Chesapeake Seafood & Prime Meats: A Bit of Surf and Turf on the Shore
Oysters! Salmon! Crabs! And steaks? Oh my! With an inventory rivaling that of any Mediterranean fish market, and just about as stunning, Chesapeake Seafood Market should satisfy anyone whose tastes lean toward the pescatarian. Spanish octopus, Portuguese sardines, South American shrimp with their heads still on lay alongside salmon from Denmark and Norway, Chesapeake Bay rockfish, Idaho trout, Northern Atlantic flounder, fluke and halibut, Florida grouper and Icelandic cod. Local oysters are shucked several days a week and sold in fresh pints, unprocessed, in their own juices, or still in the shell ready for consumption, or grilling. Fresh doesn’t come fresher unless you’re on the boat.
The quality of offerings at the year-old market is nothing new to the locals familiar with the Higgins family, original owners of the Crab Claw Restaurant in St. Michaels, Yesteryears in Easton and Annapolis, and the Salty Oyster in College Park. A long line of watermen, the Higgins’s have been a fixture on Maryland’s Eastern Shore for decades.
All the Higgins men were charter boat captains.
“My grandfather on my mom’s side was a fisherman on Tilghman Island, and the island’s plumber,” says owner Glenn Higgins. “My dad was raised in Nevitt on the Choptank, which was a waterman’s community. Dad enjoyed the restaurant business. He had his seafood market forty years ago and turned it into a bar.”
Glenn was always in the family business and still runs Chesapeake Seafood Caterers (yes, they cater too!). He operated the restaurant on the property and later leased out the space to others. After the final restaurant closed, the property sat vacant for several years. Glenn and his wife Linda, a former executive with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Microsoft, married in September of 2020 in a Maasai village in Kenya. Sharing a love of travel and wanting something more than fishing to fill their days, the couple decided on a project, opening Chesapeake Seafood in May 2021. With a keen eye for commerce and global connections, the couple sources their inventory from all over the world.
And now, they’ve expanded with the June 2022 opening of Chesapeake Prime Meats, which is no less a feast for the senses. The selection is both extensive and pretty, turning a quick trip to the butcher into a one-stop shop for a gathering for eight or a meal for two. Standbys like New York strips, rib eyes, pork, veal and lamb chops, and rotisserie chickens fill the cases, sharing space with more specialty items like Wagyu beef and wild boar short ribs. Cheeses, cold cuts (salamis and hams), homemade soups and salads, a few produce items, and wines are enough to help any at-home cook design a menu and fill a larder.
“Our dry aged beef has a big following but frankly everything is fairly popular,” says Linda Higgins. “We do have a few people that go crazy over the veal chops.”
With Italian olive oils in handmade and handprinted bottles, tins of caviar from the Caspian Sea and Picos de Pan (mini toasted baguettes) from Spain, the shop is a world away from your average fish monger. Dips and spreads all made from scratch and smoked scallops sourced from a small mom-and-pop operation in Boston lend a little wow factor to an already beautiful bit of real estate. A wagon of spice bins can turn any browser into a shopper, if only to try some of their in-house made blends and seasonings. Stay long enough, and a quick errand will give rise to an impromptu dinner party.
Glenn and Linda have their own commercial rockfishing licenses. When convenient, they slip out and catch rockfish and add them to the display case. For seafood lovers and anglers alike, it's the best kind of fishing where everything is the catch of the day. All the soups are made from Higgins family recipes dating back to the family’s early restaurant days. Homemade breads are available too.
“How will you be preparing that?” is often followed by a suggested recipe, or two. Customers are invited to make requests and the Higgins’s do their best to accommodate. Linda’s jumbo lump crab cakes are a big seller. Salmon remains the number one choice year-round and Mid-Atlantic blue crabs, of course, are the number one item in the summer months.
The couple decided to add stone crab claws, fresh from the Florida Keys, which have become one of their top selling items. Some customers joke they no longer need to book a flight to the Sunshine State during the winter months when they can enjoy the delicacy with Linda’s homemade mustard sauce without the airfare and cost of a hotel room.
“We want to keep it fresh. Keep things people like, keep it interesting.” says Linda.
The market offers one-stop shopping for a weekday at-home meal, an elegant dinner, a big family potluck — or sit back and have the Higgins’ team cater it all. Provisioning has never been so much fun, and so easy.
Chesapeake Seafood & Prime Meats
1216 South Talbot Street, St. Michaels, Maryland; (410) 745-5056; Facebook Instagram
