Luna Del Sea in downtown Baltimore is having a Super Bowl Bash this Sunday. Whether you are rooting for the Broncos or the Seahawks, come join us at the restaurant from 5PM-11PM for an all you can drink blow out.
Drinks will include beer, selected wines and rail cocktails. We will be serving a complimentary half time buffet to all of our guests. Please buy your ticket at the link below, print out a copy of your receipt and bring it to the best party in town next Sunday.
For ten years now, Luna Del Sea Steak and Seafood Bistro has been serving the highest quality Certified Angus Beef and freshest seafood. One of our customers recently asked us: What does Certified Angus Beef mean? We thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to explain that answer to everyone.
Although you might see the word angus on many menus in the steak section, the Certified Angus Beef brand is a premium mark that ensures flavorful, tender, juicy cuts of beef. The main difference is in the actual flavor of the beef and the fact that your steak can be physically tracked to an American farm. Next month, we will be showcasing a few of the farms that our beef comes from to spotlight their integrity.
Certified Angus Beef must pass 10 stringent quality specifications in order to earn the name. Here they are broken down into three different sections:
Marbling and Maturity
Consistent Sizing
Quality Appearance and Tenderness
Now all this technical talk about the steak quality might confuse you a bit, but understand that when we at Luna Del Sea send that steak or for that matter, even a hamburger to your table, we are backed by the experts in finding the best possible cuts available. Come on in and see what all the great flavor is about.
Luna Del Sea has always loved the idea of restaurant week. Although we are located in Baltimore city and are not participating, we applaud the new seventeen day restaurant week concept that Baltimore county has launched as of last Friday. From January 10th until the 26th, 53 restaurants in Baltimore County will be offering lunch and dinner specials ranging from $10.14 to $35.14.
Restaurant week has always been an excellent way to showcase some of your best cooking to customers. Restaurant week let's customers try a new restaurant at a discounted price in the hopes of gaining new regulars. The whole idea of restaurant week was invented by Tim Zagat, the founder of Zagat Survey and the late Joe Baum of Windows on the World and the Rainbow Room in New York City. What started out as a promotion that ran in conjunction with the Democratic Convention, has spread like wildfire all across the country.
Baltimore City will bring back it's Winter Restaurant Week February 16th through the 23rd and will offer three-course fixed-price dinner menus for $20 or $30. Some restaurants will also offer a two-course lunch, that will include an appetizer and entree for $15. The prices do not include liquor, tax or gratuity.
So excuse us while we get back to the kitchen and start cooking up some fresh ideas for Baltimore's Winter Restaurant Week 2014.
One of the most overlooked items on our menu here at Luna Del Sea are some of our incredible white wine selections. We have spent years choosing the perfect white and red wines that compliment the flavors that we cook with and the natural flavors that already exist in most of our dishes. Our absolute favorite wine to pair with many of our seafood entrees, including our Jumbo Lump Maryland Crab Cakes, is Cakebread Chardonnay from Cakebread Cellars in Napa Valley, California.
Cakebread Chardonnay is made from 100% chardonnay grapes and is harvested usually between September and October of each year. One of the aspects of producing world-class Chardonnay begins with the harvesting process. Cakebread Cellars only picks their chardonnay grapes at night. This ensurers that the grapes are harvested cold and that they retain their fruit purity and bright natural acidity. The fruit is then whole-cluster-pressed and aged for eight months in French oak barrels to reach it's creamy lavish fruit flavor.
This Napa Valley Chardonnay offers tasting notes of apple, ripe pear and guava fruit complimented by hints of toasted oak and honeysuckle. All we know is that it tastes great with shrimp and crab cocktail, steamed clams and mussels and almost everyone of our seafood dishes on the menu. We suggest that you enjoy cold glasses of Cakebread Chardonnay with our the Blackened Tuna And Scallops or the Whole Maine Lobster. To learn more about the wines that we serve with the cuisine that we cook, look for upcoming wine classes offered here at Luna Del Sea in 2014.
This year our restaurant decided to take the most popular item on our menu, Maryland Jumbo Lump Crab Cakes and make them available online for all of our loyal customers from all over the United States. Well, it seems many other restaurants are taking their signature items and doing the same exact thing.
In a recent article posted on Restaurant Hospitality, many restaurants are now finding a strong customer base online. Gift cards and certificates have always been big sellers on the Internet but it is now signature food items that restaurants are famous for that are becoming the stars. For example, Peter Luger Steak House of Brooklyn is now selling their famous prime dry-aged steaks online. The joint that invented the Buffalo chicken wing, The Anchor Bar is now selling fifty suicide wings online for over a hundred dollars. Even Lou Malnati's out of Chicago, are now selling their signature deep dish pizza pies online.
