21 Federal Street

21 Federal Street is a venerable institution, widely respected and loved on Nantucket, in a Greek Revival house on Federal St in downtown Nantucket. The is broken up nto many small dining rooms, each with 4-5 tables. The staff is well-trained and courteous.

While all the items are excellent, the menu is quite small. On the day we visited, there were 5 entrees and 6 appetizers and 4 salads to choose from. The entrees were Yellowfin tuna, halibut with risotto, roast chicken, lamb chps and aged steak. The chicken was $36, the steak $50 and the others about $43.

The appetizers were corn bisque with shrimp, portabella mushrooms, salt cod fritters, PEI mussels. foie gras and quail.

We chose the yellowfin tuna with cepes, the halibut, the mussels and a pear-beet salad. All were excellent.
The tuna was served with several types of mushrooms and a dark sauce. The halibut was served with a corn risotto. The ample bowl of mussels came with a rich garlic broth and the pear salad with a sort of ginger cookie and cream cheese.

To indicate the level of service here, the waitress stopped by about 2 minutes after the entree was delivered to ask how we like it. I said that I wished that the tuna were it little warmer. It was served quite rare and was barely warm. She whisked it away, warmed it (cooking it a bit more as well) and redelivered replated on a new plate with new garnishes in less than 3 minutes. Amazing thoughtful service!

Desserts were all $13. We chose a flourless red chocolate cake, and a pot du creme with cookies.
The rich cake was almost a mousse, and the pot du creme was just cold chocolate pudding, but it came with 4 pairs of unique cookies.

Quibbles: they only brought one roll and never came back. We had to ask for butter instead of the somewhat boring olive oil they provided. And the tea was brought as hot water in a pot along with 6-7 Tazo tea bags, only 2 of which actually contained real tea. Our biggest quibble was the noise level. One loud table can make these rooms quite noisy, and our was.

Dinner with 4 drinks and tax but before tip was $197.
An excellent evening.