Lunch at Bridges

We had a terrific lunch at the new Kent Island hot spot, Bridges, on Sunday.  It was really good.  The place is huge, with loads of out side seating and a big bar area, including outside bar seats that sidle up to the inside bar via a gigantic roll-back window.  Very inviting.  The interior is decorated with a basic wine theme, I think it would be fair to say, in a minimalistic way - cases of wine, beer and soft drinks are stacked all over the dining room, with wine posters as art and a huge wine bottle chandelier hanging just over the midway point between the bar and the dining room.  I imagine it could get a little loud in there on a busy night, as there is not much to soften the noise in the way of fabric or plants, but it was quite pleasant on Sunday.  (I know our dining room was very noisy this past Saturday, and we weren't even that busy - we will be replacing the rug on the wall with a quilt today, and hopefully that will help.)

Bridges is the new home of Chef David Clark, locally of Julia's fame, and he was working on the line and expediting.  There were three of us for lunch.  We shared a calamari and I had a house salad to start - unfortunately I did not read the menu that carefully and the salad came sprinkled with feta cheese, which Kevin was happy to eat for me. The calamari was good, although not as good as ours!  For lunch Kevin had the white sausage pizza - really tasty sausage with  four cheeses on a very buttery crust.  Doc and I had the Tuna Tower - sesame crusted seared rare tuna layered with rice noodles and fried wontons.  It was really, really good - I am ready to have it again!  The tuna's cold firm texture contrasted nicely with the crunchy wonton sheets, while the noodles carried the sauce that was squiggled on the plate, making the whole thing come together. I suppose it was sort of hard to eat, but once you started crushing the layers you could happily convey them to your mouth.  It was the sort of thing I love for lunch - different, very flavorful and light at the same time.  Also probably a little expensive - some of the menu items were slightly pricey for our area, although probably not for the Kent Island crowd.  Their crabcake runs $17; the calamari was $11.50 and the tuna rang out at $14.50.  Some of the pricing seemed sort of odd - for instance,  the house salad was $5.70 and the wings are $8.90.  Still, it wasn't out of line with other places of this caliber and location. And it was good!

We spoke with David for a few minutes.  He has over 30 employees in his kitchen there; he recently lost his dinner sous-chef and has yet to replace him, so he was saying that the previous Saturday night, when they served over 550 customers, really took it out of him.  He's working 6.5 days a week, both shifts.  Makes Kevin look like a slacker, eh?  In a side note, he also confirmed that his old space in downtown Centreville will be opening soon as a French bistro-styled spot, by a couple of guys from Annapolis.  It will be called Brique and they hope to open this week!

Anyway, a great addition to the Island Scene, right next door to the Jetty.  No need to travel far for some water side food and drinks.