Restaurants in Ocean City

At Nage’s cozy dining room and wine bar, guests share small plates of truffle mac-n-cheese, mussels, and ricotta gnocchi paired with glasses of wine or specialty cocktails. The chefs use seasonal, local, and organic ingredients in their tapas and entrées, such as sirloin steak frites and Chesapeake crab cakes, making popular modern dishes with a tip of the hat to tradition. Exposed brick walls, low-hanging lights, and a chalkboard specials menu sets the scene at the eatery and wine bar. Nage features live acoustic music every Friday night, as well as weekly wine tastings and ladies’ nights on Wednesdays.

The culinary traditions and ingredients of Northern Italy inform many of the dishes at Floga Bistro. Chefs there scatter fennel sausage and prosciutto across regular and gluten-free pizza crusts bound for the rippling warmth of a hearth. They ladle spoonfuls of sun-dried tomatoes, wild mushrooms, and marsala wine cream sauce over tangles of thick, sunshine-hued pappardelle made in-house. With a sharp sizzle, panini presses shut on halved ciabatta rolls hiding rib-eye, caramelized onions, and fontina cheese like the backpack of a totally unprepared secret agent. In the cozy dining room, festive booths and stone accents surround diners, and paintings of cityscapes, flowers, and abstract prints dapple the sage and pumpkin walls.

Neither Henry nor Carol Huffman, the founders of Cheese Chalet, had any idea that their future careers would be in gourmet dairy products when they first married. Henry was teaching Spanish at the University of Delaware when their local cheese shop closed down in 1976. Though the two began joking about opening their own shop, jokes soon turned to discussion, discussion turned to planning, planning turned to knock-knock jokes, and within a few months, the pair officially opened their first shop. Today, with Henry and Carol still at the helm, their staff of seven seasoned employees prepares fresh deli-style takeout meals and catering trays as they maintain the store’s stock of bulk and prepackaged cheeses from around the world.

Under the watchful eye of owners Jose Perez and Yolanda Pineda, Mariachi Restaurant's culinary team builds homemade Mexican, Spanish, and Latin American cuisine from a catalogue of authentic and fusion-based recipes. The hearty dishes run the gamut from grilled chicken breast resting atop homemade durango sauce to charcoal-broiled pork marinated with imported Mayan spices that singe the true date of the apocalypse into the meat. Barkeeps man the restaurant's two watering holes, keeping fine wines and spirits flowing as feasts unfold in a dining room ornamented with white linens and paintings on the wall. Mariachis amble through semiprivate dining rooms to enliven soirees, and on the second-floor outdoor patio, guest sup alfresco overlooking the beach and boardwalk below.

Brothers Riyad, Ousamah, Bachar, and Haitham Albaroki draw from years of work at their family restaurant in Fez to transport diners to the Maghreb region with exotic banquets of Moroccan cuisine. The walls and floors set the scene with red, yellow, and green rugs and drapes, and stone vases and receptacles of polished brass evoke images of rustic North Africa. After washing their hands with fragrant rose water, diners take their seats amid a sea of cushions and, on weekends, troupes of dancers regaling the room with flowing movements and metronome impressions. Over the next two hours, guests work through seven courses, which they can complement with honey-drizzled pastries and flavorful wines from Europe, California, and Morocco.

With a menu of scratch-made meat and veggie dishes accented by colorful sauces and collar-heating Cajun spices, the culinary artists at Nora Lee’s French Quarter Bistro transport taste buds to the lively streets of New Orleans. Hunks of daily-baked bread soak up creamy crayfish bisque or chicken-sausage gumbo, and bacon-wrapped meatloaf made with ground fillet and andouille sausage tempts forks and knives.