Isabella's, Frederick, MD

42 Market St
Frederick, MD 21701
301-698-892

For a Google map, click here.

Frederick has become a great town to wander around. The building around the canal is just lovely, and we decided to have lunch at Isabella's, a Spanish tapas restaurant right in the center of town. It was perhaps a little unfortunate that we visited Isabella's just a week after going to Jaleo in Bethesda. The food here is certainly adequate to good, but we did leave feeling that is was not nearly as good as Jaleo. Click here for my comments on Jaleo.

We had fried asparagus in a tomato mayonnaise, which were a little greasy, and for around $6.00, it seemed that the profit margin was excessive. We also had a chorizo made of wild boar. It came on a bed of garlic mashed potato in a Rioja sauce, and it was delicious. The were obviously frozen and a little tasteless and chewy. The best dish was a shrimps in a very rich sauce of fava beens with calamaresjamon serrano, Spain's delicious equivalent of prosciutto. A dish of asparagus with crab was also a little greasy, and the crab was not especially tasty.

For dessert we shared a passable chocolate mousse pie surrounded by good fresh berries.

This restaurant serves sangria, but today was very hot so we had mineral water and a couple of beers from their excellent selection of draft beers.

I have had good food here before, and I will probably come back. This was, however, certainly not a special meal, and not nearly as good as Jaleo. The bill with plenty of food for three was about $56.00, and I added $10.00 in recognition of the friendly service with perhaps a few too many enquiries about whether we liked it.