Abners Crab House — Restaurant in Chesapeake Beach

Good Morning,

When arriving to celebrate one of my buddies 50th Birthday dinner on 07/20/20, there was initially a feeling of the lack of hospitality. With a party of twelve professional men/woman, we were never given the option of sitting inside, as we were advised that due to the “INFORMAL CELEBRATION” of which we simply wanted to indulge and enjoy some seafood, we would have to be seated outside in 95 plus degree weather, whereas fans would be available as a convenience. My thought exactly and I know what your thinking.... “ON A HUMID DAY WITH A HEAT INDEX OF 101 DEGREES” are you kidding me. My sentiments exactly. Immediate after advising my party that there was no way that I would be sitting outside, I advised and requested to sit inside where we could all follow all “social distancing protocols” relative to seating. After we were seated and roughly ten mins had gone by, we were approached by a (white female) of which believed was either the Manager and or Owner, where she began to gesture with her finger over her mouth in a sarcastic and child like way and advised that we “WOULD HAVE TO LOWER OUR VOICES”, mind you there are no other patrons and or customers in the seating area and as middle aged professional adult woman/men, we have the unequivocal right to speak amongst ourselves in a respectful and orderly fashion. After realizing what had just occurred and after speaking with some of my counterparts, I respectfully approached the older woman with all due professional courtesy/respect and advise that I along with my party took offense with the way in which she had come over to address “GROWN ADULTS” as if we were being chastised as children and to be frank I advised her that as a forty nine year old handsome African American man, husband of twenty one years, father of two adult sons/one teenaged daughter and honor society student, grandfather, and Public Safety Worker serving my great State of Maryland, I will never be subject to such disrespect, disregard, and lack of customer service when patronizing an establishment. I further more advised in all of my years and having traveled the world, I have never had an interaction such as this relative to respectful adults being told to “SHISH” and “YOUR GOING TO HAVE TO LOWERE YOUR VOICES”. Immediately after my brief advisement, I returned to our table where our orders were taken by a wonderful and awesome waiter by the name of Kaitlin (Caucasian Female). After everyone’s orders were taken, we began to get back to conversing and making an attempt to enjoy the evening when what we believe was another “Manager” had come out with what I’m assuming monitoring the eating area to a degree. Now one might ask well Mr. West that’s what the staff is supposed to do and if I may interject and say that working in Law Enforcement in the position of Crime Scene Technician, I think I would know when someone is being monitored and or looked at. Further more as a consummate consumer, I would definitely recognize inadequate customer service. After we concluded our meal and the bill(s) has arrived, we were notified by Kaitlin that she had observed the lack of etiquette, customer service, and unprofessional interaction with the Manager and or Owner coming over, that she was “DISGUSTED” with the way in which our party was approached and or made to feel unwelcome. After we paid for our meals, I along with another one of my counterparts (female), began to advise Kaitlin that she had done a wonderful job in rendering her expectation along service and there was no need to for her to be upset, where she advise that she wanted to “CRY” due to what she had observed/witnessed. Of course we had to tip her well and I along with another counterpart advise the staff at the register that Kaitlin was the best experience of the evening. I’ll conclude by saying this, relative to society and the climate at present, one would think that we would all attempt to put a “BEST FOOD FORWARD” in wanting to show and interact with more humility. “BIAS WILL NOT BE...

Restaurant was slow to open at lunch time; server was not able to attend to us right away even though we were the only ones there. I tried to order the cream of crab, but it was not finished being prepared. Ordered a beer and was told they had just run out (again, only ones in the restaurant), that I would have to wait for them to swap the keg. Ordered a salad and fish and chips instead of the soup.

The house salad was made with mesclun salad mix, and it was half rotted. Just looking at the salad I could see slimy lettuce. As I tried to eat around it, every bite turned up yet another piece and I gave up, having pulled half of the salad our of the bowl. Once the rest of our meal arrived, I asked the server if she could remove the salad from our bill.

We overheard another guest inquire about the corn on the cob missing from her meal. The server said it didn't come with it because they were out of corn, and it was only a little piece anyway. The other patron asked if she could have a piece of bread instead, since the menu listed corn on the cob. Ultimately the server brought it, but said she had to check with the kitchen first.

I was in the restroom when the bill came, but when I later asked if my salad had been removed from the bill, my husband said he didn't know, actually because the server appeared with an iPad, verbalized the total, and rang up his card at the table.

We're in still in the middle of a pandemic, and the service industry is struggling to maintain staffing. As someone who has worked in this industry, I completely empathize and am patient with longer wait times and the occasional missing menu item. I'm less understanding of the staff being ill prepared for service (a patron who came in after us was able to order the soup that was not available to me because it was finished cooking), and of a poor response to poorly prepared or poor quality food.

As for what we actually ate: the crabs were fresh and tasty. My fish and chips was positively dripping with oil, but hot. It came several minutes after the other entrees. I didn't try the salmon sliders, but my husband and daughter liked them.

Maybe we just caught this restaurant on a bad day. We're planning to return to the area soon but won't be...

Went around noon with a party of 13 or so, about half of the party got crab which reportedly tasted great.

Food: Overall no major voiced issues about the food but definitely some small misses here and there. My veggie burger came dry...very dry with just an old dry hard bread with the patty in between, slice of cheese, little bit of onion, little bit of jalapeño for an extra 50c each topping. No mayo, mustard, ketchup was offered when ordering nor after it was delivered and even though I waited probably 10 minutes or more for the waitress to return, she didn't come so I just ate it with some Cole slaw (originally came with fries which waitress heard wrong...).

Service: Waitress started off missing drink orders and we had to get her attention all the time if we needed anything. Restaurant was less than half capacity but they clearly need more staff and more detail oriented staff. Our table and others (different waitress) got orders wrong (my side was wrong, table beside us got another side wrong), didn't know who ordered what, forgot what drink was in her hand so we had to taste the soda to figure it out ourselves... Wait times for food was ridiculous...crab came in maybe 30 minutes or so (fine I guess) but for other food ordered at the same time was over an hour total wait. When I kindly asked if there's any estimate on when the food would be done (wanted to run an errand nearby and others could let me know when food arrived), waitress was rude and said they're working on it but there's no estimate on the time left.

Paying the bill: Apparently it was stated on the menu that they can't split checks more than 2 times for large parties. We missed that supposedly. They said they can split the total even with all 5 families but that's not what we wanted... Of course the tip was already included as other restaurants do for larger groups......