Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [45]
Seaside Restaurant and Crab House
224 Crain Hwy. N
410–760–2200
Glen Burnie, MD
LD | $$
Beautiful crabs, especially big, come to the table stuck with a peppery, salty spice mix and too hot to handle. Grab your knife to pry away the outer shell, pick up the mallet to start pounding, and soon you will be rewarded with fat nuggets of the sweetest meat any crab ever delivered. Toss your shells into paper bags on the floor and hoist an ice cold beer to quench the thirst that spicy crabs inevitably provoke: this is a true finger-licking feast, a royal mess, and incomparably fun.
Beyond beautiful blue crabs, the Seaside Restaurant has a menu of other local specialties, well worth sampling, especially if crabmeat-extraction is too daunting a task (it is hard work!). There are beautiful broiled shrimp, scallops, and flounder, and zesty crab cakes, plus as good a crab soup as we’ve had anywhere along the Chesapeake Bay.
A busy place, especially on weekends. Expect to wait at mealtime.
St. Mary’s Landing
29935 Three Notch Rd.
301–884–3287
Charlotte Hall, MD
BLD | $$
St. Mary’s County stuffed ham is a seasonal dish, generally served between Thanksgiving and Easter, but you can get it year around at St. Mary’s Landing. It’s wonderful stuff: a corned ham packed with heaps of kale, cabbage, onions, and spice, served for breakfast on a plate with delicious potato cakes or for supper as a main course.
Lucky for us, they were out of stuffed ham one December night when we came for supper. That meant we discovered the kitchen’s marvelously crabby crab cakes, a plate of big, snapping-firm spiced boiled shrimp, and barbecued ribs that had a delicate crunch to their outermost edges and meat that slid right off the bone.
This is a fascinating restaurant, a serious tavern as well as an eatery, with a wall-mounted TV monitor that displays Keno numbers and a countdown to the next game. One morning when we arrived at 7:00 A.M., we were the first customers to take seats in the restaurant, but bar stools in the adjoining tap room were already occupied by ladies and gentlemen having shots and beers to start their day. Contrary to general principles of detecting good Roadfood, St. Mary’s County stuffed ham is almost always found in places where drinking and gambling are featured attractions.
Waterman’s Crab House
Sharp St. Wharf
410–639–2261
Rock Hall, MD
LD | $$
A big, breezy eatery with an al fresco deck overlooking Rock Hall Harbor and shuttle service for those who arrive by boat at one of the nearby marinas, Waterman’s is a good-time place. Live blues, rock, and 1950s oldies bands perform on weekends, and at dusk merrymakers gather at the 40-foot-long bar to savor cocktails, beer, and a spectacular sunset.
Tuesday and Thursday nights, customers come for an all-you-can-eat Chesapeake Bay crab feast, and that is probably the one meal a first-timer ought to have, but Waterman’s menu is broad and inviting. Other seafood temptations include crab soup served with a shot of sherry alongside, crusty-creamy crab cakes (fried or broiled), stuffed flounder, spiced steamed shrimp, soft-shell crabs, and a gorgeous broiled rockfish available with or without a side of crab imperial. Even fish-frowners will find plenty here: baby back ribs, prime rib, and Maryland fried chicken that the menu promises is “just like grandma’s.”
New Jersey
Charlie’s
18 S. Michigan Ave.
908–241–2627
Kenilworth, NJ
LD | $
While you can order what the menu calls a “push cart dog”—an ordinary street weenie on a blah roll with mundane condiments—Charlie’s raison d’être is its Italian hot dog: one or preferably a pair of deep-fried, crisp-skinned, bursting-with-flavor franks stuffed into a half-circle of what’s known hereabouts as pizza bread. It’s a sizable, hearth-baked round loaf that vaguely resembles a pita pocket with muscle. The bread is chewy, soulful, and absorbent,