Chameleon Cafe - A Restaurant True to Its Name

by Josh Flynn

Smith got his first shipment in 2001 at the Chameleon Café as a 28-year-old new restaurant owner, he had no management experience, had never had a bank account, never owned a car or house or even written a check. Not exactly your typical business owner.

Smith had wanted to cook and own a restaurant since he was a young boy. He grew up in a family of 10, so cooking was always a bigdeal in his family. His mother showed him how to cook as a boy, and then as soon as he was able to, he started working in restaurants around Baltimore. He has now been cooking for just over 20 years.

“I wasn’t really planning on doing it for a couple of years, and I really wasn’t ready, I really hadn’t had any management experience. I guess that was the big pusher, was just the cheap restaurant.”


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Before it was Chameleon Café, the location on the corner of Harford Road and Montebello Terrace was a vegetarian restaurant that didn’t last long. The owner of the building was selling it inexpensively, so Smith and his wife talked it over and decided to not only buy the restaurant space, but live above the restaurant as well. Smith admits he was somewhat naive going into it and there were many initial problems, “When I got this place, it was an absolute disaster.”

He can’t remember exactly why, but he didn’t get the building inspected prior to purchasing it, so there were a lot of issues with the condition of the building. Smith says there were a lot of other struggles along the way, especially in the first few years of operation.

Smith and his family lived above Chameleon for the first six years they owned it. By the time they had their second child, the one-bedroom apartment became too confining for four people and a cat, so the Smiths bought a house across the street in Lauraville that can be seen from the restaurant.

Chameleon Café patron and member of the online restaurant reviewing community Yelp! Jeffrey Webber really enjoyed the atmosphere of Chameleon and that he was not expecting the French-influenced cuisine and quality of food before having dinner there.

“The atmosphere felt very homey, since I grew up in a rowhouse in Baltimore, but it also had an upscale feel to it.  It's not very large, and the kitchen is small and immediately seen as you enter, so it's great to feel like you have real people cooking for you, and not just some mysterious kitchen behind the scenes trying to pump out mass-produced food as quickly as they can.  You feel like you're in someone's home.”

Smith stressed the neighborhood behind Harford Road has been a family-oriented area for a long time, and was always really great, but that the main part of the road was once a “magnet for trouble” and that he spent the first few months trying to get the troublemakers away from the restaurant.

“When I moved here it was, I would say, bad. There was a lot of bad stuff going on; drug deals, prostitution, and all kinds of crazy stuff.”

Smith says the last few years have been really great and quiet for the most part, and that he has witnessed quite a transformation in the greater Lauraville area and even on Harford Road itself. With more businesses opening up around Chameleon, the crime is dwindling.

“Like the police say, you just kinda move crime around. So when there’s activity in the neighborhood there’s not much crime, and I think that’s what happened. If you could see it from the day I moved into until now, you would really see a difference.”

With the neighborhood improving, Smith has had more time to focus on things at Chameleon like his on-site herb garden. Smith’s brother is a professional gardener and taught him how to do everything, and he said he has been keeping herb gardens for years. He made his gardens at Chameleon using a system of walls made of wine bottles and cement to plant his own herb selection. Not only does growing his own herbs save Smith hundreds in costs every year, it makes for better dishes as well, “To pick an herb and to put it right into the food is much different. It just makes all the food much better.”

Smith is into a lot of old-school cooking styles and likes to try to bring as much history and tradition to his dishes as possible. He spent some time cooking in Louisiana before opening Chameleon and was taken by the pride that the New Orleans community had in their regional dishes.

“When people cooked a classic New Orleans dish it was almost revered. Everybody would kind of stop what they were doing and make sure everything was perfect.”

It was this attitude that inspired Smith to look into Maryland and specifically Baltimore’s food heritage and come up with some local dishes that make up his “Maryland Menu” and have become extremely popular and well received. His two signature dishes are “Chicken Maryland” and “Steak Baltimore” which he found in a vintage cookbook from 1907.

Smith changes his menu to include seasonal vegetables and local foods and tries to incorporate his own knowledge and experience with tried-and-true recipes and methods from the past. Using his fresh herbs, local ingredients and unique dishes, the restaurant has evoked some pretty stellar reviews.

The Chameleon Café also blends in with its surroundings. A passerby might not even realize that on that corner there is a fine dining restaurant with a very interesting and creative owner and head chef.

With its adaptable and innovative menu and the way Chameleon Café fits in with the Greater Lauraville neighborhood, the restaurants name couldn’t be more fitting.