Our Maryland Jumbo Lump Crab Cakes have always brought a smile to our customer’s faces. We love it when our guests say, "This is the best crab cake that we’ve ever tasted" because it makes all the long hours of working in the restaurant business really worth it. In the upcoming year, we will be launching a separate section of our website to sell our Maryland Crab Cakes along some of the other menu items that our patrons have grown to love like our Luna Del Sea crab dip, oysters Rockefeller, Black Angus NY strip steak or Black Angus filet mignon just to mention a few. So stay tuned to see what Luna Del Sea will be bringing to your table and I think it’s time to order a few of those Chicago deep dish pizza pies for my staff. To read the full article about signature food items now being sold online, visit http://restaurant-hospitality.com/marketing/how-restaurants-can-sell-signature-items-online.
Here in downtown Baltimore, we are gearing up to ring in the new year with you. Luna Del Sea has designed 3 excellent dinner options that can fit into anyone's budget. So join us for the dining and celebration of the new year.
All prices are per person and include one glass of champagne.
Also after dinner and starting at 10PM, we are throwing a huge New Year's Eve Bash in our beautiful ballroom with DJ Prolific. Tickets are only available at the door and will be $30 per guest.
Some of our recent blogs have discussed our certified Angus hand cut steaks, the launching of our famous crab cake online store, a really awesome craft beer and a super holiday meal.
But we promised that our blog at Luna Del Sea was going to be a collection of weekly entries from our employees and management team on the restaurant business itself.
In the restaurant business much like every other business, great employees need great leadership. When we hire an exceptional employee, we make it very clear from day one that we have your back. We lead by example and promise to teach you the restaurant business.
So for this week, our manager Antonio will be interviewing Tony Assadi, owner and operator of Luna Del Sea.
Antonio: What was your first job in a restaurant?
Tony: “I started as a dishwasher in Timonium, Maryland at a restaurant called Father’s Gay 90’s in 1976 and after two weeks I was promoted to line cook. After that, I decided to go to work for Beefsteak Charlie’s in Towson Plaza as their Lead Front of the House Server.”
Antonio: What is your favorite part about owning a restaurant?
Tony: “Meeting new people everyday and making them relaxed and enjoy their experience when they choose to dine with us. I also love creating new and healthy dishes with the freshest ingredients that keep me and my guests young and energetic.”
Antonio: How has the restaurant business in downtown Baltimore changed over the past ten years?
Tony: “I find that our customers are more educated about the quality of food the we serve. The quality of our certified Angus meats, fresh seafood and organic vegetables are all very important to me and are now available from our suppliers on a daily basis. Diners in Baltimore really care about quality.”
Antonio: What new trends do you see happening in the restaurant business?
Tony: “I see the service aspect of what we do slowly being minimized in the future. The technology is already there with tablets and point of sale systems but we still like to give the personal touch and customer service that our guests deserve.”
Antonio: How do you keep your existing guests happy while attracting a new generation in the process?
Tony: “I try to personally greet each and every customer just to let them know that I am here. I truly care about making sure that we rise above and beyond their expectations when they dine with us.”
This week we are sharing with the entire world our famous Maryland Jumbo Lump Crab Cake recipe. We have held these ingredients, our preparation and our cooking procedures very closely to our chest for many years but now realize that the public is ready to try and duplicate our most prized entree here in Baltimore. The holidays are the perfect time to spend with family and friends, so why not spend time seeing if you can create these crab cakes in your own kitchen at home.
Here at Luna, we have made the bold decision to develop an entire website to selling our famous Maryland delicacies to you. We have also decided to put together some easy to prepare romantic dinners that will include our marinated hand cut Certified Angus steaks with delicious homemade side dishes and our most popular appetizers like crab dip and jumbo lump crab cocktail if you are planning to entertain.
So, stay tuned to see everything that we have in store for you in 2014 and good luck preparing our customer's favorite item on the menu.
As we are quickly approaching Thanksgiving, we want to make sure all of our loyal customers and out of town visitors have a special place to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner. We have decided to serve a seasonal menu with all the goodies you have grown to love on Thursday November 28th from 5pm until 10pm. Luna will have all the football games on that day with a fully stocked bar. Our dinner will be $35 per person and will be served with one glass of white or red wine. We look forward to toasting a holiday cheer with you.
Take a look at our Thanksgiving menu
For this week's blog, we've decided to spotlight one of our favorite beers here at Luna Del Sea, Heavy Seas Gold. We're not bragging when we say "we broil the best crab cakes in Baltimore" but we also serve some pretty incredible local beers. In fact, we usually aren't the ones making that statement, it's usually one of our customers. Whether it's a Baltimore local or a guest from out of town, we live to to hear the words: "That was the best crab cake I've ever tasted!" come out of our customer's mouths.
