By SHANNON HOWELL

FOR THE FREE LANCE-STAR

The minute you sit down at Wilkerson's Seafood Restaurant, a waitress comes right up, brings you glasses of water and a basket of mouth-wateringly good, piping-hot hushpuppies; all of this before she even takes your drink order.

It's just one of the things that keeps me going back to the Colonial Beach landmark, operated by the Wilkerson family since 1946.

A quick 45-minute drive from downtown Fredericksburg, Wilkerson's sits on a low spit of land and has a wide view of the glorious Potomac. Getting out of the car, my feet crunched on sand and crushed up oyster shells, and, despite the cold temperature, summer and days on the water felt close at hand.

My husband and I went there on a Saturday night with our neighbors, Clay and Donna.

We started with an order of mini crab cakes ($9.95). The crab cakes are not made from lump crab, but were tasty. The tartar sauce was good; the homemade cocktail sauce, delicious.

The salad bar came with all our dinner entrees and had a really nice selection. The lettuce was all green and crispy, absolutely no icky white pieces. And I loved that the salad bar plates are colorful Fiesta ware.

Some of our favorites on the salad bar were the potato salad and slaw--both with just the right amount of mayo and seasoning--pickled beets and pickled watermelon rind (surprisingly good!).

I ordered my favorite dish there: fried oysters ($19.95). My helping of oysters was generous and the flavor, as always, was simply fantastic.

The breading is light and the oysters were little and popped with juice when I bit into them.

The side of baked potato was good, but my attention was on the oysters.

My husband ordered the all-you-can-eat steamed, spiced shrimp ($19.95) with steamed veggies. I'm not sure he touched the veggies because he was so busy peeling and eating the three plates of yummy shrimp he put away.

When he needed more shrimp, our waitress was very quick to bring it right out.

Plus, my husband has a drinking problem--he goes through a lot of water at a meal. The waitress brought out pitchers so we never ran out of water; a much-appreciated nice touch.