwiches. Wine. Sounds like sounds like they need sandwiches. Walking
Nestor Aparicio 32:26
distance. Well, that’s
Bill Blocher 32:28
what we’re looking for here the avenue. Also, no one ever
Nestor Aparicio 32:31
lived here. We’re kind of, no one ever lived here. No one could ever walk here in a snowstorm. Well, back in the day, back in
Bill Blocher 32:37
97 if the if the licensing and regulations had been different. This should have had a second, third floor with living facilities in it, a lot of centers.
Nestor Aparicio 32:48
Yeah, all the modern anything you see in gaithersburg down that way, they all have that
Katie Blocher Izzo 32:53
beer now, where that’s been Bel Air on Bond Street, that’s a little tiny
Nestor Aparicio 32:57
place. Well, listen, my cords long enough to get my own silver because I make myself at home, because I’m not gonna go yelling for Selma. But we’re here red brick station. He has brought me sandwiches, which I’m gonna be three weeks eating. I want to just dive into your crab cake while we’re on the air, because I want to, I know you got places to go. You got and those wine to serve over there. I saw that roast beef sandwich on that ciabatta over there, and he keeps dropping the mic on me here without realizing it’s live. It’s all right, and I wanted that roast beef sandwich. Oh, you’re trying to bring I don’t want to eat. I don’t eat. I’m not eating that. Let’s go. Kate, no, I don’t, I don’t.
33:34
I know you’ve done this for years. But listen,
Nestor Aparicio 33:37
if you took a picture of me with yellow mustard and showed it to my wife. She would know I would not eat that. I find eat yellow moss.
Bill Blocher 33:44
Well, here’s, here’s what you here’s what you do when you grow up in Catonsville. Okay, and this is my mom and my dad. I
Nestor Aparicio 33:49
know Saltine, oh, mom’s right up here, mom, mom’s looking down. You’re gonna give you’re gonna wreck this crap.
33:57
Use my piece. You just do this. So all you do? You
Nestor Aparicio 34:01
show them. Show them how you do it. Here. There you go. See that little dollop of mustard? Yep, there you go. Do this right here. You take a little family style. This is family style, how we’re doing like that. See that crab meat right there? I would not all you do. No, I would, no, that’s all you need. The regular
Katie Blocher Izzo 34:13
way. No. Need a regular nobody’s gonna put some lemon on there. I put a lemon. You want
Nestor Aparicio 34:17
to squeeze some lemon. I have lemon. I don’t want to insult the chef. Hold on. Let me. Let me check it out here first. Uh huh. That’s lumpy. That’s delicious. I’m not insulting you to call that a Catonsville crab cake. I like a catons I’m not wrong, right? The
Bill Blocher 34:32
only thing is, I still am a fried guy. We saw majority broiled. Everybody does. You put some crunch on that. I’m better off.
Nestor Aparicio 34:39
Well, they always talk about when you fry it, you need to add more filler to keep it, to bind together so it doesn’t just fall apart in a frying pan. Everybody makes
Bill Blocher 34:49
excuses. It’ll use less crab meat. That’s all well, don’t fill it up too much. I
Nestor Aparicio 34:55
like slur i the slurry is the flavor for me. It’s what makes it the one thing I. Mustardy or makes it obey. I
Bill Blocher 35:01
kind of found and mountain branch where I played golf. Sure, they do a good crab cake. It’s exact same recipe as mine, but they use egg whites so it gets a little fluffy, a little soft. It’s really, really good. Instead of using whole eggs, which we use, they use egg whites and it kind of just fluffs it just this little bit. This is
Nestor Aparicio 35:20
the crab cake tour. Is interesting because you were asking me, Katie, about the crab cake tour. Yeah, every single one are different. And when I dream this thing up a couple years ago, you know, during the plague, all the businesses were struggling, you tell you, I mean, what were you doing here? You stayed open 100% of the time, but masks and curbside. And how do you curbside french fries? Well,
