From breakfast to late-night eats, try these 7 Ocean City restaurants

When you get to Ocean City, the hard part isn’t picking a place to grab a bite — the challenge is narrowing down your choices.

With dozens of restaurants along Coastal Highway’s 10 miles, from corporate chains to local bistros and mom-and-pop diners, let us help you track down a delicious meal, reliable service and prices that won’t bust your vacation budget.

Here are seven independent, locally owned eateries that are proven winners for both your belly and your wallet.

Sahara Cafe

• 1901 Baltimore Ave.

Consistency has been a winning formula at Sahara Cafe, one that owners Neela and Steve Robbins didn’t want to mess with in late 2019 when they acquired the diner.

Their wide-ranging menu covers all the breakfast basics plus a few fun standout offerings. Neela recommends a dish called Ray’s Perfect Storm, a breakfast sampler of two eggs, two slices of bacon, sausage and a slice of French toast. Reviewers give high marks, too, for the homemade sausage gravy and eggs Benedict.

Sahara delivers on a promise of speedy service — the food comes out so quickly that some online reviewers found it suspicious. Steve credits his kitchen team, who’ve worked together for years, for the efficient system.

The diner is attached to an old-school motel of the same name, where you can see pool guests toweling off from your window seat. If the dining area feels like a throwback, that’s because it is: The business just turned 40, and its wooden booths and chairs are authentically vintage.

“We’re not trying to do anything fancy,” Neela said. “But we like the simplicity — you know, it’s breakfast. You just wanna be simple.”

Buxy’s Salty Dog Saloon

• 2707 Philadelphia Ave.

Doug “Buxy” Buxbaum left western Pennsylvania in 1985, bound for Ocean City. He worked as a dishwasher, barback and bartender before opening his own place in 1999 at the old Salty Dog at 28th Street.

He added his name to the marquee and, over time, his own unmistakable Pittsburgh flair. Buxy’s is now the beach resort’s home for all things Steel City. It’s a true sports bar, where every Ravens-Steelers game feels like an event. He even embraced the saloon’s “dog” theme: kids meals come in a dog bowl.

There’s nowhere else in Ocean City to get pierogies like this. Buxy said his first distributor quit on him because they couldn’t keep up with demand. Now, he claims the title of the East Coast’s biggest seller of Mrs. T’s pierogies, which the kitchen tears through by the pallet.

In 2017, Buxy took over the adjacent Pizza Hut and connected the spaces to create Dry Dock 28, a giant space that can host bigger crowds, parties and live music.

The cheesesteak egg rolls, filled with chopped ribeye with a side of homemade cheese sauce for dipping, are a menu standout. Another fan favorite is the “Tiny Hiny” sandwich, with sauteed turkey, jalapeños, onion and American cheese.

“There’s a lot of choices in this town,” Buxy said. “Anybody can sell a cold Budweiser, but you gotta have the service, you gotta have the food.”

Sushi Cafe

• 13711 Coastal Highway

Calling this eatery intimate is an understatement. Owner Alex Sananikone said his original plan was only to offer carryout service, which still makes up the majority of his business. The 600-square-foot Sushi Cafe now squeezes in 18 seats, including a handful of stools overlooking an open-air prep kitchen the size of an office cubicle. Reservations are recommended.

One advantage of being so small: Ingredients are delivered fresh daily — by necessity.

“We really have to order our fish pretty much every day,” Sananikone said, “because we have about three refrigerators for the entire restaurant.”

Sananikone spent his career in the sushi business, having started at the venerable OC Wasabi after he graduated from high school. He opened Sushi Cafe in 2017.

He recommends the Cafe Shrimp appetizer — tempura-fried, butterflied shrimp topped with crab imperial and wasabi mayo. It offers two dozen different sushi rolls, like the sumptuous Yokozuna, featuring a combo of soft-shell crab, tuna and jumbo lump meat.

In a tight kitchen where elbows bump, it helps to have staff who are mostly family. Alex’s coworkers include his wife, his mom, an aunt and cousins.

“That’s why I think it works so well,” he said. “Everybody works hard for each other.”

Everest Kitchen

• 6301 Coastal Highway

Everest Kitchen is cooking up international cuisine you can’t find anywhere else in Ocean City.

