Restaurants in Owings Mills, Reisterstown Luck Out, Then Cash Out After Irene

Carla Mattar at in Owings Mills thought she was lucky the restaurant on Lakeside Boulevard lost only one day to Hurricane Irene.

The shop closed on Sunday, Mattar said, but was serving up hummus platters, wraps and sandwiches Monday morning, despite several malfunctioning electrical outlets keeping some overhead lights in the kitchen area from turning on.

Mattar felt fortunate the restaurant had power at all. But as it turns out, some other eateries in Owings Mills and Reisterstown fared even better.

Several shops on Owings Mills Boulevard and Main Street never lost power and were serving large crowds of customers Monday, many of whom did not have electricity at home.

At the in New Town, customers were camped at tables with laptops and venti cups of joe around noon. J.B. Barnes, who was working the register, said the coffee shop was normally nowhere near that busy in the middle of the day.

Reed and Kristan Presnell had pulled two round tables together in the middle of the coffee shop’s seating area and sat diagonally from each other, both engrossed in what was on their laptop screens. The couple, from Marriottsville, said they had power but their Comcast Internet service was not working at home.

“They told me there’s no power at a node [that distributes Internet signal],” Kristan Presnell said.

Further down Owings Mills Boulevard, was making sandwiches for a modest post-lunch crowd. The deli never lost power either.

On Main Street in Reisterstown, The Cow was piling scoops of ice cream high for powerless customers seeking contact with the outside world, and further up the street, Martha and Mary’s Restaurant managers said it never lost power at all.

Most hopping of any eatery, though, was Java Mammas coffee shop. 

With its front door propped open and the air conditioner off on a cool and breezy day, Java Mammas' indoor and outdoor seating was consistently filled late Monday afternoon with locals debating when power would be restored and showing off photos of fallen trees near their homes.

Josh Silvius, working the cash register, said the coffee shop never lost power, and neither did his Pikesville home, where his mother stayed while her home in Glyndon sat dark.

Silvius said the shop had been packed all of Monday.

With more than 90,000 still without power in Baltimore County, it may be packed much of Tuesday, too.