Off the Eaten Path

I'd been holding off on Canton Dockside, because former tenant Canton's Pearls closed so quickly, making me worry the spot was another doomed location. But this new venture had plenty of customers when we arrived, and obviously had been busy all day: When we showed up at 5:30, we barely snagged the last dozen crabs in the house. At $39 a dozen, they were understandably small, but still sweet and heavy for their size. We sat on the restaurant's patio at a paper-coated picnic table with a nice harbor vista, enjoying a pitcher of beer ($9 for imported, $7 domestic) and a pound of fat, perfectly steamed shrimp ($17). We also tried a few less messy appetizers. Dockside's menu is a bit puzzling, with some traditional crabhouse items like a creamy crab dip ($11) sharing billing with more ambition fare, like Scallops Harvey Wallbanger ($12), which are pan-seared and served in a martini glass with vanilla butter and vodka-macerated oranges. If you're sitting outside, I'd stick with picnic-table-appropriate dishes.
If you're sitting inside—as a summer storm forced us to do midway through our meal—expect more cognitive dissonance. The room's décor reflects the all-things-to-all-people aesthetic of the menu. The elegant white globe lights and tilework from Pearls remain, but the walls have been covered in old-timey, sepia-toned murals, while sports balls now dangle between the globe lights; a stuffed swordfish oversees all. But the visual chaos does give the place a rakish cheerfulness, which is definitely augmented by the friendly young staff.
For main courses, we found the basics to be most reliable. A softshell sandwich ($12) featured a lightly battered, crisply fried crustacean; it was our own darn fault that we ordered it on a too-big roll instead of a couple slices of white. For sides, you can't go wrong with good, skins-on fries; the pasta salad, dotted with sun-dried tomatoes, is a fine if unexciting alternate, but avoid the fruit salad, which on our visit was past its prime. Ribs ($9 for a half rack) were tender but not all that flavorful; they came slathered in a sweet sauce.
Entrée salads really are entrée-sized here. We like the sirloin steak salad ($12), with cucumbers, grape tomatoes, and blue cheese dressing on crisp romaine, as well as "Cicero's Favorite" ($12), in which an unlikely combination—raspberry vinaigrette, sun-dried tomatoes, fresh peaches, blackened chicken, and blue cheese, among other ingredients—worked remarkably well. Both salads were a bit overdressed, though, so I'd recommend asking for the dressing on the side.
The day's desserts are on display in a revolving cake carousel; most aren't made in-house. We tried a marbled cheesecake and a key lime pie ($5 each); both were fine, but not exceptional. But who could mind, when we were all so full anyway? Those crabs were the only small things we ate all night.
Canton Dockside is a much less ambitious operation than Canton's Pearls was, and that seems to be working for them; the place was still packed when we left. I guess no matter how much a neighborhood gentrifies in Baltimore, its denizens will still want a friendly, casual spot where they can order up a round of beer and hardshells and celebrate what makes this part of the world so pleasant. And if they occasionally want a few seared scallops in a martini glass—well, Dockside's still got them covered.