Restaurant Local
101 East Dover St.
Easton, Md.
410-819-8088 or http://www.tidewaterinn.com
Brunch, Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m.-3 p.m.;
Lunch, Mon., Thurs., Fri., 11a.m.-3 p.m.;
Dinner, Thurs.-Mon., 5-10 p.m.

Atmosphere: Casual elegance
Service: Amiable
Don’t miss: Crab cakes with
cheddar grits; fondue
Tariff: Appetizers, $7-$16;
entrees, $21-$29

I’m sensing a trend afoot on the Eastern Shore. In the past few months, I’ve visited several classic restaurants that have been re-imagined through shedding traditional menus and updating old-fashioned dining rooms. Restaurant Local, the new eatery at Easton’s Tidewater Inn, has done both—and then some. The restaurant’s main staff, which includes corporate executive chef Richard Hamilton, worked together at the Spiced Pear Restaurant in Newport, R.I., before reuniting to design and operate Restaurant Local. They bring with them an ambitious wine program and, according to food and beverage director Christopher Bender, a desire to showcase local ingredients, albeit in as unpretentious a way as possible.

Even those who weren’t regulars at the Decoy Bar or The Tidewater Grille—the restaurant’s previous incarnations—quickly know that change has come. If you enter the Tidewater through the hotel, you pass through two distinctly different environments—the brocade and silk upholstered lobby and the restaurant’s post-modern, blue-lit bar—before entering the restaurant, which creates yet another distinct space with royal blue walls and chairs and dramatic silver sails swooping across the ceiling. The quick sequence of the three is a bit jarring, and while all three environments have their charms, on the rainy night we were there, the spareness of the bar’s décor and the odd blue glow of the light just felt cold instead of cool, like an unfinished bachelor pad. We also wondered whose idea it was to place a pillar in the midst of the most highly trafficked area behind the bar, forcing patrons to awkwardly climb around it, one at a time.

Once settled in your very comfy chair in the dining room, though, those concerns melt away in a flurry of thoughtful service and good food—some of it excellent. On the night of my visit, our server, young and eager to please, immediately brought two small mason jars filled with crisp, pickled fennel and cabbage to the table for before-dinner nibbles. I love this idea as a way to prep the palate for dining. More thrills came in a basket of freshly baked biscuits, cornbread, and foccaccia served with two butters, one flavored with sea salt, the other with honey. (Note to diners: Starches of any kind are one of the restaurant’s strong points, so do try to leave your diet restrictions at home.)

In making our way through the menu, my dining companions and I found decent starters and better entrées. I thought the combination of aged cheddar and baby beets and microgreens in port wine reduction was inspired and tasty, but at $10, the salad could have been a little larger than the fist-sized portion on my plate. Conversely, the crab martini—a martini glass filled with lump crabmeat seasoned with mint and mango—seemed generous at $13, if a little inappropriate for February.  The grilled shrimp appetizer, topped with a caponata-like vegetable garnish, was served on more of those tasty biscuits. And a word of warning for diners who recall The Tidewater Grille’s turtle soup: Restaurant Local’s is different, more stew-like, yet full- flavored and full of meat. And Bender assures me that the restaurant is returning to serving the soup with a small pitcher of sherry, if requested.

We fared well with entrées, including a perfectly cooked-to-order filet mignon served with buttery garlic mashed potatoes, sweet lump meat crab cakes, a crispy-skinned rockfish fillet, and the appropriately named Lobster, Lobster, Lobster, a combination of stuffed lobster cannelloni and butter-poached lobster tail with lobster cream sauce and lobster reduction. Slow-poaching the tail in butter gives it a remarkably silky texture, and, while richer than the usual grilled tail, I say vive le difference.

As good as the entrées were, we were equally wowed by the sides. My crab cakes were accompanied by zippy, Southern-style horseradish-tinged coleslaw and light-as-air grits shot through with cheddar and a touch of jalapeño. The flaky rockfish shared the plate with a crispy polenta cake and strands of shredded squash masquerading as noodles. We also felt compelled to try the creamed spinach—clearly fresh and enhanced but not bogged down by cream—and a sharp, tangy, velvety portion of macaroni and cheese. While you can order filets of tuna or pork chops or grilled whole main lobsters from the “Just Protein” section of the menu, you’ll miss out if you don’t indulge in a side here.

Our evening ended with a flurry of whimsical desserts. Bender remarks that “once the first fondue goes out into the dining room, it’s like an epidemic. Everyone wants one.” Well, I did, and I took childlike pleasure in dipping the homemade marshmallows, which were twisted like knots, chunks of pound cake, and the surprisingly good homemade Rice Krispie treats into the chocolate fudge sauce. (The fondue also comes with fresh fruit.) Our table also ordered a slice of classic opera torte, a sophisticated confection of chocolate ganache and nut-based cake layers, and the more-than-clever “study of apples,” which included a miniature caramel apple, apple tart, and a small scoop of apple ice cream.

If your vice is wine rather than sweets, Restaurant Local presents a wine list full of temptations, including thirty-five wines by the bottle for $35; the selection, more than 1,200 strong, includes some with price tags that soar into the thousands. (Our bottle of A to Z Pinot Noir was modestly priced at $38.) Much of the restaurant’s wine is stored in custom-made redwood racks in the handsome Decanter Room (the former home of the much beloved Decoy Bar), a private dining room separated from the restaurant by glass walls, where diners can enjoy customized tasting menus with accompanying wine.

Bender says that in opening Restaurant Local he was most nervous about customers’ reactions to the changes made, but that he has been pleasantly surprised by the way the restaurant has been embraced by the Easton community. “We see it more as an evolution than necessarily a change,” he adds.

Let the evolution begin.

Mary K. Zajac writes from Baltimore.