West Ocean City · the roundup
The West Ocean City crab crawl, drawbridge to harbor
Four heavyweights share three miles of mainland: a market that posts its crab price in public, a crab house on the working harbor and two feast rooms on Route 50. How to run them in one afternoon.
West Ocean City keeps four heavyweight crab houses inside about three miles, all before the drawbridge. Route 50 into Ocean City on an August Saturday is a parking lot. The smart crab eating happens on the mainland side of the bridge. One of the four is a market-restaurant on Route 611 that posts a crab price in public. Almost nobody else does that. One sits on the commercial fishing harbor. Two are all-you-can-eat rooms on the highway that have fed the bridge queue since the early 1980s. Run the crawl from the quiet end toward the bridge.
Start at the Shrimp Boat, 9724 Stephen Decatur Highway, where Route 611 splits off toward Assateague. It has been there since 1989, half restaurant and half seafood market. The board is the draw. The house specials page this week posts $1.99 male crabs with no limit, weekdays 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in season. The board does not state a size. These are not jumbos. Weekends swap in a posted mini feast at $34.99: six male crabs with a half pound of shrimp, corn and hush puppies. The regular menu carries a $54 blue crab boil built around three medium crabs. The market case claims boat-to-table sourcing. It stocks head-on shrimp the house calls the only ones in the area.
Second stop: Crab Alley at 9703 Golf Course Road, above the Ocean City Commercial Fishing Harbor. It has been a crab house since 1984. It has held this site since the 1994 boardwalk fire pushed it off 9th Street. This is the only deck of the four that looks at working trawlers instead of traffic. Steamers run at market price. The cream of crab soup has a following. The snow crab feast for two is the order reviewers return to most. If you walk one seafood market on the crawl, walk this one.
Third: Waterman's Seafood Co. at 12505 Ocean Gateway, on the corner of Keyser Point Road since 1982. It runs ten thousand square feet, two bars and a full market with carryout. The all-you-can-eat Original Feast is steamed crabs and steamed shrimp plus fried chicken, hush puppies and corn on the cob. No crab numbers are published online. Third-party menu listings from recent seasons put the feast in the high $40s per person. Confirm that figure by phone before counting on it.
Last comes Hooper's at 12913 Ocean Gateway, the foot of the drawbridge, family-owned since 1981. The house claims more than 13,000 crabs steamed a week in season. The feast adds fried chicken and hush puppies to the crabs and shrimp. Sneaky Pete's dock bar hangs over the water for the boat traffic. Every crab size on the menu reads market price. Call for today's numbers.
What the reviews actually say
The Google ratings sit in a tight band of 4.3 to 4.4 across roughly 9,000 pooled reviews. Crab Alley and the Shrimp Boat top it at 4.4. Hooper's and Crab Alley draw their praise for the water: the bay deck at one and the working harbor at the other. Reviewers describe Waterman's as the dependable family room, clean and friendly with a market counter. Reviewers praise the Shrimp Boat for freshness at low prices.
At the market-price houses the complaints are about the final bill, not the crabs. One Crab Alley review describes a feast for two expected at about $90 that came to $145. "Between 3 of us we spent $247.00," one Google reviewer at Hooper's wrote. At the Shrimp Boat the complaints run to fans instead of strong air conditioning and servers who skip the specials. Where prices float, ask the number before the tray hits the paper. Where they are posted, expect a warm room.
The one-afternoon version runs midweek. Eat males at the Shrimp Boat at lunch while the $1.99 board is live. Hit the market counter and a bowl of cream of crab at Crab Alley mid-afternoon. Then take the feast at Hooper's with the drawbridge going up behind you. Or carry out a dozen from Waterman's for tomorrow and eat it on the porch with nobody waiting for the table. It is the first of August and the crabs are heavy.
