Eastside Grill

The Restaurant

Eastside Grill opened on Strong Avenue in 1985 and has cooked uninterrupted ever since — long enough to be the answer for every Northampton birthday dinner, every group-of-eight company outing, every Smith College graduation when a grandparent says 'we can't go anywhere too fancy.' The dining room is a comfortable mix of dark wood booths and dressed white-cloth tables, with a separate bar room that runs a serious Sazerac and the only working oyster shucker in the Pioneer Valley. The room can absorb a party of fourteen without anyone else hearing a sound.

The cooking is creative American with a Cajun-Creole streak that reads like a New Orleans expat brought home to the Pioneer Valley: blackened ribeye with creole mustard butter, Cajun shrimp pasta with andouille, pan-seared salmon with corn and crawfish maque choux, grilled lamb chops with mint chimichurri, and a soft-shell crab special when the season is right in May and June. The grill output is the room's strength — steaks come out exactly to temperature, and the kitchen will char a porterhouse without requiring a special order. The wine list runs through a sensible American and South American selection at fair markups.

Service is the kind of professional warmth that comes from a staff that has worked together for years — servers know what the kitchen does best, what to skip on a slow night, and which wines pair properly with the heat in the Cajun dishes. Eastside is the Northampton room that takes a reservation a week ahead even on a Saturday in October, that handles a separate dessert with a candle without anyone announcing it, and that produces a competent, generous, well-made meal at a price that doesn't require a commemoration. Forty years and counting.