Chestertown Chef Steve Quigg and The Kitchen at the Imperial
The Chester River is a natural draw to the small, historic town of Chestertown in Kent County, second only, perhaps, to the popular farmers’ market on Saturday mornings that features fresh dairy, produce, meats, and baked goods from local growers and producers. While the town is intertwined with American colonial history and the river offers all the outdoor activities that one could hope for, it’s the majestic palette of color at sunset that I find most engrossing. The natural setting is a large part of the reason why artists and creatives are so often drawn to Chestertown.
While moved by the beauty myself, my heart often feels as if it resides in my stomach. So while others may be seeking out the works of local artists at the Massoni Gallery, I’m always on the hunt for artists who have traded in their brushes for whisks and kitchen knives.
Steve Quigg is the head chef and owner of The Kitchen at the Imperial on High Street in Chestertown. After working for over twenty-five years in the technology field, Steve and his family moved to the Eastern Shore, where they bought a former coffee shop in Rock Hall and transformed it into a casual fine dining restaurant. A self-learner, Steve learned to cook through cookbooks, which he continues to do to this day, rather than taking the traditional route of culinary training. It may be, for this reason, that he is able to tap into such creativity, as he is unconstrained by purely traditional thinking.
In 2014, Steve moved his restaurant to Chestertown, to make use of a larger dining area and a kitchen that could remain open year-round. What first drew me to The Kitchen was Steve’s more unique menu items: braised beef cheeks over creamy polenta, chicken liver pate, rabbit, and hand-made pastas laboriously crafted with patience and love. For me, it’s always the odd bits and the older, slower traditions that grab my attention. It’s often the lesser-known menu items that require a greater degree of creativity in preparation, to make them appealing to diners who aren’t familiar with them. These dishes demonstrate Steve’s cooking skills and his playful nature in the kitchen.
“Food is all about playing,” Steve told me as we sat at The Kitchen’s bar on a Saturday morning, talking shop over a cup of coffee. “I make pasta from scratch because I just enjoy doing it. If you don’t love cooking, you need another job. The people with the passion in the restaurant industry are the people who are still standing.”
Not only is Steve still standing, he is thriving. Chestertown has not been immune to the country’s labor shortages or the devastating effects the pandemic has had on independent businesses. Recently, multiple local restaurants have had to close up shop. But, The Kitchen remains busy during dining hours, in large part to Steve’s playfulness and creativity, which are evident in the menu items that rotate weekly and that feature a varying display of ingredients, dishes, and cooking techniques.
Take, for example, a dessert special on offer at The Kitchen, a chocolate bread pudding cake, paired with a peanut butter whisky. For a dining experience a short walk from the river’s edge, dessert was the last thing on my mind when I brought my family to experience dinner at The Kitchen. But this rich, sweet, salty, intoxicating combination had our table scraping the remaining morsels of chocolate from our plate and crooning with hyperbolic cries of delight. “Good God, this is the best thing ever.” All manners and social graces melted to the floor as we indulged without a care for who might be peering across the candlelit dining room to figure out who these howling diners might be. Steve had managed to fuse our current ages with our younger years through this mixture of childhood birthday cake with tasty adult libations.
The true standouts of the meal were local favorites that were painted with Steve’s magical brush: rockfish, crab, and oysters. If you’re running a restaurant on the Eastern Shore, it is essential that you have at least some of these items as many out-of-town visitors have come seeking Maryland’s classic seafood offerings. As Steve told me, “You have to balance your urge to play, at times, because you have to sell plates” that appeal to the wider public.
Having grown up on Long Island, I am no stranger to seafood, and I have strong opinions about it. There’s no need to mess with oysters, or so I thought. Shuck them open, sprinkle a bit of lemon and maybe add a dash of vinegar or horseradish, and slurp it down in its own natural brine. Similarly, crab comes packed with its own bursting flavor, enhanced with a bit of melted butter or a shake of Old Bay, but it’s best to just crack open and eat right from its source. But these low-frills methods of tasting the sea are methods I can employ on my own. I was eager to try Steve’s take on these local resources.
It was for these reasons that I eagerly ordered the Kitchen Crab Soup. Thick pieces of crab meat were paired with corn in a cream-based broth. Hidden in the layers of flavor was a tangy hit of heat. If crab was a desert-crawling beast that a Santa Fe chef had cooked with local chiles, you may just get something similar to what Steve is doing with his crab soup. Had the dining room all been served a bowl at the same time, you would surely soon hear a symphony of metal scrapping porcelain, the sound of hungry diners refusing to waste a drop of broth.
Steve’s version of local rockfish was pan seared until its outer layer was crispy and brown and the flesh still flakey and light. The rockfish was placed atop a bed of whipped Redman Farm’s sweet potatoes, wilted baby spinach, and a Riesling saffron sauce. Each bite was an electric shock of pleasure with salty, buttery, creamy flavors hitting my tastebuds. When the dish first arrived, its presentation sparked familiarity. Orange and yellow concentric circles were centered on a black plate, mimicking the Maryland sun’s hues as it was swallowed by the night on my first trip down the river. Was this a case of maddening apophenia or had Steve managed to capture the sun over the Chester River and paint her on my plate? Perhaps neither explanation would have mattered if the meal didn’t taste nearly as wonderful as it looked, but rest assured it did.
We ordered a variety of other entrees that we passed back and forth, sampling a wide array of the menu’s offerings. We devoured the herb crusted halibut with sweet corn, green squash, heirloom cherry tomatoes, butternut squash caponata, and a dashi-infused tomato water beurre blanc. We swooned over a tender, braised lamb shank, marinated in rosemary and garlic, slow cooked in carrots, plum tomatoes, chicken stock, and red wine, served alongside smashed potatoes. We fought over the last of the pan-fried oysters, dressed with breadcrumbs, butter, and herbs. The meal was rich in textures, colors, and flavors, like an artist who has combined his mediums into one magnum opus.
The Chester River is a beautiful sight to behold on a clear night in any season. But the Gods aren’t the only artists at play in the evenings in Chestertown. Though, it can be hard to find activity in the downtown area, particularly on nights earlier in the week, when many shops and restaurants either turn off the lights in the early evening or remain closed until the busier days at the end of the week. But, if you know where to look, there is an artist flipping through the pages of a cookbook, ready to place his canvas in front of you.
The Kitchen at The Imperial
208 High Street, Chestertown, Maryland; 410-778-5000; Facebook