Bill Blocher 35:43
I will, I will say this, we knew enough people to cheat just a little when we closed down, we could do to go only right? But we wouldn’t take the orders over the phone, so they had to come in. Well, while you’re waiting for your food, why don’t we all have a beer? Right? It was, we skated the issue a little bit, and
Katie Blocher Izzo 36:04
we were little terrified. We were terrified. Police came in several
Bill Blocher 36:07
times and told us to get these people out of here. And I said, they’re waiting for their to go food. You can’t have 60 people in here waiting for the ball
Nestor Aparicio 36:15
game. The ball game, right? Exactly. Listen, during that period of time, I was worried, you know, I walked across the harbor. I live downtown amici and amicis is like, sort of my, my, my Arnold’s, you know, and I’m there, all the lights are off. They’re handing people bags. Everybody’s got masks on. I’m like, I got tears of eyes. I’m like, you’ve got to survive. We all got us. We I need to come in here and eat meatballs later on, I get to keep all my businesses open. And that’s when the conversation really started, and when things freed up a little bit, it was like I wasn’t going to run for mayor. If you guys watch the documentary, I was going to run for mayor in 2020 when that didn’t happen, I said, you know, stimulating business is what I’ve learned about the plague, and that’s what my role needs to be, running for office or not for office, because that’s the most important thing going on. Is keeping businesses open, not the ravens, not yours. They’re there to stimulate business. Quite frankly, yeah, that’s why we gave them $600 million to fix the stadium. And the crab cake thing felt like ping pong democracy. To me, it felt like I could go all around town. I could sit in a corner bar in Catonsville, or sit in, you know, up in Hereford, or I could go to Bel Air. I could go to go to Ocean City, and everybody would have a different crab cake. And everybody have an opinion about their mother’s crab cake, or my mother’s crab cake, or fried or broiled. And it would never eat the same crab cake twice. And I have it
Bill Blocher 37:30
well, you know, it’s funny too, because when I was a kid, I have a vivid memory of getting a fried crab cake in a pan, whether it was my mom’s or my grandmother’s or whoever’s was, but I remember shell out of it, and you’d still it was the best crab cake ever. They didn’t have jumbo lump and colossal my mom would say, That’s how, you know it’s real. That’s right, when we would have crabs, and we had crabs a lot. I can remember, Katie has a picture of the Holland’s market on her wall in the deli over there. My mom used to take me to Holland’s market on Saturday morning. I put big, giant rubber gloves on and pick out my live crabs, and we would literally pick them out of a barrel, put them in a paper bag, and we took those home, and steaming, steamed their own. Crabs steamed on in the kitchen, four at a time, in a pot in the kitchen. And I remember when we were done eating crabs, well, and there’s another story to that, because that’s how I learned to drink beer. But when we were done eating anything, my my mom would go through the pile and say, we can get meat out of that. We can get meat out of that. We can get me out of that. And my grandmother and my mom would sit down and pick crabs so their fingers were bleeding and take all that meat in a little pile. Tomorrow night, we’re having crab cakes, not crab soup, though. Crab soup was all the all the claws, right? Break them, drop me soup,
Nestor Aparicio 38:42
like smoking a real restaurant. You’re
Katie Blocher Izzo 38:43
here that now, I know we just give out of a can by the plastic tub.
