The Maritime Cafe opened last summer in the spot where Queenie’s Roadhouse was, in the little town of Elk.  Rodney Workman and Alexa Newman were both chef’s in upscale Bay Area restaurants before moving to this remote location.  They are open Thur to Sun for dinner Thur to Sat and lunch on Sat and Sun.  It’s a small place with a  small menu serving local produce and seafood.  They offer some organically farmed wines.  They have patio seating out front, a counter with stools inside and tables inside.  Windows in the room afford a view similar to the patio and music was in the background.  The room was decorated with some sea articles and the staff was super friendly.  The menu appeared to have more choices at dinner but we were there at weekend brunch time and it had plenty of interesting sounding choices.  It was good enough that I’ll go back.

Set-up

Food

We snacked on some potato chips and onion dip while we waited for our order.  The chips were housemade and crisp.  The dip was smooth with good flavor.

 

The roast chicken sandwich was on nicely toasted sourdough bread with lettuce, mayo and pickles. A fun difference from most chicken sandwiches is that they slice the breast meat so it doesn’t pull out in chunks when you take a bite.  Also, it still had the well rendered skin on the meat which added flavor.  A good sandwich.

 

Buttermilk pancakes were topped with butter, almonds and came with a blueberry syrup.  I asked if they were thick or thin pancakes and the server said thin so I jumped at these.  There were 2 large thin cakes with nice crispy edges and great flavor.  The butter chunks were a little too hard to spread well but that was not a real issue.  The toasted almonds added an additional texture factor to the great pancakes.  The syrup was not maple but surprisingly tasty and there was ample for both cakes.  It added sweetness but not too much so you could enjoy the whole plate.  I’d get this again in a heartbeat, but know I far prefer thin to thick pancakes and there are plenty that feel otherwise.

 

They had 2 housemade desserts on the counter and I couldn’t resist trying one of the chocolate chunk cookies, but the lemon tart did look quite good.  The cookie was huge and did not have nuts, just large gooey chunks of chocolate in the tasty batter.  The middle chocolate was still runny but the cookie was baked through.  It was delicious, rich and messy.