Soul restau­rant din­ing room, look­ing toward the out­door seat­ing area.

Satur­day Sep­tem­ber 9^th, 2017 was a beau­ti­ful late-sum­mer day. It was final­ly start­ing to cool off a bit. We were head­ing to Annapo­lis for brunch at Soul restau­rant (click here to see their com­plete list­ing in our Food & Drink Busi­ness Direc­to­ry) fol­lowed by a wine tast­ing at Great Frogs Win­ery. This was to be our first vis­it to both places.

Soul is locat­ed in the Vil­lage Greens of Annapo­lis retail cen­ter. It is in the For­est Dri­ve cor­ri­dor on the Bay Ridge Penin­su­la, in a mod­ern (what looks to be fair­ly new) low-rise devel­op­ment of mixed retail and town homes, west of down­town Annapo­lis. There are den­tists, a hard­ware store, phar­ma­cies, and a lot of oth­er restau­rants in the neigh­bor­hood. A num­ber of them have grouped togeth­er, call­ing them­selves SOFO or “south for­est.”

Setting the scene

The pub­lic-area of the restau­rant is L-shaped. We arrived about 12:15 PM (~75 min­utes after they opened) and entered at one end of their long bar, where a patron or two was din­ing. We were walked the length of the bar, and then took a 90° turn to the right into the din­ing room. With large win­dows on three walls, the area was bright­ly lit. We were offered the option of eat­ing out­doors, but it was a bit windy, so we opt­ed for indoors.

Chef Mar­co Pierre White: ‘Moth­er Nature is the true artist and our job as cooks is to allow her to shine.’

The wait­er seat­ed us at a table by floor-to-ceil­ing win­dows at the far end of the room. In the cor­ner at the oppo­site end of the room, a sole patron dined at a ban­quette. Oth­er­wise, the place was emp­ty. The wait­er took our order for cof­fees and water, and left us to peruse our menus. The lone din­er soon left, but oth­er folks grad­u­al­ly filled-in some tables over the next hour.

As I sat down, I had to brush some crumbs off my chair. Our table and those around us looked clean and nice­ly set. But as we looked around, we noticed the floor was lit­tered with crud (prob­a­bly from the night before, giv­en the car­rot stick next to us looked pret­ty shriv­eled up). That def­i­nite­ly didn’t make for an appeal­ing din­ing envi­ron­ment.

Their cof­fee was great — I’d go back just for that!

Crumbs (far left of the image, and cen­ter and right under the able and chairs) and a car­rot stick (cen­ter left) lit­ter the floor at the table next to us.

What's for brunch

The wait­er returned with our drinks. Their cof­fee was great — I’d go back just for that! We then placed our food order and sat back to wait. The wait wasn’t over­ly long, but it was long enough for me to fin­ish my cof­fee. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, our wait­er was also help­ing folks sit­ting out­side, at the far end of the build­ing, so wasn’t pay­ing us a lot of atten­tion. I even­tu­al­ly man­aged to flag down one of his col­leagues, who got him to bring me anoth­er cup.

The Soul restau­rant menu is in two columns, with two sec­tions to each col­umn: Morn­ing Food, Sides, Lunch Stuff, and Flat­breads (the last one was the only sec­tion we didn’t try). At the bot­tom of the right-hand col­umn was an inspir­ing quote from Chef Mar­co Pierre White (“dubbed the first celebri­ty chef, and the enfant ter­ri­ble of the UK restau­rant scene”): “Moth­er Nature is the true artist and our job as cooks is to allow her to shine.”

Sides

Home Fries with Old Bay sea­son­ing, pep­pers, and onions. It came with a ramekin of ketchup for dip­ping.

We ordered two sides to share:

• Home Fries with Old Bay sea­son­ing, pep­pers, and onions.
• Corn­bread with sweet-pep­per jam. The wait­er warned us the corn­bread is made from scratch and might take a lit­tle while, but we said that’d be fine.

When they came, the por­tions were both of a good size. The home fries were hot and tasty with a good tex­ture. The ramekin of ketchup was sit­ting atop them; when­ev­er I see that, I hope some­body made sure to clean the bot­tom real­ly well.

The wait­er warned us that the iron skil­let hold­ing the corn­bread was very hot and we should be care­ful not to touch it. The bread was also quite hot, and had a nice crusty exte­ri­or. The inside was dry and crumbly. The sweet-pep­per jam was an excel­lent accom­pa­ni­ment, but the con­sis­ten­cy was more like a sauce than a jam.

Unless a shrimp dish is meant to be eat­en with fin­gers, there’s no point in leav­ing the tails on.

Soul restaurant’s corn­bread with sweet-pep­per jam.

Cindy’s main course

My wife ordered shrimp & grits from the “Lunch Stuff” sec­tion of the menu. The grits were good, as was the sauce. The andouille sausage were well-spiced, and the shrimp were nice­ly cooked. But we had two com­plaints about the dish: 1. There were only three shrimp on the plate, which seemed a bit miser­ly; and 2. They left the darn tails on the shrimp! That is one of my pet peeves (Cindy’s, too) — I’ve writ­ten about it before, and I’m sure I’ll do so again. Unless a shrimp dish is meant to be eat­en with fin­gers, there’s no point in leav­ing the tails on. They just make extra work for the din­er.

Shrimp & grits with andouille sausage and cre­ole sauce.

My main course

From the “Morn­ing Food” sec­tion of the menu, I ordered Eggs de la Soul. The menu describes it as scram­bled eggs with chunky bacon, grits, and grilled toast. The grits tast­ed great: per­fect­ly cooked, moist, soft, and fluffy; the scal­lions on top were a very nice touch. The thick chunks of bacon were great with both the grits and eggs. From the pho­to, you can see the toast is thin-slices of crusty baguette, nice­ly crisped.

Again, though, we had two com­plaints (yes, we share our food, so we can both taste what’s going on). 1. There was no but­ter or jam for the toast. Yes, you can eat it with some grits or eggs on it, but some pre­serves, apple but­ter, or some­thing else would have been nice to have; and 2. The grits, and espe­cial­ly the eggs, could both have used some salt and pep­per, but none was pro­vid­ed. When a restau­rant doesn’t put salt and pep­per out on its tables, it usu­al­ly means the Chef is so con­fi­dent in his/​her abil­i­ty to sea­son the food cor­rect­ly that you won’t need to add salt and pep­per. So, I fig­ured I’d try things as-pre­sent­ed.

A cou­ple of folks who were seat­ed near us after we were near­ly done with our meal told their wait­er they’d been there the day before. One of the first things they did was to order some but­ter, salt, and pep­per. In a lit­tle while, he showed-up with salt-and-pep­per shak­ers on a small tray, along with a ramekin of but­ter.

After my meal, I wish I’d asked for some salt and pep­per, too. I also should have asked for but­ter for my toast.

Eggs de la Soul, with grits, toast, and bacon.

Soul restaurant conclusion

Over­all, the food was quite tasty and well pre­pared. The var­i­ous nig­gles I point­ed out were not that big a deal, though I’d real­ly like to see clean­er floors, whether they were dirty from that morn­ing or the night before. As we left, Chef Dave Pow was chat­ting with some­one by the door, and he kind­ly held it for us as we depart­ed. We look for­ward to see­ing him and his food again. ♦

Fan­ci­ful ani­mal heads make for an inter­est­ing coat-rack in Soul restau­rant.