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"Hi, Mr. [Morris Martick]," I said, since he'd never instructed me to call him Morris. "How are you?" Martick half-smiled and gave me one of his dead-fish handshakes.
Of course, proclaiming the end is nigh was part and parcel of Morris Martick's schtick. Like anyone who knew Martick, I'd heard him allude to the Grim Reaper since the day I met him, and my guess is he was bringing up death even as a teenager. "Boss, I know, I'm a living legend," he once told me years ago. "Unfortunately, I'm a dying living legend."
The last time I saw Martick, I asked if he believed in heaven. "I doubt there's an afterlife," he said. "How can you prove it? It's folklore. People want to beh' eve it. They don't want to accept the finality of life. When it's over, it's over."
A remembrance of Baltimore's quirkiest French restaurateur
On ai sunny, breezy afternoon in Bud-September of 2008, I pressed the lit doorbell at Morris Martick's home and French restaurant at 214 W. Mulberry St. Like so many times before, I watched as Martick silently looked through a peephole from the side of the shuttered 19th-century facade - probably in the same manner as his parents when they ran a speakeasy in that very building during Prohibition days - and eventually opened the large, thick front door.
"Hi, Mr. Martick," I said, since he'd never instructed me to call him Morris. "How are you?" Martick half-smiled and gave me one of his dead-fish handshakes.
"Why are you here ?" he asked in a voice dripping with sarcasm. "Are you writing my obituary?"
Of course, he knew full well why I was there. It was all over the local news that he'd closed his celebrated bistro, Martick's Restaurant Francais, after nearly 40 years, according to him because of his age (nearly 86) and pressure (mounting violation citations) from Baltimore Housing, due to the decaying condition of the building.
On the surface at least, he was fairly philosophical about the matter, though far from gleeful. "Nothing lasts forever," he said, staring me straight in the eye. "You have to be a realist, and the reality is, I don't have the energy to do that work anymore. ... How long do you think you live? I read the obituaries. People younger than me are dropping dead."
This was classic Martick: straightforward, honest, unsentimental, rather self-pitying and unabashedly morbid. But always intriguing and never dull, unlike most people.
And yes, Mr. Martick, here I am, writing your obituary.
Last Friday, Dec. 16, Martick died of lung cancer at Union Memorial Hospital. He was 88. Last month, he reportedly collapsed while walking along Howard Street, probably as part of his daily routine of strolling over to the Blue Sky restaurant on the corner of Park and Saratoga for breakfast, then to Lexington Market to shmie around, and then taking care of some banking matters on Howard.
That was only a couple of weeks after I last saw him. And yes, somewhere in my kishkes I knew it'd be the final time I'd lay eyes on him. I interviewed Martick for our "Life Lessons" column, and I could tell he was slowing down. He was still plenty sharp, but seemed a tad more confused than in the past. He could still walk up a flight of stairs like a young fella, but seemed more wobbly.
I also noticed during our 90-minute interview in his second-floor kitchen that he never at any time called me "Boss." (One of Martick's trademarks was calling everyone "Boss," as in, "Who else but an idiot would open a French restaurant on Mulberry Street ? Can ya tell me, Boss?")
A lifelong bachelor, Martick agreed with me that he shouldn't still be living there, but he couldn't figure out where to go. Indecision, he always told me, ruled his life.
For years, friends and family attempted to get Martick to move, all to no avail. He always cited a toxic mixture of inertia, "poverty" and business reasons for his inability to relocate, even after his restaurant closed. My guess is he simply loved that old, dilapidated shack, since he lived there all of his life and had countless memories within those walls. I suspect he would've died much earlier if he'd moved, like a plant out of its soil.
"I'm at the terminal stage of life," he said to me last October. "Rather than part of the future, my life is part of the past. Now, I'm in the era of questionable, unintended consequences." Then, he alluded to his defunct restaurant, out of the blue, almost as if I'd brought it up. "It would be foolish for me at my age to open up again " he said, plaintively.
Of course, proclaiming the end is nigh was part and parcel of Morris Martick's schtick. Like anyone who knew Martick, I'd heard him allude to the Grim Reaper since the day I met him, and my guess is he was bringing up death even as a teenager. "Boss, I know, I'm a living legend," he once told me years ago. "Unfortunately, I'm a dying living legend."
But Martick never got over the demise of his restaurant. Despite all of his kvetching, it was in his lifeblood, as any of his former employees will tell you (and if you check out Facebook, you'll see their tribute page to Martick and his wit and wisdom).
