Gertrude's Chesapeake Kitchen

Gertrude's Chesapeake Kitchen inside the Baltimore Museum of Art is one of Maryland's most distinctive restaurant experiences, combining the culinary traditions of the Chesapeake Bay with the cultural setting of one of the most significant art museums on the East Coast. Chef John Shields—a cookbook author, television personality, and leading authority on Chesapeake cuisine—designed the restaurant's menu around seasonal local ingredients and the cooking traditions of the Mid-Atlantic region. The result is a menu that changes with the seasons, drawing on Chesapeake Bay rockfish, blue crabs, and oysters alongside farm produce from nearby Maryland and Virginia growers who supply the kitchen directly. Soft-shell crab, in season from spring through early summer, is one of the restaurant's most celebrated dishes, representing the Chesapeake at its most distinctive. The annual crab cake, prepared with jumbo lump and served with seasonally appropriate accompaniments, is the year-round anchor of the menu. The Baltimore Museum of Art has free general admission, meaning a visit to Gertrude's can be combined with an afternoon exploring one of the mid-Atlantic's finest permanent collections, which includes the world's largest collection of works by Henri Matisse. Reservations are recommended; the restaurant serves lunch Wednesday through Sunday and dinner on Friday and Saturday evenings only.