Between Father’s Day and the Juneteenth holiday, it has been an extremely busy weekend at Captain White’s Seafood, an iconic business in the D.C. region that is now located in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
The business moved to Maryland last year, after being on D.C.’s Southwest Waterfront for about 50 years.
Owner Sonny White said he was pleased to see that the new location was thriving over the holiday weekend.
“After 50 years of good service and good crabs, we have a lot of customers,” said White.
It was so busy on Monday that White had to call in extra employees to help out.
Dozens of people were in a line that stretched around the business, and when the line would shrink, more customers would pull into the parking lot.
“This is the first time we’ve been open on Juneteenth,” said White. “We weren’t really expecting it to be as strong as it is.”
Local customer Steven Benson was there Monday.
“When I came and looked I was like, ‘Oh my god, that’s a lot of people,'” Benson said.
But he was not really surprised by the large turnout.
“I’ve been knowing them for 30 years and I never had a bad experience with these guys,” Benson said.
Another loyal customer who has frequented the business for years, Zebora Johnson, said she expected the long line.
“I kind of knew it, because they have a sale on crabs today, plus it’s a holiday,” Johnson said.
Captain White’s Seafood filed a complaint in 2015, accusing the D.C. government and Wharf developer Hoffman-Madison Waterfront of conspiring to run them out of business, in part by closing Water Street, the primary access road leading to the business.
The District and the developer admitted that Water Street was an access point, but denied that they “entered into a conspiracy.”
In March 2021, a U.S. District judge ruled that Captain White’s leases in D.C. were void.