Nestor Aparicio 38:49
It’s fine that. Man, I went down to Costas and went after a dozen last Saturday night, first time this year. Man, you know, I mean, look at me. I got to taste the crab meat in my teeth. I’ve
Bill Blocher 38:59
become good friends with the comrades too. Oh, I love Tony and Andrew. Great people. I don’t know them personally, but I know their operation because they have placed two miles from my house, yeah, and they’re so cool, because not only are they still doing things the old way, but they’ve classed it up to a point where I was leaving here late for dinner one night, and I went online and I said, All right, up on my house, they’re right there wondering if I can order something. I go online. I’m already logged into their computer. I run in the door, pick up tuna and
Katie Blocher Izzo 39:26
and what are you talking about? The place on Bel Air? Yeah,
Bill Blocher 39:29
the little market they bought built on Bell Road, sure. I literally put on my phone. I need that. I need that I need. I gotta head out of here. So I told you and I’d be home at seven o’clock. It was like 630 and I’m still here. I went back way home, up Bella Road, instead of 95 stopped at comrades, picked up a bag. It had what I wanted in it. I didn’t have to say hi to anybody. They handed me my bag, and I ran out the door. I’m home in time, and I got dinner. Well, I owe Tony a call, because he goes on a boat every morning. Oh yeah, and he goes out of bully’s quarters, and he’s invited me on a boat. Have you ever been out on one of the commercial boats? I. Have not, no, I’m gonna, I’m gonna get your ass out of bed one day, we’re gonna go out and do it together, because I need, I needed, you’re a real boat guy. No, this guy, you’re like a schooner guy. This guy’s, they’re the real deal. And they’ve, they’ve managed to keep the Conrad name and the Conrad process working. And I’m, I’m not, I wouldn’t say I’ve ever jealous of it, but I’m really proud that they’ve been able to do that, because they’ve grown exponentially, exponentially, and just kept this whole family thing working, and it works in a modern way, which I’m still trying to grow into.
Nestor Aparicio 40:31
Well, you got a next door here. You’re growing in a modern way. Well, we
40:35
still grow like Katie said, in organic one.
Katie Blocher Izzo 40:38
Yeah, it’s small. It’s small enough where you can see everything happening, which is, I think, why we’re successful, because you can, you can see a problem before it happens. Yeah, so everybody’s happy all the time because we’re watching,
Nestor Aparicio 40:48
well, I’m happy right now, and I haven’t even know, Oh, you haven’t even tried that thing’s as big as my we’re gonna share that. I’m gonna work. I’m gonna work on a crab next door, which running for Baltimore County Executive. He’s gonna come on, keep that mustard away from me. Bill blocker, I’m telling Katie and Bill are here. We’re there at your reference station. You can come see him anytime. Got a nice view of the mall. Got a nice view of the play area here in the kids area in the common square. We’re on the avenue in White Marsh. I said it would never work. I was wrong again. Come by and get one of the delicious staffs. Now, my wife did say to me today, he can bring me some of that blueberry beer we had
Bill Blocher 41:23
June one. We got three weeks. All right, well, I’m gonna sit back and I’m gonna wait till I will have you back in three weeks, and we’ll take our six pack home. By the way,
Nestor Aparicio 41:30
I want to do the show over in the Italian joints. What I want to do? Well, that’s a tribute to and we still got his picture over there. That’d be a good thing. All right, we’ll step out. We’ll take a break. We’re here at Red bridge to anything else. Get in. You got any events or anything coming up? I need to know about coming up that need to know about
41:44
you? Soiree? Yeah, I’ve got a couple seats available tomorrow.
41:47
That sounds
Katie Blocher Izzo 41:49
fancy for me. Sounds fancy. It’s not so fun. We do dinners, wine pairings, all kinds of stuff all the time. It’s all on, all on Facebook, all right, you know, just follow your Facebook page, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Instagram, come
Nestor Aparicio 42:00
over and see them. My God, we’re white marshes, plenty of ample free parking in the rear. I came over a couple weeks ago for a movie. I haven’t been to the movie in a while. I saw the Cheech Chong movie on 420 at 420 Oh, I needed to laugh, man. I mean the Orioles play right now in the pitching Let’s laugh. I mean that and the Justin tie I need, yeah, I need to laugh. So springtime is here. Come see our friends at a red brick station. We’re doing the Maryland crowd. Doing the Maryland crab cake tour. It is presented by the Maryland lottery. Have the Back to the Future scratch us. We’ll be giving these away here. We’re gonna be back at fade Lee’s on the 28th of the month, and then we are on the seventh making a an adventure back up to Carroll County. We’ll be back up at Green Mountain station, where they have a delicious crab cake next week. We are going to be at the Maryland party with Howard Perlow, whole bunch of local folks. About 1800 people will be poolside. Will be broadcasting poolside from the Encore in Las Vegas. I’m getting my hair done. I’m Nestor. We’re back for more here. Red Brick station on the Maryland crab cake tour. Stay with us. We’re going to talk about land use development and government. You.
