The Chesapeake Seafood House was privately owned and served some of the best fresh seafood in town during the 1950's, 1960's and the early 1970's. It was so good that professional fishermen dined there because they knew that the quality of seafood being served was excellent and that their meal would be properly prepared as ordered.

I dined there numerous times as a kid because we were Catholic and it was routine for us to have seafood on Fridays and my dad, an avid fisherman, loved the food there. My aunt's boss, Herb Jones, owner of Jones Shutter Products, also loved the Chesapeake and he and his wife would take us there. He too, was a long-time (late 1920's onward) avid fisherman, and we would go out with him and others on his fishing boat on overnight weekend fishing trips, from Miami and later from his dock in Islamorada and really haul in the fish.

Unfortunately the New England Oyster House chain of mediocre seafood restaurants must have made the owners of the Chesapeake a financial offer that they couldn't refuse to take advantage of the Chesapeake's outstanding reputation. As predicted by many, the quality of seafood went dramatically downhill over time. Most of the old clientele of the Chesapeake ceased going there because they were used to the high quality and unique dishes prior to the restaurant's sale and they weren't going to pay good money for the mediocre meals common to the New England Oyster House's chain of restaurants. The New England Oyster House Chesapeake was one of the first locations, if not the very first, that the restaurant chain closed when they began floundering financially. Maybe the patrons of the other restaurants in the chain didn't know high quality seafood from mediocre seafood and allowed other stores in the chain to remove viable financially but all the former patrons of the Chesapeake sure knew and stopped going to the NW North River Drive location when there were other fine seafood restaurants serving high quality seafood in town.

Rest In Peace, old Chesapeake, you are a great memory of the old Miami that many of us still treasure.