...continuing with our family road trip to the Delmarva Peninsula. We finished exploring downtown Easton and we checked into the Holiday Inn Express, which would be our ‘home’ for three nights.
Then it
was time for dinner. In my pre-trip
research I’d listed several possible destinations as dinner possibilities. They had included Doc’s Downtown Grille…where
we had lunch; Hunters Tavern; The BBQ Joint; Legal Assets, and Out of the
Fire. Our group reviewed the on-line
reviews and the menus. Out of the Fire was the winner…
‘Out of the Fire’ occupies a remodeled former home at 111 South Washington Street in Easton. This restaurant’s motto is “Eat Well. Be Well. Give Back.” As per the restaurant’s website, they are “committed to community enhancement by providing interesting and creative cuisine while engaging in environmental and social sustainability”.
We did
like the idea that they had repurposed a home rather than building a new
structure. Note the enclosed patio
dining in the second photo. .
Inside Out of the Fire, the dining areas were generally broken up into an assortment of rooms of different sizes. The only bar I remember seeing that was smaller than the one in the first photo was one we encountered in a bed and breakfast in Scotland several years ago.
Our little group was seated on the second floor in a room that we had all for ourselves for most of our meal. As you can see from the photos, it was a bright and cheery dining environment. Unfortunately for me, our helpful wait staff offered to take a group photo. I’m not exactly a ‘fashionista’ and since I’m retired, most of my shirts come from Tractor Supply and carry the ‘Carhartt’ brand…and most of those shirts don’t involve a collar.
…on to
the food!
We didn’t
really order individual entrees… We’d had a big lunch and we decided to pick and choose
items that we could share. The first
thing we ordered was the House-made Focaccia Bread served with olive oil.
($6.00) It was excellent.
We also ordered the Grilled Squid. ($15.00) It came with anchovy-caper aioli, guindilla peppers, lemon and parsley. It was nice but it is hard to beat my memory of a similar offering from the Erie Café in Chicago.
FYI,
Guindilla peppers are a pepper from the Basque country of Spain and
France. They are normally eaten as a
tapa or as a pizza topping and they are only mildly spicy.
Another
plate to grace our table was this pile of Prince Edward Island Mussels in a
spicy tomato-caper broth. ($19.00) We also ordered more focaccia bread when we
ordered these nice mussels…
Keep the
food coming! Next we shared the Meze
Platter. ($20.00) It consisted of hummus, olive tapenade, beet-pistachio dip,
tzatziki, goat cheese and grilled naan.
It was quite good and it kept all of us sampling the goodies for quite a
while.
Meze or
mezze? Meze is Turkish and Mezze is used
more often in Greek. Both stem from
Ottoman Turkish which in turn stems from the Persian ‘maze’ for “taste or snack”
Hey, Bill
and I ‘had to’ have some serious protein with our evening repast… So we ordered
the Grilled Butchers Steak...medium rare. ($34.00) It came with fingerling
potatoes (not shown), pickled Fresno chili peppers, shallots, arugula, egg and
herb oil. It was a quality piece of meat
that everyone tried and Bill and I especially enjoyed it!
Yes…I
know! We should have stopped eating
already! Nope! The problem was that we viewed the dessert
menu and noted some unusual house-made ice creams. We all have a weakness for ice cream and we
couldn’t pass up this opportunity… We ordered a scoop each of the Ricotta,
Limoncello FroYo, Brown Sugar and Sweet
Corn ice cream. ($5.00 per scoop) I particularly enjoyed the Brown Sugar
version. I don’t know what we expected,
but the sweet corn ice cream tasted like sweet corn.
We did
enjoy our meal or ‘greatly extended snack’ made of shared types and styles of
food. Out of the Fire gets 4.5 stars
from us. FYI, they also offer a variety
of pizzas. This restaurant is also open
for lunch. To learn more and to view the
menus, go to Restaurant | Out of the Fire | Easton, MD.
FYI,
Travel and Leisure Magazine has named Easton as Maryland’s Most Charming Town”,
where “big city cool meets small town America”.
Interestingly, much of the town’s tourist development was driven by
Bluepoint Hospitality Group…which invested tens of millions of dollars into the
town.
That’s
all for now. Just click on any of the photos
to enlarge them.
Thanks
for stopping by for a visit!
Take
Care, Big Daddy Dave
David, T-shirt and jeans are great. There's no need to feel embarrassed about it. These days I wear sport pants and pulli since we walk 15km daily..I must say that food looks really good here, steak for the win :-))
ReplyDeleteLooks like you had a nice variety of foods. I've been wanting to cook some mussels.
ReplyDeleteOh I get hungry reading about this food! It does sound delicious, but sweet corn flavored ice cream kind of makes me shudder. It's like how there's a cheese-cake flavor that can be added to anything, and it's really strong, but fake! Sure, tee shirts are great...I wear many of them myself!
ReplyDeleteDave, let me assure you we are definitely NOT fashion plates ourselves and that said we never wear PJs and slippers while out in public or ripped jeans, but we do like our blue jeans, flannel shirts (it's winter in NH) and comfy sweatshirts. The places like Out of the Fire would be our choice of eatery, comfy and welcoming. When you mentioned that you all were not hungry and would just have appetizers, I couldn't help but thing that was a lot of food...all looked good to me except for the squid, no thanks. Now, fried calamari is quite a different story as it is an appetizer we enjoy sharing.
ReplyDeleteOf all your posts I have read over time, this one to Eastern Shore really got me. 30 years ago I helped my friend and sailing buddy transport his full keel, 26 foot sailboat from the Tennessee River to St. Michaels (in January!), Md, a stone's throw from Oxford and Easton. I loved it- I would have retired there years ago, but the cost was too high to be comfortable. Did you know that Easton was Talbot Courthouse in the 18th Century? The famous Talbot Resolves was signed there, a big event in American Revolutionary history. Hey, run over to St. Michaels and see the Skipjacks and Bugeyes and you can eat at The Crab Claw, where boats can tie up to their dock for lunch!
ReplyDeleteHi robotpotato... No worries! St. Michaels is coming up soon on this road trip narrative...more than one post too. Like you related, it is an expensive place to live...and for us it was too expensive for a 3 night stay...hence Easton instead.
ReplyDeleteTake Care, Big Daddy Dave