As we tooled down I-97 toward Annapolis and Preserve, I was a bundle of nerves. I pondered the wisdom of testing out a tiny, popular new restaurant on a Friday evening—one that didn’t take reservations—with a carful of friends old and new. And I worried, too, about dragging everyone to yet another farm-to-table eatery. At a time when even McDonald’s touts its “locally relevant” offerings, maybe being locavore isn’t something to highlight anymore. I pictured the five of us lined up for an hours-long wait on Main Street after circling the city for parking, only to be confronted with boring borage salads and pallid plates of air-chilled chicken.
But that’s because I hadn’t counted on the smarts and ingenuity of Jeremy and Michelle Hoffman, the husband-and-wife team responsible for this sophisticated, high-energy gem, whose calling card is a focus on pickled, fermented, and, as the name suggests, preserved preparations, and whose menu also boasts contemporary twists on homespun comfort food—another culinary cliché the Hoffmans
finesse with wit and wisdom.
As my buddy Charlie slipped into a miraculously open parking space directly in front of the restaurant, I began to feel a tad more optimistic. Our party of five was seated immediately—arrive early and that can happen—and relaxed into this brightly sleek but subtle jewel box of a restaurant, with its whitewashed brick and golden maple. It was a lovely early fall evening, and the restaurant’s roll-back windows were open to the breeze. Within the hour, the place filled with happy, handsome diners enjoying and sharing deeply satisfying food.
If you’re with a crowd, order up as many of those pickled and preserved things as you can: exemplary sauerkraut dressed up with bright dabs of grain mustard; draped ribbons of silky kimchi; a brilliant “quick pickle” platter of every vegetable under the sun, each bathed in a singularly inventive brine. The pop of these bracing items contrasts beautifully with a smoky lentil dip. The platter also includes another farm-to-table mainstay, deviled eggs, stuffed with a surprisingly addictive mix of minced turnips in chili-garlic sauce. Queen of the starters? An even more addictive pile of crispy kale gilded with giant dollops of cumin-spiced yogurt and generously sprinkled with a dice of red onion. Everyone at the table loved it so much that fights threatened to break out. (Fancy that, Mom: fighting over kale.)