Leonard Copsey’s

*This restaurant is permanently closed*

Leonard Copsey’s more a seafood market than it is a restaurant; so if you have a nearby kitchen in which to cook hard-shell crabs, flounder, or shrimp, it’s a great place to shop. With the Chesapeake Bay just to the East and the Atlantic Ocean just a short hop over the Eastern Shore, Mechanicsville is in the heart of Mid-Atlantic seafood country, where the exalted culinary rituals include steaming crabs and shrimp with peppery spice mixtures, stuffing flounder with fresh crabmeat, and eating oysters by the dozen.

For those of us without someplace to cook, Leonard Copsey’s place is worth a stop for take-out food. Here you can get heaps of steamed hard crabs coated with hot spices and loaded with sweet-meat that is ready to be picked and plucked from within the shell. You can buy bushels of clams and oysters, ready to eat or to cook, and you can buy pints or quarts of excellent hot crab soup.

Virtually all of this food demands large quantities of beer; and lucky for hungry passers-by, Leonard Copsey’s place sells Bud and Bud Lite by the 6, 12, and 18-pack.