Crabs

I’m not sure what the statute of limitations is on this, but I have a confession to make: I’ve stolen crabs before. Not just from the ocean, but from professional crabbers.

You see, I grew up on a river on the Chesapeake. In the summertime, crabtraps line the channels everywhere. You have to slalom inside and outside of them in an effort to make sure they don’t get caught up and tangled in the outboard.

Blue crabs are everywhere in the brine of the Lynnhaven, clinging on to the barnacles of salt-saturated docks. We dropped crabtraps out in our own special secret productive spots, and we’d drop chicken wings on strings and try to be stealth, plucking them from the muddy floor of the river four feet down. Once or twice, when we weren’t successful we’d take the shortcut and empty a single professional trap in our boats on the way in. Bad karma, and really rotten in retrospect. But you can just taste the Old Bay seasoning when you hear claws scraping on the bottom of a hot august aluminum boat.

Everytime I go home, the first place I want to go out to eat is Chick’s. My favorite used to be Bubba’s and their cheese bread appetizer, but it’s packed with tourists now and I developed an intolerance for lactose (and tourists). Chick’s is as close to authentic as you’re gonna get on the Lynnhaven. I guess that’s why it surprised me when my sister sent me the NYTimes profile on all of our favorite local joints.
Make sure click on the multimedia piece. It’s pretty much dead on.

Jimmies, the male blue crabs, have Washington monuments on their bellies. The females, sooks, have the capitol. In such proximity to the legend of the anatomy of these arthropods, it was only fitting that we recently feasted on crabs in the District.

Previously on the blog, OYSTERS.