Best Crabs In Ocean City Maryland – A few years ago, Berlin, Maryland, and its neighbor Ocean City, voted America’s coolest city, served traditional East Coast food with local hospitality galore.
Compared to the Mayberry in the Runaway Bride movie, the historic center of Berlin has a variety of restaurants, shops, a brewery, a hotel and even a wine tasting, all within a few blocks. During the summer, you can cheer on the local establishments rushing down Main Street with tubs – trust me, it’s awesome! Everyone knows each other, and from the school bench. So, if you are somewhere and no one knows anyone, you are in a tourist trap.
Best Crabs In Ocean City Maryland
I’m lucky because my husband Mike’s family lives here and he went to high school here. I think we are almost locals with our favorite hangouts.
The Best Seafood Restaurant In Every State — Eat This Not That
It seems unusual for a small town that some restaurants boast about inventing certain drinks and/or dishes.
One such place is the Decatur Diner, famous for the Pipeline. This massive 5-pound log of eggs, potatoes, sausage, onions and cheese is only $10.99. It can literally feed a family of 4. But if you finish a whole book on your own, your name will appear on the wall. However, breakfast for us is just something that helps us wait until we get what we really want – crab!
From the moment we landed in Maryland (Baltimore), we have been craving crabs. Eating crab is one of the best things to do in Baltimore, and pretty much anywhere in Maryland, including the East Shore. What crab? Maryland blue crab, of course: crab cakes, soft shell crab and your favorite steamed crabs that you can eat as much as you like.
One of the family’s favorite places to get your first 2 drinks in one sitting is Harborside in Ocean City. Although it is the birthplace of the original Orange Crush – a drink now offered in almost every eatery and drink in the area – we come for the crab sandwich: crab cake, fried soft shell crab, bacon, cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion and mayonnaise – need I say more?
Ocean City Maryland Crab / Sticker
Right on the water with the window open, it’s hard to tell if you’re inside or outside, and the sunset sky can be quite picturesque. The staff can be playful if you take too long to order or simply because you are the only one who has never lived here. And when we feel playful, we go out to the pier and try to swing and hook to the pole – here life offers simple pleasures. One word of caution: the wooden slats on the floor are the perfect size for a credit card. Yes, it happened to us—well, Mike.
It is imperative that we visit both the Harborside and the place to eat crab at least once per visit. And it should be on everyone’s wish list!
Waterman or Hooper are usually on the agenda for the latter. Both of our nephews and Mike’s brother worked at one or both of these restaurants.
Our nephew Danny is particularly adept at arranging for us a seat on the rails by the water at Hooper’s Restaurant, which has a beautiful view of the bay.
Phillips Crab House In Ocean City Permanently Closes After 66 Years
We spend hours sifting through steamed crabs covered in Old Bay sauce, enjoying sweet corn on the cob, enjoying savory shrimp, and ignoring chicken that spills out on long tables (nothing against chicken—we just prefer crab stomach capacity).
I think the biggest adjustment Mike has had to make since moving to California is the lack of blue crab, so he makes sure it gets satiated whenever we’re in Maryland.
During the summer, young people from all over the world come to work in these bustling restaurants. Last time we played a guessing game at Waterman’s trying to figure out where our server is from – Romania!
Another of our favorite food activities is strolling along the Ocean City boardwalk for the famous Thrasher fries and Fisher’s popcorn.
Old Bay Screams Maryland. But Crab Houses Go With Different Spice
French fries may be the best in the world, at least according to my husband, and let me tell you, he ate his share of fries! If you need ketchup with french fries, forget it! They are served with malt vinegar.
As for popcorn, that’s my area of expertise. We once tasted the best caramel corn on the boardwalk and Fisher’s was the unanimous winner! Of course, every time we leave with a bad mood, but we always come back.
During our last visit for our nephew Matt’s wedding, the dessert for every meal was Maryland’s official dessert, Smith’s Island Cake. To our advantage – or perhaps to our detriment – Mike’s sister Teresa ordered too many cakes for the rehearsal dinner.
So, Smith Island cake was sometimes a dessert, and sometimes an appetizer – for any meal: breakfast, lunch or dinner. Seriously, I usually don’t even eat cake!
Ocean City Restaurants
If you want to visit Smith Island, it’s a quick 10-mile ferry ride from the Maryland mainland to where it sits in the Chesapeake Bay. Legend has it that women saw off their sailor husbands with thin cakes filled with fondant that lasted longer than buttercream. The cakes served as a reminder of the family and community left behind by the boatmen. The fudge version is now called “Original Chocolate” but we all voted Red Velvet as our favorite.
Lastly, it has nothing to do with food, but no visit to Ocean City or Berlin is complete without a visit to Assateague Island, which hopefully includes at least one wild pony sighting! It’s always a highlight with plenty of trails, great beaches (you can even drive 4 wheels on the beach) and wild life. Every year on Assateague Island, several people are injured by wild ponies, so if you see any, please stay away!
We always leave Berlin with tears in our eyes, knowing that it will be some time before we see family again. And there might be a couple of tears for the crabs too.
If you’re looking for some of the best blue crabs in Maryland, you’ve definitely come to the right place. Ocean City is known for its abundance of crab houses, where you can choose your meat and take a dip in Old Bay to your heart’s content, after the crab soup appetizer and, of course, before the crab cake main course. At Ocean City, we take our crabs seriously. Whether you’re dining or hanging out, check out the guide above before deciding which of the many crab houses you’ll head to for your vacation. Check out Ocean City’s Best results to see which restaurants have earned Best Crab awards year after year, and if you’ve had a particularly good experience at any of them, vote for your favorite in this year’s contest.
Grappling Crab Shack
BLU Crabhouse and Raw Bar is a family-run restaurant that combines familiar East Coast dishes with a unique eclectic flair. Some dishes on the menu include steam cooking Read more…
If you’re new to crab harvesting and are feeling stumped when your bushels of hard-shelled spiny crabs arrive, this video will show you how to get straight to the meat. There are males and females – most of the crabs you get will be males, or “jimmies” as they’re called here. If you’re “chicken neck” for your own crabs, it’s good to know the difference. Think of the Washington Monument and the US Capitol.
We have some great tips when it comes to hand line crabbing in OC, from basic preparation to choosing a spot on the water to mark out. However, the most important thing is to follow the laws and regulations of Maryland when it comes to catching crabs and leave only your footprints. We laid out some of the most basic rules when we documented our DIY crab fishing experience off the pier at Ocean Pines.
Choose the right clothes Wear tennis or swimming shoes rather than flip flops or go barefoot. Clothes are likely to get dirty, you can take that into account…
The Crab House
Maybe that’s not why you’re on this page, but they’re pretty cool anyway! You can’t eat them, and technically they aren’t even crabs, so if you pick up one of those bad guys when you’re exploring Ocean City’s waters, just toss it back in.
Horseshoe crabs: Approaching the beach near you! Habitat and History: Horseshoe crabs are not uncommon in Ocean City. Horseshoe crabs dating back 450 million years have been given…
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Traveling Stroller: Ocean City, Maryland
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