Mark’s Score 9.4
This restaurant is a decadent indulgence of mine. I don’t get to Easton very often, but when I do, this is one of my favorites. The thing about Easton is that it is chock-a-block with excellent restaurants. So, saying that this is my favorite restaurant in Easton is saying a lot.
The Wardroom is the closest you are going to get to an authentic French Café on the Eastern Shore. However, it is more than just a café, it is also a wine, cheese, and charcuterie shop. But the best part of this restaurant is the wine wall. They have two Enomatic wine dispensing machines embedded in the walls of the café. The first one serves lovely moderately priced wines from a variety of locations around the globe. The second machine serves some of the world’s most reknowned wines. Have you ever wanted to taste a Vosne-Romanée but didn’t want to commit yourself to spending over $100 for a wine you have not yet tasted? Not to worry, you can buy a glass through Wardroom’s Enomatic machine for about $20. Give it a try, see if you like it before committing yourself to $100+ for a bottle. Or maybe you can’t afford to spend $100+ for a bottle of wine, here is an opportunity to taste some of the best wines the world has to offer for a small fraction of the cost of a full bottle.
When I go to the Wardroom I am like a child in a candy store. I walk in the door, pass the tables, pass the less expensive wines in the first Enomatic machine and go right for the expensive stuff. When you are seated the wait staff will bring a wine card to your table to use for the machines. On my last visit, I selected a Chablis Grand Cru from the famous Les Clos vineyard (see map). Chablis vineyards are located on a bench of chalk (the same chalk outcrop as the cliffs of Dover), imparting in the wine a lovely and distinctive minerality. Chablis is a less famous wine region of France, and it even got a bad name in the seventies. But this wine is worth every penny of its full price.
This is one of two restaurants where I chose the wine first then select a dish to pair with the wine. I asked the waitress to bring me a dish that would be best paired with the Chablis. She brought me the “Southerner” sandwich – a turkey sandwich on rye with bacon and avocado, accompanied by a side of greens drizzled in a light dressing. It was a perfect match.
After lunch I walked over to their adjacent wine store. I always find wines that I have never heard of, and no I did not buy the Grand Crus Chablis. Why? Because their wine store has an excellent selection of obscure nebbiolo and grüner veltliner wines from Italy and Austria. I became familiar with the Nebbiolo grape while working with one of our vendors in Milano. Every Christmas they would send me a case of Barbaresco. I have been a fan of Nebbiolo ever since.
Though I always resolve to buy a French wine, I haven’t yet managed to get past the Italy/Austria section of their wine racks. Maybe someday I’ll get to the French section, but not this day…
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