If you peek into Rooted Rotisserie’s compact kitchen, you’ll see a big metal oven that, with its rows and rows of silver spikes, looks a little like a medieval torture device. When husband and wife owners Amanda and Joe Burton take me into the kitchen so I can see it, I can feel the heat from it radiating onto my face.
The Burtons say the oven is central to what makes their food so special — and it’s also a symbol of the determination and serendipity that helped make the restaurant happen.
“The one thing that I had to find to make this place real was that I couldn’t get, like… the typical rotisserie oven that you might find at a Peruvian restaurant or Costco. So I really did my homework to find an actual, traditional French rotisserie,” Joe tells me as we sit inside the Southwest Baltimore restaurant.
The couple did their research and tracked down the oven they wanted — the problem was that it was in New York, it was too expensive, and the seller was not super enthusiastic about parting with it.
“When we got there, he was like, ‘oh, you shouldn’t have come,’” Amanda remembers, laughing.
Joe tried to soften the seller up by telling him about his dreams for the restaurant, and eventually, the seller gave in — and at a price they could afford.
“One day he just called me out of the blue and said, ‘I’m ready to sell the oven,” Joe says. “The very next day, we rode the bus to New York to check out this oven, and it was in one of the sketchiest places that you will ever see. I thought I was walking down into this place to get robbed!”
The couple says the oven produces the French-style rotisserie chicken that they are looking for.
“The French-style oven is a flatter oven,” Joe says. “And instead of a giant wheel turning, the spits turn, which leaves it to more even cooking, faster cooking, and the flames hit it in a way that the juices are kind of pushed back into the meat.”
When the lockdown hit, Joe was working as a sous chef at a restaurant in the Horseshoe Casino. Out of boredom, the couple began cooking meals at home and posting the process on Instagram. That turned into a small soup delivery business. The soups turned into dinners, and soon they were doing pop-up events.
They were shopping for a spot inside one of the markets in the city, when one of their customers told them that he’d spotted a place that seemed perfect for them. They fell in love when they walked in.
Rooted Rotisserie doesn’t just offer chicken. Their menu also includes dishes like confit potatoes, pan-roasted salmon, and braised collard greens. The couple says they want to cook simple food, prepared well.
“Everybody now feels like you have, like, a star thing on the menu. Something that maybe is gimmicky and you have to have a grass wall and neon lights before people want to come. No shade to that… but we eat out a lot, and sometimes we just want regular food,” Amanda says.
Joe is from West Baltimore, and Amanda is from Randallstown. I asked them how it felt to sell rotisserie chicken in a city so loyal to the chicken box. Amanda says that although the city isn’t huge, there’s room for several things to exist at once.
“I just feel like Baltimore’s like an underrated foodie city. I think the landscape is big enough for a chicken box to exist alongside French-style rotisserie chicken,” she says.
She mentions that their restaurant is next door to the popular clothing store City of Gods, where people can also buy things like wings and fried fish from Oh Honey, On the Bay!, a vendor stationed just outside the store.
She said the two businesses have a friendly relationship, and she’ll often encourage her guests to try their food, too.
“I feel like just us being right next door to them and us having that kind of like symbiotic relation with them is really what Baltimore is about.”
Rooted Rotisserie is located at 1116 Hollins Street. Give them a call at 443-401-6329 or find them online at rootedrotisserie.com.