Owner Iraj Pokharel, whose family is originally from Nepal, opened his doors July 27 beside the Route 90 bridge in what used to be a Jewish deli. Everest Kitchen offers a menu of scratch-made entrees featuring Nepalese, Indian and Tibetan food, with a little bit of Sichuan thrown in.

He recommends the butter chicken and tandoori shrimp, cooked on a 400-degree charcoal grill, with a homemade tandoori sauce. There’s also fresh-made naan.

Everest Kitchen is Pokharel’s second location in town, having started a carryout joint at a Second Street hole-in-the-wall in 2021. That location’s kitchen and menu are smaller, while the new location is larger and focuses on street food.

What sets Everest apart is its hours: It stays open until 4 a.m. to satisfy tourists’ late-night cravings.

“If you wanna come, you know, have some chicken masala or a chicken tandoori at 2 in the morning,” Pokharel said, “we’ll be open.”

Higgins Crab House

• 3102 Coastal Highway and 12801 Coastal Highway

Getting steamed crabs at Higgins is a resort tradition as meaningful for some as Boardwalk Fries and saltwater taffy. At both its uptown and downtown locations, Higgins offers those classic crab house vibes: tables with brown kraft paper over a red checked tablecloth and a roll of paper towels in a plastic bucket.

You can get any size crabs here, from small and medium all the way to super jumbo. Bushels of live crabs to go are also available. All of their crabs are locally caught and picked — no pasteurized meat from overseas, said John Oleksak, the 31st Street general manager.

Not into crabs? Higgins’ menu also has other standards, like kettle-cooked fried chicken, burgers and sandwiches. A fan favorite is the half-pound Crabby Burger, featuring cheese and a dollop of crab dip.

“It’s a meal,” Oleksak said. “You gotta bring your appetite for that one.”

The Hobbit

• 121 81st St.

The Hobbit is one of only a handful of true fine dining destination restaurants in Ocean City, with Michelin-inspired hospitality and service and a killer bayfront view. Reservations are required, but that doesn’t mean they take themselves too seriously, said owner Garvey Heiderman.

“I don’t want it to be stuffy, I want it to be very welcoming. Just because we have white tablecloths, it can’t be sterile,” Heiderman said. “We like to give a heavy pour and a heavy portion on the food.”

He recommends the low-country take on fried green tomatoes: beurre blanc sauce and panko-breaded fried greens with a scratch-made onion marmalade, topped with fresh-picked crabmeat. Other entree specialties — some of which hit the $50 and $60 mark — include duck, broiled crab cakes and filet mignon served three ways.

At the bar, try the “Luke’s Luxardo” Manhattan, made with Rittenhouse rye whiskey, Dolin rouge vermouth, and cherry and blood orange bitters.

Heidermans’ late father Tommy opened the restaurant in a converted house in 1977. The property eventually was razed to build the 10-story Rivendell condo building in 2008, with The Hobbit opening on the first floor.

By the way, Tolkien fans, don’t overthink it: The restaurant’s name was picked for its novelty, not for Middle Earth fandom.

Surfin’ Betty’s Burger Bar

• 1501 Philadelphia Ave. and 12701 Coastal Highway

Betty’s co-owner Vince Sapia says his burger bar is a “hybrid quick service” restaurant, where you can still get a 30-minute lunch, but there’s also table service and a full bar.

Food quality and premium ingredients are a priority. They use local pasture-raised prime beef for their burgers and a local grower for their organic grain-fed chicken.

Vince recommends the Black & Blue burger, with pickled red onion, gorgonzola and a balsamic drizzle. He also says to try the Shore Billy, a fried chicken sandwich seasoned with Old Bay and topped with a Chesapeake aioli.

Its first location opened in 2023 at 15th Street next to the fire station, which is probably why the place is now super popular with Ocean City’s public safety personnel. A new uptown location opened beside Northside Park at 127th Street this summer.

“We kind of wanted to be your typical corner spot — and it just took off,” Sapia said. “We never imagined it would be the success that it’s been.”

Vince named the restaurant for his late mother, Betty, the matriarch of an Ocean City restaurant family that has also operated DaVinci’s By The Sea on the boardwalk for four decades.

“Everybody always asks us, they’re like, ‘Did Betty surf?’ Well, let me tell you, Betty would’ve surfed if she could’ve kept her cigarette lit, you know? She didn’t even swim.