Though he'd be loath to admit it, Martick loved the business. It's where he found himself and hit his stride.
The dimly lit bar at Martick's appeared to be straight out of a Sinatra number, with full ashtrays, hanging Tiffany lamps, plastic cocktail stirrers and usually an abandoned pack of cigarettes on the counter. The work of artisans hung on the walls, and odd knickknacks shared shelf space with liquor bottles. The dining room, with walls in both aluminum and snakeskin wallpaper, had a quirky, bohemian feel, with a statue of a Greek goddess and a life-sized folk art wood carving of a Pennsylvania Dutch woman cradling a loaf of bread.
Of course, there were Martick's signature dishes - carrot and sweet potato soup, bouillabaisse, pate and salmon Florentine, beef Bourguignon, mussels with cream and tomatoes, duck with Bing cherries.
"I made it work," Martick told me last October. "When I first started out, I asked the bank for a loan. I told them why, to open a French restaurant, and they turned me down. But I learned you have to persevere. If you can't do plan A, do plan B. ... And I believe I made a difference."
Martick's life story is fairly wellchronicled. Born on the second floor of that house on Mulberry, he attended Edgar Allan Poe Elementary School and graduated from City College. His bootlegger parents, Harry and Florence, were Polish Jewish immigrants who ran a packaged goods store and then a speakeasy and tavern on the first floor.
After his father died in the '4Os, Martick - who was stationed in the Aleutian Islands during World War II - and his siblings helped their mother run the bar. "What happened to me was my mother got sick, had cancer and went almost totally blind," he said. "I stayed. I didn't have the strength to leave and start my own life. I felt a commitment. I didn't have a career. So I was stuck in a bar."
For decades, Martick's Lower Tyson Street Tavern catered to a mix of artists, musicians, journalists, workin' Joes and self-styled bohemians, beatniks and avant-garde hipsters. Among the celebrities who dropped by over the years were Leonard Bernstein and Billie Holiday, as well as other notables in the music world. He also featured the works of local artists and served people of all races and sexual orientations, then a taboo.
But by the mid-'60s, the neighborhood and clientele started changing. "I didn't care for the drunks and the bums," Martick said. "So I closed the S.O.B. up and went to Europe."
Martick spent about a year in France, enjoying the culture there while working in restaurant kitchens. He came home and Martick's Restaurant Francais opened on July 9, 1970, with the proprietor eventually becoming his own head chef.
Martick's soon acquired a reputation as one of the city's best and quirkiest bistros - director John Waters was a frequent patron - and one local scribe characterized it as "the Natty Boh of French dining in Baltimore." At the same time, Martick himself developed a rep as a dyed-in-the-wool Baltimore character, in the same pantheon as Abe Sherman, Mister Diz, Wild Bill Hagy, Mimi DiPietro and William Donald Schaefer.
Martick never took it all too seriously, but one could sense that he privately reveled in all of the attention. But he eschewed the notion that he was eccentric. "When you say eccentric, it implies an abnormality," he said. "I guess I am a character, when you consider the norm. I have no social skills, and I live my life alone."
He summed himself up this way: "How many people could open a restaurant on Mulberry Street and survive? I'm a Jew, so I'm a survivor. I can take the hits. I'm the last Jew of Mulberry Street."
Guys like Morris Martick made Baltimore what it was in the days before there was a 7-Eleven on every corner and Walmart knocked off all the momand-pops. He was one of those unique characters - sorry, there's no other word for it - that made Baltimore different, just like such long-gone institutions as Haussners, Louie's, the House of Welsh and the Peabody Book Shop and Beer Stube.
The last time I saw Martick, I asked if he believed in heaven. "I doubt there's an afterlife," he said. "How can you prove it? It's folklore. People want to beh' eve it. They don't want to accept the finality of life. When it's over, it's over."
But when I asked if he believed in a higher power, this eternal skeptic and most non-observant Jew of Jews surprised me. "It's good to have something to believe in," Martick said. "It won't change anything. Things work out the way they work out. What can we do to change the ebb and flow of life ? Reality is what it is.
"I'm not sure if there's a God, but there must be someone" he said with a mischievous grin. "Because I hear a lot of talk about it."
Morris Martick is survived by his brother and sister, Alexander and Rose, and a nephew, niece-in-law and great-nephew.
Copyright Baltimore Jewish Times Dec 23, 2011