Heavy Seas Gold is the beer that we most often pair with our Maryland crab cakes. Some people like a nice glass of French Sancere with seafood but we are a bit more traditional around here and always suggest cracking open a nice cold beer with our crab cakes. The entire story of Heavy Seas is a great one because it all started here in Maryland. A guy named Herb was all set to embark to on a career in the theatre in New York City. Just before he was going to leave, his father Albert asked his son to come work part-time at the local tavern that he had just purchased. Once Herb entered the bar on the first day, his father tossed him the keys to the bar, cussed some words of encouragement and walked out the door. So now Herb was the proud owner of a local tavern. This tavern was called Sisson's and it was without a doubt, Maryland's original Brewpub.
As years went on, Herb had his heart set on expanding the production of his brewpub and created the Clipper City Brewing Company. Here he started brewing Heavy Seas Gold. Luna Del Sea is a family owned and operated restaurant and bar, so we love the fact that this beer has a strong family ties to Baltimore. We also love the way that this beer tastes with almost everyone of our seafood dishes. On their website, Heavy Seas Gold is described as:
"An easy-drinking session beer that pours a deep golden color. It smells slightly floral and herbal, thanks to a hopback full of Cascade and Centennial hops. Gold is tasty and refreshing, with a round mouthfeel."
All we know is that we love the way it washes down a jumbo lump crab cake. Heavy Seas Gold is brewed locally year round and has won distinguished awards at both the Great American Beer Festival and the World Beer Cup in 2010. So the next time you join us for a romantic dinner or belly up to the bar for our awesome happy hour, order a Heavy Seas Gold to see what we are talking about.
Here at Luna Del Sea, we realize that it is very important for us to consistently publish new content for our website. From the outside, we know that working in the restaurant business looks like it might be a lot of fun. And believe us, it can be just that. But the long hours and stressful work allow for very little time to write a blog. Our blog is not our weekend hobby. Our blog is going to be about our everyday life. We decided that the only way to be completely true was to let our employees write the news about our restaurant. As owners, we will play editor to the articles and work hard to give Luna Del Sea an honest voice.
Our blog will be dedicated to keeping our customers in the loop of what goes on around here in our restaurant. One week we might be introducing a new fresh seafood special or a recipe to one of our happy hour appetizers. The next week, our topic might be a great steak marinade or a seasonal creative cocktail. We'll discuss great wines, craft beers and what it really feels like to be a bartender in Baltimore. Our articles will shine a light on the latest trends in the restaurant industry and make you want to become one of our regulars.
We believe in keeping an open dialogue with our guests and we promise to publish new and interesting articles that you will look forward to reading. For the next month, we'll be getting organized and practicing up on our writing skills. Stay tuned to hear what our staff has to say about Luna Del Sea and the restaurant business. They might even share some tips on how to be a great customer and score a free drink every once in a while.
Luna Del Sea in downtown Baltimore is launching a brand new online store to sell our Maryland jumbo lump crab cakes! We have been serving our famous crab cakes for over ten years now. Locals and visitors alike have constantly expressed an interest in being able to indulge in our delicious crab cakes at home. We have now made the requests of our valued customers a reality.
To celebrate our new online store, Luna Del Sea will be throwing a happy hour party on Thursday October 17th from 4pm until 6pm. We will be serving complimentary samples of our Maryland jumbo lump crab cakes to tempt your taste buds. Our wait staff will be pouring complimentary glasses of Martin Codax Albariño 2010. A crisp, elegant and dry white wine that has aromas and flavors of pear, passion fruit and apple with bright acidity. This refreshing wine is the perfect compliment to our famous Luna Del Sea crab cakes. Reservations for this event are highly recommended as seating is limited. To reserve your spot, call 410-752-8383 or reserve online.
As part of the new online store launch we are running a Luna Del Sea pre-holiday promotion for a limited time. You can order 3 Luna Del Maryland jumbo lump crab cakes for only $50!
So order your crab cakes now and enjoy them at home!
I am now happy to announce that the highest sought after beef in America is now being offered on our menu. Certified Angus Beef is the name of the game here at Luna Del Sea. We cut each steak to order and sear it to perfection for all of our customers. We are known for the some of the top rated seafood dishes in Baltimore, Maryland. Located at 300 West Pratt Street in the heart of Baltimore City, you can't get much better.
Our Crab cakes are second to none and our seafood comes in fresh daily. You can never go wrong dining in style with us. So the big news on Certified Angus Beef is that Luna Del Sea is now a gold standard customer and from the burgers to the prime beef we offer, you will now be excited to know that is is all certified. Simply the best beef you can find.
From our daily specials you will see that our team has a passion for food and pleasing our customers. All our chefs here including myself are very excited to serve you.
Bon Appetite Baltimore
Chef
Luna Del Sea
"The waitress suggested we try one (crab cake) as an appetizer because they don't use any filler; it's all CRAB. Wow, we're glad we tried it. Fantastic!"
Barb Scipio
