Baltimore restaurants serve Thanksgiving meals influenced by global cuisine, from Italy to the Philippines

The Thanksgiving table of Luke Ilardo’s childhood overflowed with all the hallmarks of a Sicilian holiday feast. There were “40-pound” lasagnas and casseroles of pasta al forno “the size of three small children.” There were mountains of fried shrimp, fried veal cutlets and “trays of rice pudding that you could go swimming in,” Ilardo remembers. And then there was “so much bread.” Like the traditional American Thanksgiving, his family’s Sicilian-style meal was a “big, celebratory feast,” said Ilardo, the co-owner of Doppio Pasticceria, an Italian bakery stationed in R. House food hall in North Baltimore’s Remington neighborhood.