After our Saturday in Frederick, Maryland, I couldn’t believe that more people in the D.C. area don’t talk up Frederick as a day trip. Frederick takes the quaint small town feel of Old Town, Alexandria and mixes it up with some of the stalled in time shabbiness of Baltimore.
Take, for instance, The Old Log Wash House Laundromat pictured at right. The sign has the requisite old fashioned ad placements for Coca-Cola, although I’m not entirely sure what a spin cycle has to do with “The Pause that Refreshes.” Nevertheless, if I lived in Frederick I would do all my laundry here just to bask in its antiquated glory. Okay, maybe not.
Frederick also has a capital selection of antique stores, particularly Emporium Antiques, a conglomeration of dozens upon dozens of antiques dealers in one enormous space. The breadth of their wares encompasses just about everything from a 19th Century Swedish grandfather clock to an antique stove to a basket-woven shoulder bag housing old artillery shells. They have a few vintage clothing displays, as well.
But thrift and vintage clothing junkies should absolutely check out Venus on the Half Shell. Its collection of clothing is not especially vast, but each piece of clothing has clearly been carefully selected, as the tag affixed to each item has a pithy remark about its origin.
But no trip to Frederick is complete without stepping into the time warp that is the Barbara Fritchie Candystick Restaurant. Interestingly, the actual Barbara Fritchie had nothing to do with roadside diners. Instead, she was a Maryland folk hero from the Civil War, who purportedly flew the stars and stripes as a gesture of defiance to advancing Confederates.
Though the sign boasts “Fine Foods”, it’s probably best to steer clear of just about everything but their pies, unless you have a craving for dumpy diner food. And though their soda fountain boasts an old school Hamilton Beach triple head milkshake mixer, their insistence upon serving Hershey’s Ice Cream means that soda fountain bliss is unlikely.
The atmosphere is decidedly Nighthawks at the Diner, but only if the original Nighthawks in the Edward Hopper painting were still hanging out there fifty years later. Aside from the countergirl, we were the youngest patrons by about forty years.
Though the diner maintains these boss light fixtures, the proprietors have done away with other vestiges of a bygone era, such as the penny candy concession.
The Candystick offers about a dozen different pies made from scratch, as well as their apple dumpling.
The menu lists the apple dumpling with the standard a la mode format, as well as something I had never heard of before- “with milk.” After the countergirl confirmed that she had, in fact, enjoyed the dumpling in this manner, I decided that I would follow suit. The golden shell of the dumpling is thin and not too buttery and encloses a generous helping of apples and cinnamon. While ice cream might have been a greater enhancement to the dumpling, the milk bath did offer an element of wholesomeness that dessert usually lacks.
The countergirl touted the chocolate pie as her favorite, but we decided to see what they could do with the banana cream pie. The pudding layer offered fresh slices of banana and that was topped off with a layer of foamy meringue instead of the usual whipped cream. AK didn’t care for this variation, characterizing it as "otherworldly", but I found the mix of fresh bananas and meringue to be refreshing.
Although neither the pies nor the dumpling blew us away, their overall quality is arguably well above typical diner fare. Besides you need an activity to occupy yourself while soaking up all that classic diner ambience, and it might as well be pie.
Take a day trip to Frederick and check out Barbara Fritchie Candystick Restaurant on your way back at:
1513 W. Patrick St.
Frederick, MD
(301) 662-2500
—AC
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