For this week’s review, I decided to visit one of my favorite local watering holes. Located at 145 Mayo Road in Edgewater, MD, Waterman’s Tavern is a small restaurant in an unassuming building. Half liquore store, half restaurant, Waterman’s is a local secret. Great food at fantastic prices, it’s a place where the wait staff will know your name and have your drink ready for you upon entrance.

Waterman’s opened last summer, shortly before I moved down here. My roommates are huge fans of this place and convinced me to go one day. Needless to say, I’ve been going back ever since. In the past year that Waterman’s has been open, their menu has expanded to include more seafood items and their restaurant has recently expanded to include booth seating. When I frequent Waterman’s, I typically get a burger, which in this critic’s humble opinion is one of their top menu items. This time, I decided to order a cup of their Waterman’s Crab Soup and an order of their Maryland Crab Cake Sliders. 

Waterman's Crab Soup

First, let’s talk about the soup. For only $3.95 for a cup of soup, you can expect a large coffee mug filled with delicious, spicy tomato broth and fresh vegetables with oyster crackers served on the side. I had expected a small cup for the price and had thought they had mixed up my order and given me a bowl instead. Come to find out, they just serve large portions for reasonable prices.

Rustic in appearance and clearly homemade, the soup is filled with peas, corn, lima beans, carrots and onions. Backfin crab is also present in the soup (hence it’s name), but in all honesty although I could see pieces of the crab, the taste was missing. The soup had a great spicy heat to it, and this ended up being the dominating flavor. A nice aesthetic touch is the crab claw that is included in the soup. While this looks nice and is a fun presentation, here’s my issue: how do you expect me to eat the claw? With no mallet or other claw cracking devices provided to me, I simply couldn’t eat the claw and it sat there in my soup…taunting me. 

Maryland Crab Cake Sliders

Next up was my order of Maryland Crab Cake Sliders. The order comes with two sliders and a side of homemade potato chips. Made with jumbo lump crab meat, folded with house made imperial and pan seared golden brown, the cakes are then topped with a house made tartar, lettuce and tomato and nestled in between two butter toasted slider rolls. My initial thoughts were “wow, those are some small crab cakes.” I understand that the premise of sliders is to be a miniature version of the larger sandwich, but for $10.95 I was expecting them to be slightly bigger, a little fuller.

While small in appearance, the cakes were big on flavor. More meat and less filler, with a light citrus taste and fresh herbs throughout, the pan searing of the cakes gave them a great, crunchy crust. The buttery rolls were a nice complement to the cakes, although at times I felt the bread swallowed up the cake and left it nowhere to be found. The home made tartar provided a great creamy contrast to the crispness of the cake’s crust. While the outside of the crab cake was crunchy, the inside remained tender and moist.

  

Four Claws Decision:  

Waterman’s Crab Soup
Crab Meat Quality:
Taste:
Texture:
Value:
Overall: 

Maryland Crab Cake Sliders
Crab Meat Quality:
Taste:
Texture:
Value:
Overall:

I love Waterman’s Tavern. It’s comfy, it’s cozy and it’s where everybody knows your name. I just don’t completely love their crab soup and sliders. While they were good, they weren’t the best and I don’t think I’ll get either again. I certainly will be back to Waterman’s, but I think I’ll stick to my Sunday brunches and burgers from here on out.