Carpenter Street Saloon — Restaurant in St. Michaels

So many thoughts but let’s start with the food.. It started off strong with the crab balls and the vegetable crab soup. Both were good. The crab balls were filled with lots of crab meat and little to no filler. One thing I didn’t like was that the crab balls came with a side of cocktail sauce. That really threw me off since the two don’t tend to pair well together but the crab balls were seasoned enough themselves that a sauce wasn’t needed.

Rockfish sandwich: we were not expecting it to be fried (we could have misread the menu as I never went back to look) so we did take the breading off the fish which was easy to do. The fish itself was cooked well. The tots however were cooked a few minutes too long..

The mahi tacos had ZERO flavor even though they are heavily seasoned. Lack of salt. Which I’ll say I prefer under salted than over. The sauce itself had no flavor and I didn’t touch the mango salsa because it was warm so no thank you.

The place was busy and they had one waitress running tables. She was very nice and still managed to be very attentive. The people behind the bar however ignored us when we walked in and stood since we didn’t know we could seat ourselves. We had to ask.

Now for the “ut ohs”.. I did not like what was going on in that kitchen. You could see part of the kitchen every time the waitress went in and out of it. The station by the door had food all over the floor, there were two big bags of spinach opened and just sitting on the prep table by the door, and there looked to be a knife near the edge of the prep table closer to the door. That prep table was also used to put fresh plates of food on when she had to add something to it AND put the dirty plates on to dismantle the finished plates. We didn’t see the table getting wiped down in between and we didn’t see her wash her hands after handling people’s payments then going to get new food. (She very well could have since the door of course closes after a while). A glass was also broken and not all the pieces were picked up because there was a huge piece by the door to enter and exit the kitchen for the duration we were there. (It broke while we were sitting waiting for food). Because of this we didn’t really eat much of our main dishes since that’s when we noticed all of...

It’s a bar and restaurant in the heart of St Michael’s. Been there forever. Totally crowded with sight seers. It’s noisy. The waitress was fine and friendly. I had an orientalist chicken salad, which I get often at other restaurants. I expected something like Panera offers. It listed chicken, mandarin oranges, Chinese noodles, greens, and pecans. I expected tender chunks of white meat chicken. Instead it was overly fried dried out hot-spiced skewers of chicken that I could not eat. The dressing was even hotter. I never saw any pecans. It was terrible. My son had fish and chips. It was inedible but he ate it. It was almost black. It had been fried in old oil and it was bitter and the fish was dry. When we left the waitress asked me if I wanted a box for my leftovers. I said no thanks. She said, “Are you sure?—it’s delicious.” I said no thank you a couple of times. I did not bother to tell her the salad was terrible and the fish inedible and burned because it would have been like telling a Republican Christian evangelist that the Earth is not 6,000 years old and Donald Trump is a textbook sociopath. The waitress was very nice and the place is busy as hell. They must all have had COVID and lost their sense of taste. I left a 20% tip and reminded myself that if I ever go back I’ll try the cheeseburgers. I kept thinking what Gordon Ramsay would have done! He would have demanded the owner come out on TV and he would have berated and humiliated the guy. It was that bad. Your eyes can see the crust is almost black. That is not a taste issue.

I see other reviews that give high praise. I cannot explain that unless they’ve never had...

We had tickets to see Lights on the Bay so even though we woke up to foggy skies last Sunday we decided to make the best of the day and check out the Christmas decorations in St. Michaels and Cambridge. Our first stop was St. Michael's and after checking out online reviews of local restaurants decided on Carpenter Street Saloon. We arrived around 1 and even though they still had a nice crowd we were seated right away at a 2 top booth in the dining room (for some reason they were closing at 3 so i'm glad we stopped when we did). Hubby & I had already checked out the menu online and were ready to order when the waitress arrived - hubby ordered the Smokehouse Burger with cole slaw while I went with the Jerk Chicken Sandwich with fries. The chicken was moist, flavorful and quite tasty but hubby's burger was the bomb and he immediately proclaimed that the cole slaw was the best he had ever had (this always happens when we don't order similar things - his meal always turns out to be the better one but at least he gave me a bite). The vibe of the place is totally old school boating town, love the wood and murals, and the staff is really friendly and efficient, only problem with the place is parking can be a bit crazy, we got lucky and got the last spot in the parking lot out back. St. Michael's is filled with lots of great restaurants but we would definitely come back here for lunch or perhaps even breakfast, in the spring or summer next time so we can stroll along the street and check out all the...