Comfort food with a real regional style is rife in Annapolis, and the competition among restaurants to give people no reason ever to complain about portions is evident on just about every plate.  Here are three more places I really enjoyed on a recent trip to the Chesapeake.

The Blackwall Hitch
400 Sixth Street
410-263-3452
theblackwallhitch.com/annapolis

    I tend to shy away from chain restaurants, however few the links may be, but in the case of The Blackwall Hitch, I would be remiss if I didn’t say it really is one of the best, most ambitious restaurants in Annapolis, with branches in Rehoboth Beach and Alexandria.  The odd name comes from a special mariner’s knot used to hitch ships quickly and securely upon arriving from London’s Blackwall Port at docks in Maryland and Virginia.  Thus, there are maritime echoes in the décor of the Annapolis unit (the first, opened two years ago, owned by local James King), along with Colonial-style high-backed chairs, tufted black booths, and hanging Edison lights, with a large, well-lighted bar to the rear of the very comfortable main dining room.  There’s also rooftop dining and live music Wednesday through Sunday, and a Sunday jazz brunch.
    Executive Chef Zachary Pope has a long résumé with the awards to prove his rep as a chef adept in a wide range of cuisines, with stints in Washington restaurants like Vidalia, Vintage Wine Bistro and Red Sage.  The menu, therefore, offers fine Chesapeake fare like lump meat crab cakes with sweet-tangy roasted corn salsa, cherry pepper rémoulade and rosemary-scented French fries ($35) and wonderful shrimp and cheddar-laced grits with andouille sausage, tomatoes and a white wine sauce ($27), along with seared ahi tuna dusted with sesame seeds, served with seaweed salad, hot wasabi, Sriracha and avocado cream as an appetizer ($16) and six really exceptional fire-roasted flatbreads ($13-$16) that can be shared at the table.
      Then there are a slew of salads—the one with steak and blue cheese is delicious—burgers and sandwiches, and main courses like succulent pork osso buco ($28).  Right now the soft-shell crab season is in full swing.
      Like many restaurants around town, they serve the dense, mile-high Smith Island chocolate cake ($9), along with Key lime panna cotta with strawberry sauce ($9), and a warm pineapple upside down skillet cake with brown butter and caramel ($9), along with housemade chocolate truffles ($2.50 each).
    The wine list is pretty extensive and includes many bottles under $50, though they should have more Maryland and Virginia wines on the list. Wines by the glass are priced way too high: a Francis Ford Coppola Director’s Cut 2013 that sells for about $15 in the wine store costs the same here for a single glass.
    The Blackwall Hitch is, as I said, ambitious, but I found the quality of everything I tasted consistent and made from very fine ingredients.  That, and a lively bar crowd and music, are what keeps the place packed with people willing to pay good money for very good food. 

Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

IRON ROOSTER
12 Market Space
410-990-1600
ironroosterallday.com 

    Iron Rooster proudly boast that it serves “Breakfast All Day,” and many loyal patrons take advantage of that.  I would most certainly join them any time over a big plate of fried chicken breast and waffles with cream gravy and very good stone-ground grits ($9.95), and the omelets make for a hearty meal from 7 a.m. onward.  The eggs Benedict are sensationally good—there are five variants—and I, of course, went for the “Benny,” with that sweet Maryland blue crab meat, a poached egg, tomatoes and micro greens atop an English muffin (a steal at $17.95). The breakfast taco ($13.95) includes scrambled eggs, fat pork belly, green chili salsa, pico de gallo, queso fresco and home fries ($13.95).
    There’s a great deal more, all of it made fresh to order, including fine flaky biscuits, and the signature, much-too-sweet Navy pop-tarts ($5.95).  For supper you can have the smoked brisket chili ($4.95-$7.95), chicken pot pie ($22.95) that will feed two people, and a meatloaf of daunting proportions, with black pepper pan gravy and poached egg, fried leeks and broccoli ($21.95).
    The colorful two-tiered eatery, with a lot of farmhouse décor and Mason jars on the wooden tables, is set right on the City Dock, so it’s a swell place to take your time and watch the boats come and go along with the people. 

Open Mon.-Sat. 7 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sun. 7 a.m.-8 p.m.

