Berlin · spotlight
Elliott's Seafood answers the phone five hours a day. That is the storefront
A takeout-only crab shack on Adkins Road runs the highest Google rating of any crab room between the bridge and the beach. The terms are the strictest.
Elliott's Seafood runs a 4.9 on Google, the best crab rating between the bridge and the beach. The terms are the strictest: takeout only, from 10922 Adkins Road outside Berlin. No dining room. No online ordering. No orders through Facebook and none left on voicemail. You call 410-641-5938 during an afternoon window that runs roughly 1 to 6. You talk to a person about what came in. Then you drive out and pick it up. The shop sits well off the beach routes.
That 4.9 spans about 156 reviews, a small sample. The famous rooms on Coastal Highway carry two and three thousand reviews and sit between 3.8 and 4.3. On one aggregator, 96 percent of Elliott's ratings are five stars. There is no view, no bar and no fried-chicken buffet here to offset a light crab.
The trade is steamed hard crabs by the dozen and the half-bushel. The house posts combination specials to its Facebook page. Over the past two seasons those boards have paired two dozen small and medium males with a pound of spiced shrimp. Those combinations ran 69 to 79 dollars. Half-bushel-and-shrimp combinations have run 99 up to 129 depending on the grade. A half-bushel of females with a pound of shrimp has gone for as little as 49. Prices move with the catch. That is why the phone call is mandatory.
What the reviews actually say
Reviewers describe crabs that arrive heavy, hot and seasoned with a sure hand. "Best crabs we've had in a long time," one Google reviewer wrote in April 2026. Another reviewer ordered two dozen males and shrimp and called them some of the best crabs they'd ever had. The same review praised the phone manner after a better-known competitor had brushed the buyer off.
The sharpest complaint on record is an October 2025 three-star review. It reads: "They were watery and not very full. Meat was not white. They looked like they might have been reheated." That is a late-season complaint about a product that varies by the day. It is the risk you accept buying crabs from anyone. The other complaints are practical. The window is short. The location is genuinely out of the way. If you do not reach a human, you do not have crabs tonight.
The prices are the best in the county for what you get. A family-size crab-and-shrimp spread under 80 dollars does not exist on Coastal Highway. A single all-you-can-eat seat there runs 62 before a drink. Go on a weekday. Call right at the top of the window, before the good grades sell through. Ask what the males are running and take the shrimp. Then eat at your own table on your own newspaper.
