For six decades, Phillips Crab House stood as a beloved institution in Ocean City, Maryland—an essential part of summer vacation traditions and seaside cuisine. Born in 1956, Brice and Shirley Phillips opened a humble crab shack at 21st Street and Philadelphia Avenue, using surplus crabs from their Hooper’s Island processing plant. What began as a small takeaway transformed over the years into an English Tudor‑style restaurant sprawling across an entire city block, boasting ten dining rooms, five full kitchens, and seating for up to 1,400 guests.
Old Time Elegance
The building’s interior was a whimsical wonder—a maze of mosaic lights, carousel horses, antiques, and even repurposed treadle‐sewing‐machine tables. Shirley oversaw a menu of Eastern Shore classics—crab cakes, crab soup, oyster dishes—based on family recipes and fresh Chesapeake crab meat. Brice’s steamers complemented Shirley’s elegant dishes, creating a blend of down‑home comfort and refined seafood.
Wide Spread Expansion
As the restaurant grew, so did the Phillips empire. They opened additional Ocean City locations—like the Bayside Cantina—and ventured beyond into Baltimore’s Harborplace in the 1980s, the Southwest Waterfront in D.C., and later travel plazas, casinos, and airports.
Friends, Family, Food
But perhaps the restaurant’s most profound legacy lies in the people who worked there. Seasonal employees—fondly called “Phillips boys and girls”—received not just jobs but mentorship and, often, onsite housing. Many college students found their first taste of independence here and returned summer after summer, ascending to bussers, servers, and even full‑time managers. The Phillipses treated their staff as extended family—Shirley addressing them warmly regardless of age, and Brice and Shirley’s own children growing up amid the hustle behind the lines
A Memorable Menu
Generations of vacationers recall the dessert bar, soft‑serve and seafood buffet—the upstairs Endless Crab Feast and prime rib—while the downstairs offered full crab‑house service. Family gatherings, first dates, college reunions, milestone celebrations—they all happened under that iconic roof.
In December 2021, after 66 seasons, the Phillips family announced the sale and permanent closure of the original location. The property carried millions of memories for locals and tourists alike, and the closure acknowledged the staff’s decades of dedication. Plans to convert the downtown site into housing—briefly transforming into Union Chesapeake Seafood House in 2022—were approved, removing even more traces of the brand: signage was scrubbed, and the building eventually became student housing for J1 workers.
Meanwhile, the “uptown” location—often called Bayside or Philly Avenue North—had already been torn down, a casualty of shifting tastes and changing real estate . By 2018, that branch had shuttered, leaving only the flagship until time caught up.
Today, Phillips Seafood continues elsewhere: in Baltimore, airports, casinos, and international markets. Yet no matter how far the brand stretches, its foundation remains a crab shack that became a family legacy, binding generations of workers and vacationers with memories of biscuits, steamed crabs, colorful dining rooms—and shared life lessons.
In Ocean City, the crab house is gone—but for many, its spirit lives on in stories of late‑night seafood feasts, summer love, staff traditions, and the infectious energy of a community-built restaurant. Those memories, and the people who created them, are what truly made Phillips Crab House a cornerstone of Maryland’s coastal cuisine and culture.
