Sparks (Hunt Valley) ★ 4.2
North of the city in horse country, Sparks holds The Milton Inn, a Foreman Wolf French fine-dining room in a 1740s stone house worth the drive.
More food day trips in Baltimore
Owings Mills ★ 4.0
Owings Mills, northwest of the city, is the home of Linwoods, Tom Devine's long-running New American fine-dining room and its pepper-crusted tenderloin salad.
Kent Island ★ 4.0
Kent Island, just over the Bay Bridge, is lined with waterfront crab decks where you crack steamed blue crabs with a view back across the Chesapeake.
Annapolis ★ 4.3
Annapolis pairs the Maryland capital's colonial waterfront with serious crab houses; cracking a dozen at a dock table is the canonical Chesapeake day out.
St. Michaels (Eastern Shore) ★ 4.2
St. Michaels on the Eastern Shore is a wooden-boat harbour town built for slow seafood lunches, with crab houses, oyster bars and waterfront dining.
Frederick ★ 4.1
Frederick anchors a day trip around the Voltaggio brothers' Wye Oak Tavern and a walkable historic centre of cafes, breweries and the carrol-creek canal.