The Restaurant
Isabella's Taverna & Tapas Bar opened in 2005 in a converted nineteenth-century brick storefront on North Market Street, halfway between the Square and East Patrick. The dining room - eighty seats inside, with a sidewalk patio that adds twenty-four more from April through October - keeps the original brick walls, exposed wood beams, and the long mahogany bar that runs the length of the south side. A wood-burning paella hearth in the back kitchen anchors the room visually and on the menu; the open layout means the entire dining floor watches the rice cooking through service.
The kitchen runs a Spanish tapas-and-paella programme built around classical Iberian technique with Mid-Atlantic sourcing. The tapas list runs about twenty-five plates: gambas al ajillo (head-on Maryland shrimp in garlic-olive oil); patatas bravas with a smoked-tomato aioli; the croquettes of jamon Iberico; chorizo a la sidra (cider-poached chorizo); pulpo a la gallega (octopus over potatoes with smoked paprika); albondigas in tomato-saffron; a salt-cod brandada with garlic toast; the Manchego-and-quince plate. The paella list carries three preparations - Valenciana with chicken and rabbit, mariscos with shrimp and mussels, and a vegetarian alcachofas with artichokes and white beans - each cooked from order in a thirty-minute service and served at the table in the carbon-steel pan.
The wine and sherry programme is the room's depth - a forty-label Spanish list with serious Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Albarino, and Tempranillo, and a six-flight sherry programme that runs from fino through Pedro Ximenez. The sangria - house-made in three colours from the bar - is the room's most-ordered drink, and the cocktail list integrates Spanish vermouth, gin tonics in the Spanish style, and the kalimotxo (red wine and cola, the Basque highball) for the late bar. Service is staff-driven and warm, and the room - louder and looser than the city's heritage taverns - has become Frederick's preferred address for the eight-to-sixteen-person team dinner, the casual birthday, and the long downtown lunch that runs into early afternoon.
Why This Is Frederick’s Team Dinner Pick
Isabella's is Frederick's group-dinner and team-dinner room because the tapas-and-paella format is engineered for it. A long table of ten or fifteen orders twenty-five small plates across the centre of the table; the kitchen sends them in waves rather than in courses; the conversation moves freely as the plates move; and no diner is ever locked into a single entree while the table moves at a different pace. The paella - cooked from order, served in the pan, carved and distributed by the captain - gives the table a shared centre that no plated entree can match. The price point - about thirty-five to sixty-five dollars a head with a glass of wine - lets a host build a generous evening without the conference-budget question. And the brick-walled, mahogany-bar setting tells visiting colleagues that this is downtown Frederick at its most characteristic.
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