VIN 909
909 Bay Ridge Avenue
410-990-1846
vin909.com

    Set in a pillared, clapboard Sears Roebuck house in Annapolis’ Eastport residential neighborhood, Vin 909 gives off the feeling that you’re dropping in for a nice meal at a friend’s home, in this case your new friends, owner Alex Manfredonia and chef Justin Moore, who opened this very popular restaurant five years ago.  In cool weather there’s a nice fireplace you can warm yourself at; in hot weather, a patio.  Meals, as at home, are meant to be shared.
    Vin 909 is a very green restaurant—they even recycle their oyster shells—earning the Annapolis Environmental Stewardship Certification and a Certificate from the Environmental Protection Agency's Green Power Partnership Program.  Ingredients are as organic and sustainable as possible, and they list their providers on the menu. The seafood just arrived that morning from the local boats. It’s just a really nice, nice place, and big-hearted Alex couldn’t be more amiable or happy to see you.
    We dined out on the patio on a brilliant sea-blue afternoon, and we might have lingered for hours among people who were doing just that, sipping the last of a bottle of rosé wine, splitting a dessert, wondering when they can get back again.  Of course, wine plays a big part of the philosophy and the appeal here, with 90 well-priced labels on the list, and all beers are from either craft or micro breweries.
    Do not fail to order the lovely, warm, fresh-pulled mozzarella ($14), served in an almond-ricotta pesto with fried basil and “pearl” dots of balsamic vinegar (above right).  The pizzas (left), eight of them, are more like flatbreads and are addictive; we ordered two for three at our table: the simple Margherita ($12) and the “Fun Guy” ($16) with wild mushrooms, ramps, Taleggio cheese, arugula and a sprinkling of freshly picked thyme.
      Although it’s all too easy to order way too much, the food is light, intensely flavorful, and seems to lead naturally to having a dessert like chocolate pot de crème ($7) or butterscotch pudding ($7).  The cooking seems simple, so it has to be perfect to impress guests the way it does.

Open for lunch Wed.-Fri., for dinner Tues.-Sun.

    I’ve always believed that Americans tend to like wines whose name they can easily pronounce, like Bolla Soave and Cloudy Bay, and shy away from those they cannot, like Chassagne-Montrachet and Forstmeister Geltz-Zilliken.  But that may only begin to describe the allure of the wines of La Crema, whose aficionados have a wide range of wines to choose from under that mellifluous name, including nearly 20 different Pinot Noirs and 10 Chardonnays, along with Pinot Gris and Viognier.
    It’s become a matter of trust, of course. If a person finds both the La Crema Pinot Noir and Chardonnay to his liking, he is likely to find others in the line intriguing, although prices range from $23 to $90.  At dinner at Sea Grill restaurant in New York, I asked La Crema’s winemaker, Elizabeth Grant-Douglas (left), why the winery makes so many iterations (that’s the wine geek word for different bottlings of the same varietal) of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
    “La Crema has built a broad reputation for its most popular wines, so people have come to trust the label,” she said, “and my job is to maintain a La Crema style in all our wines—not too buttery, not too much oak, letting the fruit shine through—while discovering how our different vineyards can produce nuances.” 
     Thus, a Green Valley Pinot Noir 2013 ($65), which comes from the coolest region of Sonoma, has “firm structure and natural balance;” Shell Ridge Pinot Noir 2012 ($50) is “brilliant, rugged, rich,” deriving flavor from the “ancient sea shells in the soils of Shell Ridge;” Chardonnay Nine Barrel 2012 ($70) is “an exceptional expression of a Russian River Valley Chardonnay, made from nine of the highest quality barrels.”  La Crema also has holdings in other parts of California as well as in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
    Grant-Douglas, who grew up in Niagara Falls, Canada, and graduated from Brock University’s Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture program, is expert in dealing with the vagaries of cold terroirs, even making so-called ice wine, whose grapes literally freeze on the vine.   She joined La Crema as an enologist in 2001, was named Winemaker in 2010, and since 2013 has been Director of Wine making for the company.  “They wanted someone who understood cold climates,” she said, “and when I got to La Crema I worked the nigh shift during the harvest as the lowest man on the totem pole.  They didn’t hire me for my name; I think it was more for my strong back and boundless enthusiasm.”
    Nor was she hired to make wines that were expressions of her own style. “They didn’t hire me to make an `Elizabeth wine’ and I wouldn’t want to,” she said. “Matter of fact, I believe that, if a winemaker makes a Pinot Noir or Chardonnay that shows his hand in it, that’s not a good thing.  Sometimes you have to wonder how much Pinot Noir is actually in some of those bottles, because they don’t taste much like Pinot Noir.  They taste more like Zinfandel or Syrah.”
    One of the ways Grant-Douglas “finalizes” a wine is to take a sample bottle home with her to have with dinner, insisting, “If the wine doesn’t go well with food, it’s not a good wine.”
    The winery, which has moved around a bit over four decades, is this summer opening The La Crema Russian River Estate, spread over 260 acres of Saralee’s Vineyard. Founded in 1979, later purchased by the Jess Jackson family.   Despite the amount of wine La Crema produces, most are made in small-batch appellations of between 2,000 and 6,000 cases.
    The treatment of the newly harvested grapes is crucial to achieving a certain delicacy and the creamy texture of La Crema’s wines.  In the case of Saralee’s Vineyard Chardonnay 2013, the grapes “are hand harvested and 100% whole cluster pressed. After one night of cold settling, they are racked in French Open barrels for fermentation, then inoculated with the house strain of malolactic culture and stirred once every three weeks to enhance richness of mouth feel. The juices are racked only once before bottling.”
    With the Saralee’s Vineyard Pinot Noir 2013, “seventy percent whole berries go into open top tank of fermentation, with juice cold-soaked for 3 to 5 days and carefully hand punched three times each day” to achieve the best extraction.  The free run wine is then transferred to 100% French oak barrels, where it is aged for 10 months. 
    The whole aim, as Grant-Douglas says, is to produce a range of wines that are not only exemplary of the varietals in the bottle but that also are definitively La Crema, vintage after vintage, vineyard after vineyard.  The less done back at the winery the more likely that is to be achieved.