Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [42]
The restaurant, which is a family-friendly outfit with enough elbow room to host banquets and offer frequent weekend entertainment, claims “the best view on the Eastern Shore.” That’s hard to dispute, especially looking west at sunset, but it’s those superlative crab cakes that will keep us coming back.
Chick & Ruth’s Delly
165 Main St.
410–269–6737
Annapolis, Maryland
BLD | $
Chick & Ruth’s is a wild, fun place to eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a late-night snack. In the heart of old Annapolis, it is a Jewish-style (but not strictly kosher) deli that is so cramped that if you sit in one of the booths opposite the counter, you will be within inches of the person next to you. This is not the place to come for a quiet, private, or intimate conversation!
The menu is wide-ranging, from creamed chipped beef on toast to spiced steamed shrimp by the pound. At breakfast, you can have a bagel with lox, pancakes with a ham steak, or a seasoned crab omelet with a heap of Delly fried potatoes. At lunch, there are sandwiches, hot plates, foot-long dogs, and fantastic hamburgers ranging from two-ouncers to one-pounders. The homemade soup repertoire is grand, including matzoh ball, chicken noodle, French onion, Maryland crab (spicy!), and cream of crab.
Being near the District of Columbia, Chick & Ruth’s Delly has its own twist on the kosher-style restaurant theme of giving celebrity monikers to sandwiches. Here the house specialties have the names of politicians ranging from George W. Bush (turkey breast, lettuce, and tomato on whole wheat toast) to George Nutwell, the registrar of wills (turkey, bacon, lettuce, and tomato on rye toast). Big as regular sandwiches are, there is a whole separate section of the menu that boasts “The Biggest Sandwiches in Annapolis.” Someday we shall order a foot-and-a-half-long sub titled USS Annapolis, loaded with with hams, salamis, cheeses, lettuce, tomato, onions, and special Italian sauce.
Chubby’s Southern Style Barbeque
Route 15N at Old Frederick Rd.
301–447–3322
Emmitsburg, MD
LD | $$
A plain place in the beautiful countryside south of Gettysburg, Chubby’s has become a destination dining spot for lovers of barbecued pork. Smokemeister Tom Caulfield marinates and dry rubs ribs, cooking them low and slow until drippingly tender, then serving them with a choice of sauces that includes South Carolina mustard–style, North Carolina vinegar-pepper, and the most familiar, sweet-tangy tomato. Caulfield’s pulled pork is soft and smoky, and baked beans are liberally laced with shreds of it. Even the barbecued brisket is excellent, albeit more Texan than Southern.
The menu is broad and also includes non-barbecued daily specials. About five years ago Washington Redskins lineman Randy Thomas made pig-out history by consuming six pounds of Chubby’s food in less than an hour. His menu included a pound of brisket, two-and-a-half pounds of ribs, a pound of shrimp scampi, a pound of chili, three-quarters of a pound of crab dip, cheese-garlic toast, cheesecake, and pumpkin parfait. His beverage of choice was iced tea, of which he ingested a gallon.
Copsey’s
Route 5
301–884–4235
Mechanicsville, MD
LD | $$
Copsey’s is an all-purpose stop along Route 5: it is a liquor store, a raw seafood market, a take-out seafood shop, and a sit-down restaurant, as well as a place fishermen and friends hang around having a few tall cool ones and discussing whatever needs to be discussed. The primary attraction for those of us eating our way along the Western Shore is spiced, steamed, hard-shelled crabs, served by the dozen on tables covered with brown paper and outfitted with mallets and picks for getting at the crustaceans’ elusive meat.
Beyond whole Maryland crabs, Copsey’s is a source of big, plump crab cakes, pounds of you-peel-’em steamed shrimp (infused with the same peppery orange spice mix that is used on the crabs), and raw oysters by the dozen. It is a distinctly local kind of place, and we have observed that many of the regular patrons come to eat fried