The Terrace at The Charlotte Inn

The Restaurant

The Terrace occupies a converted Victorian carriage house at 27 South Summer Street in Edgartown's historic whaling district - one block off Main Street, three blocks from Edgartown Harbor's working ferry slip and the Edgartown Lighthouse promenade - and has held the seat as the island's only Relais and Chateaux property since The Charlotte Inn earned the credential. The dining room runs about sixty covers across a series of intimate Victorian parlors with original wide-plank hardwood, careful low-light through dinner service, working antique furnishings sourced from the inn's three-decade collection, period New England portraits and a deliberate carriage-house-with-enclosed-garden palette that reads as a working Relais and Chateaux destination rather than a generic seasonal inn restaurant. An enclosed garden terrace adds about twenty covers in the warmer months - string-lit, hedged, the most-photographed proposal setting on the island.

The kitchen runs the French-influenced fine-dining format the way the format ought to be run with deliberate Edgartown carriage-house discipline. The dining card pulls from the working classic French canon with deliberate New England-seasonal accents - Dover sole carefully filleted tableside, working pan-seared scallops sourced from the Vineyard fishing fleet, lamb chops finished with working herb-and-mustard crust, careful working seafood-tower openers from local oyster farms and working New England-pantry seasonal preparations from the inn's own gardens. The format reads as a working chef-driven French-influenced interpretation rather than a contemporary tasting card - a careful Relais and Chateaux dining card that respects the working hundred-and-fifty-year French canon while pulling deliberately from the working Vineyard pantry.

Service is the older school of Relais and Chateaux hospitality - career servers in formal whites, a working sommelier programme that runs deep on French Burgundy and Bordeaux with deliberate California and New England-friendly accents, a working bar programme that runs the classic-cocktail card with deliberate working seasonal-ingredient discipline, and a pace that treats a two-and-a-half-hour dinner as the format rather than the exception. The jacket-preferred dress code - loaner jackets are kept at the door for guests who arrive without - and the no-children-under-twelve policy keep the working evening register at the deliberate fine-dining level. The South Summer Street Edgartown address with the working Edgartown Harbor and Edgartown Lighthouse promenade three blocks away means a guest can walk the working historic-Edgartown grid before or after the dinner. For a Martha's Vineyard evening that needs to register as the island's working Relais and Chateaux credential, The Terrace is the answer.