Choptank: The Menu
Posted by bellastraniera - 11/01/10 at 05:01 pm This just in from Grub Street: Maryland-style seafood restaurant Choptank is opening tonight. (How better to celebrate the Ravens’ complete and utter pummeling of the New England Pats?) It turns out that I know one of the guys behind this place: culinary consultant Kevin Patricio, a fellow Balmoron and old friend who knows the ins and outs of Maryland food and drinks, so I can vouch that this place is no City Crab.
Here’s a menu for the curious, below. The raw bar selections – oysters, shrimp cocktail, and Jonah crab claws – are all typical of what you’d find down there. Though Jonah crabs are not the bluefin kind used in crab feasts during the summer (as at the Hideaway here in NYC), they’ll do during the winter. Because of the big German population that originally settled in Baltimore, you will also find a lot of things there like the Ostrowski’s Polish sausage listed here – though one thing that’s missing is the sauerkraut, which many Marylanders eat with their Thanksgiving turkey.
In the starters section, crab chowder is obviously a Maryland top choice, though I think most Balmorons’ heads would pop off if they saw octopus on the menu – or even worse, on the plate. Seafood is one thing, but foreign-sounding seafood is still considered “weird” and “European.”
Perhaps most anticipated are the Maryland peel n’ eat shrimp. These are a mouth-watering favorite at so many seafood restaurants, and they’re particularly good at Federal Hill’s Cross Street Market. We can’t wait to try Choptank’s shrimp. Veering towards the decidedly un-Baltimore is arctic char with beluga lentils and bacon. We ain’t got nothin’ named beluga down dere, hon, and our fish usually ain’t that fancy. Salmon or “rockfish,” aka striped bass, is usually as wild as it gets.
The best fried chicken used to be at Cross Keys’ cafeteria. That’s gone now, but Maryland, home of the Perdue chicken empire, is certainly a hub for fried chicken. I’m not as sure about the collard greens, but they do go well with chicken.
We have our fingers crossed that the crab cake will live up to expectations. In its usual incarnation at country clubs, it’s served with field greens, not iceberg lettuce, since it’s usually the most expensive thing on the menu, but we’ll try the non-country club version.
A thrilling piece of news is the inclusion of “boardwalk fries” in the sides. As anyone from the Baltimore-Washington-Philly area knows from going downee ocean as a kid, the vinegary, thick, salty fries served on the boardwalk in Delaware and Maryland are beyond compare.
The cocktail menu has some intriguing original cocktails and an impressive selection of microbrews, a couple of which are from Maryland. But! There is no Natty Boh. Noooooo….. Guess we’ll have to go back to the Purple Patio for that one.
Grub Street: What to Eat at Choptank
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bellastraniera
a.k.a. Marcy Swingle - obsessed with food and fashion.
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