Dangerously Delicious HQ & Test Kitchen Bar — Restaurant in Baltimore

We just came back from eating here, 10/9/19 at ~7:30 PM. Here are our thoughts: We had the date night special and we ordered the SMOG and Chicken Pot Pie for savory and Cherry Crumb and Chocolate Coconut Chess pies for desert. The pies were pretty tasty, but the two savory pies were lacking salt, the cherry crumb pie was lacking sugar, and the chocolate pie had too much sugar! The portion sizes of the savory pies were pretty small. For the price of the date night special, altogether it wasn't so bad. But I'd never pay the full asking price for a small slice of pie like that. The staff have absolutely no customer service skills whatsoever. Nobody greeted us as we entered, and we watched as more than five other customers entered without being greeted. In fact, we had to wave to the employee before he got up from his chair. We ordered our savory pies first and then went back up to order our sweet pies afterward. We also ordered our drinks when we ordered our sweet pies. When we told the girl employee that was our plan, she gave us a death stare and didn't say anything! Then, she proceeded to have an audible argument with the guy employee. The lack of customer service skills was actually laughable! This business is not at all environmentally conscious! Every single piece of pie is first warmed up on a paper plate, which is thrown away, and then is brought out in an aluminum container. There is no recycling bin, so you're forced to throw away your perfectly recyclable glass bottles and aluminum containers! What a shame! We brought our aluminum containers and another customers glass bottles home with us to recycle. This business generates a huge amount of unnecessary landfill waste! What's so hard about getting a recycling bin? When we asked the employee, he said they're "trying to convince their boss to get a recycling bin." Why should the boss need to be convinced of this? It costs little to nothing extra for the business and saves the environment! The only side dish available was a sad excuse for a salad.

We will not return until these issues are addressed, which is a shame because the...

Don't believe the hype. While this place has the boho charm of Hampden going for it, the pies are not worth what you pay for them. We tried the pulled pork BBQ and Chicken pot pie savory pies, and the cherry and lemon meringue dessert pies.

Pulled pork BBQ: The pork is marinated in the sauce before baking, not mixed with it, so there's flavor but it's muddled and flat. The crust is dense, tough, and in some cases either overbaked or stale, because it is nigh-on impossible to penetrate with the plasticware they provide you.

Chicken pot pie pie: Note - this is not a pot pie. This is group of pot-pie ingredients cooked into a regular pie shell. It was very dry, and there was enough black pepper in it to drop a horse at 10 paces, effectively ruining whatever underlying flavor there might have been. Ditto on the crust problem (this is pervasive across all of the pies we tried, and might be related to the fact that the crusts are vegan.)

Lemon meringue pie - The meringue part was correct and well-done, but the lemon half of the pie was extremely custard-y and had both an odd texture and a strange flavor. It was definitely lemon, but was very understated and had a Pledge undertaste.

Cherry pie: How they can screw up this classic is incredible to me, but they managed it. They used real cherries (bonus) but they also used lemon juice or zest to pull out the tartness of said cherries and in the process overstated the lemon, so the pie tasted more like lemon juice than cherries. It was also slightly under-sweetened.

I'm giving two generous stars, one of which because they handled a big rush with aplomb, and the other because the side salad greens and balsamic dressing provided were fresh and delicious, and because they keep a gigantic pitcher of water and disposable plastic cups in a cooler in the dining area, so you can get yourself some (free) drinking water if you don't want to...

I’m not sure what happened to this brand but it has fallen so far from a few years ago. Warning to anyone curious about going here, don’t do it. I used to drive an hour out of my way to have these fantastic pies from dangerously delicious in DC and I was excited to see one in Hampden neighborhood of Baltimore so I decided to give it a shot. I saw the other reviews online but I thought maybe it was just a few upset customers. Walked in and there were two parties seated. One had a dog at the bar and was waiting for their food, another table just paid their check and was about to leave. As I’m about to place my takeout order with the bartender, someone from the kitchen came out with a slice of pie and handed it to the bartender. Bartended then stopped taking my order and said to me, wow I can’t remember who ordered this and he was completely serious. The person from the kitchen had hands that wouldn’t stop shaking and the bartender looked high out his mind. Really?! Two tables and one was about to leave. I wonder who ordered the food… anyways I asked which pies were vegan, and he said he wasn’t sure but the menu was on the wall. I remember the fruit pies in DC used to be vegan and he wasn’t sure if that was still true. I changed to a savory pie, the Thai chilli, and paid and left with our pie. Got home and warmed up the pie, and it was gross. Too much going on with this pie. Green beans, mushrooms and spicy chilli sauce drowning it all. Straight...