Photos and story by Lisa Hinton-Valdrighi
Brunch at Reedville Market comes with crazy cocktails, whopping portions and delicious desserts
I’m ashamed to say it’d been quite a while since I made the drive from lower Lancaster County to Reedville to dine. In fact, the last time I’d visited 729 Main Street in the small fishing village it was called Tommy’s Restaurant.
So on a warm Sunday morning in June, my husband, Chris, and I ventured across the Wicomico River and down Northumberland Highway to brunch at Reedville Market on Main Street. Formerly Tommy’s, Reedville Market is so named because the building once served the village as a general store and even included a butcher shop.
On scenic Cockrell Creek, Reedville Market was purchased by the Nutt family in 2018 and underwent a major remodel during COVID-19 downtime in 2020. The restaurant now seats 200 with added seating in an enclosed porch, an expanded lounge area with countertop seating and full service bar and outdoor dining on a new deck. There’s even new lighting, new bar equipment and new kitchen equipment, including an oven direct from Italy, according to general manager Mike Zavalanski.
The restaurant is also offering a new summer dinner menu that includes crab legs and a surf-n-turf combo of filet mignon and lobster tail. And, although the dinner menu looked delicious, with its seafood, steak and chicken entrees, I was happy we chose brunch as our first outing to the market.
I love breakfast food. Can eat it all day, and a midmorning Sunday brunch is on my favorite things list. And no brunch is complete without a mimosa. The restaurant offered several, including a traditional orange-juice based mimosa, cranberry mimosa and lemonade mimosa. I chose a mimosa sunrise. Layered with grenadine, orange juice and champagne and flagged with an orange and cherry, it was as pretty as any rising sun.
My husband is a bit of Bloody Mary connoisseur and Reedville Market’s signature loaded Bloody Mary earned his praise. I believe Chris’ actual words were “craziest bloody I’ve ever seen.” The drink was a meal in a glass, topped with picks of bacon, olives, pickles, cheese, shrimp and two pieces of tender steak.
The breakfast offerings included several omelets—spinach, southwest and crab—along with traditional pancakes, French toast and waffles and eggs Benedict. I’m a country biscuits-and-gravy girl at heart and had heard that Reedville Market’s was among the best around. I instead opted to try something I’d never had before but always wanted to try, chicken and waffles. The already hearty offering came with a choice of bacon or sausage and toast, biscuit or English muffin and breakfast potatoes. There were two full plates of food, way more than I’d ever eat in one sitting. The fluffy, sweet waffle was topped with three large chicken tenders, crispy on the outside but fork tender and moist on the inside. The potatoes were sliced thin and sautéed with pieces of crispy bacon and onions. The homemade biscuit was filled with pieces of melted cheddar.
My husband, more a lunch guy after 11 a.m., made his selection from the sandwiches and lighter fare side of the menu. Although it claims to be lighter fare, there was nothing light—in terms of portion size—about his choice. The menu included a burger, reuben, French dip, crab cake sandwich and steak and cheese sub, along with three quesadilla offerings. He chose the crab quesadilla. Crabmeat and cheese, blended with the market’s homemade taco seasoning, filled a large flour tortilla, which was then covered with lump crab meat and homemade Pico de Gallo. Dipping sides of sour cream, cocktail sauce and tartar sauce offered flavor variety in every bite.
The dish came with a side of French fries or onion rings. He chose onion rings, which came overflowing on another dinner plate and were enough to share among three or more.
overlooking Cockrell Creek.
Although we both packed up about half of our meals to enjoy the next day, our waitress, Shenelle, tempted us with a variety of Chef Stacie’s homemade desserts. She suggested customer favorites, Key lime pie and bread pudding. Both were large portions. With the perfect sweet-to-pucker ratio, the Key lime filling was rich and creamy, piled thick atop a flaky graham cracker crust and garnished with slices of fresh lime and homemade whipped topping. The warm hunk—and I mean large, shareable hunk—of bread pudding came covered in and floating in a sweet sauce that was good enough to eat by itself. The decadent desserts were the perfect ending to brunch with a waterfront view that will bring me back to Reedville Market. And I definitely won’t wait so long between visits.
