Why didn't he just get a Phillips crab cake sandwich for $14.99 and tell them "hold the bun"?

FOR LUNCH, yes, with the italics. But it's two crab cakes you get for the $28 price. Which I'm sure is pretty comparable with other restaurants in the Inner Harbor.

A very good suggestion. I don't know why the waiter didn't make it. EL

I don't know what the going rate for crab cakes is at the harbor, but $28 seems high - even for dinner to me. I'm pretty used to seeing 2 crab cakes and 2 sides for around $24 which isn't that much lower but still it's some difference.

The problem with the harbor is they kind of have you captive if you are non-native. Once there and finding parking and all that, once someone gets hungry they aren't going to want (or know how) to get out and find some place else.

I agree with you, EL that the waiter should have recommended the single crab cake or the crab cake sandwich for lunch. Especially since Phillips deals with so many out of towners on a regular basis.

Of course, he is the brother of a restaurant critic, so I should have given him some advice before letting him loose in the harbor. :-) EL

I'm gonna throw this out there, in regards to Crab Cakes. I think one of the best places you can get a Crab Cake in MD is not in the Inner Harbor. Friendly Farms and Corner Stable are in my top 5 for best crabcakes.
Now whether they use "all MD blue crab meat"... is another story. But than again 75% of Phillips is international crab meat.
That's just my opinion. I hate it when tourists are told the only place to go is Phillips, it's just very unfair.

Was Twilight a mistake or was it the 2 p.m. showing? We saw it last Friday and I was the oldest person there who wasn't a mom.

Maybe just me, but I thought the casting was great except for the male lead. Too creepy. Too much hair gel. EL

Maybe just me, but I thought the casting was great except for the male lead. Too creepy. Too much hair gel.

EL

I gotta agree with you. He's scary looking. And all of the young girls are CRAZY about him. I don't get it. I'm only 32, am I getting old?

I'm only 32, am I getting old?

Happens to all of us, Babe!

"am I getting old?" - as my 83 y.o. dad is fond of saying "it's better than the alternative!"

Happens to all of us, Babe!

Not me!

Speaking of a great crab cake, I nominate Mo's Seafood! The price is good and cheap and the hostess let's you sit whereever you want. Best of all the service is really slow so its a great place to kill time. Try it TODAY!
@%8()

I (the tourist) WASN'T "told" anything; I knew I was in a touristy area but needed a quick spur of the moment lunch. Anyhow the crab salad was quite good.

On a somewhat related note, I'm happy to report that Sal's Seafood in Broadway Market is back to only carrying real north American blue crab. None of the Venezualen (or worse, Asian) stuff.

You guys complaining about the price of crabcakes really don't want to know what I paid for a pound of jumbo lump from Florida.

$28 for 2 Indonesian Swimmer Crab Meat crab cakes - I think not.

Yes we do Hal!

The big thing down here now is the Apalachicola oysters, harvested just about an hour's drive from here.

I'm tempted to mail-order some crab cakes and there are several web sites offering them. There is one on the Eastern Shore called crabplace.com that only sells MD blue crab. But it says lump, not jumbo lump.

I went to see a 1pm showing of Twilight on Sat. There were others around my age ( I will be 30 on Saturday) without kids. I don't get why they all think he is cute. Though, I liked the book Edward more that movie Edward.

PCB Rob, the lump crabmeat tastes just as good as the jumbo lump, but it's harder to get all of the bits of shell out of it.

The jumbo lump I just bought was $28, and was from Florida. It should be cheaper down your way. Get Henry Hong's crabcake recipe from the City Paper website or somewhere and make your own.

I haven't made today's crabcakes yet, but I filched a piece of the crab meat, and it was very tasty indeed. When I start to flinch at the cost, I remind myself that I'll be getting four $7 crabcakes out of it, which is way cheaper than a restaurant.

That's ok, Hal. If it makes you feel any better, being ever the conspiracy theorist that I am, I think that the MD Blue crab meat you've been buying at other times is actually Florida, Louisianna or Tx anyway. And yes, the price is way high right now but you are right - way cheaper than restaurant crab cakes!

Hal,
Thanks for the info. There is a seafood market down the street from where I work, I'll get over there and see what they have.

They do steam shrimp there with Old Bay, but you have to tell them to go real heavy on the seasoning or else you only get a tiny sprinkle.

I've been told Publix will do the same, but I haven't tried theirs yet.

Bra1nchild, have you tried Publix' steamed shrimp?

have you tried Publix' steamed shrimp?

As it happens, I've had Publix' steamed shrimp. It was a couple of years ago, and from the Pt St Lucie store, but quite well done. We diidn't get Old Bay because the people I was visiting had never heard of it and I wasn't ready to lead them into yet another new experience that day.

OK, I was going to wait until next year's Crab Week, but it seems I need to start building my Baltimore street cred.

What I need is a good crab cake recipe. Very detailed, step-by-step. Not one that assumes I know how to make crab cakes and am just looking for an interesting variation. (However, let's assume I start with crab meat, not that I start by cutting off the face of a squirming crab.)

Thanks.

thanks Eve,
Next visit to Publix, I will try their shrimp. Too bad you didn't enlighten them to Old Bay....

Crabs don't squirm. They pinch.

Bucky, you'll be happy to know that crabcake recipes never start by cutting off the face of a squirming crab. You're probably thinking of soft crabs.

Here's a good treatise on crabcakes by Henry Hong in the City Paper (previously linked to by Elizabeth):

http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=15410

And here's a link to Henry's recipe:

http://citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=15411

Be careful with the recipe, as there are some editing errors (such as refrigerating the cakes, flipping halfway through, before the step where the cakes were actually formed).

I don't make mine exactly like Henry's, but it's a good base to start from.

Mr Bucky, while there are several (like a zillion trillion) crab cake recipes out there, if you got Old Bay, look on the side of the tin. The recipe is good and typical of local cooking. Two secrets: spread the crab on a couple of paper towels whilst looking for shell but do it very gently so you don't break-up the lumps. When you mix the crab into the wet ingredients, use both hands and fold together, again very gently, so as not to break-up the lumps.

Thanks to all. I'll do my best. (And yes, I did find Old Bay here in the western Baltimore suburb in which I live.)

Hal - that's a relief.

Bucky, I like the several variations that John Shields offers in his Chesapeake Bay Cookbook, including Senator Mikulski's and a version of Faidley's. (I've used the remoulade sauce from page 37 to great effect on many things.) A couple of years ago we tried each recipe over the course of a season, and the only one that wasn't well-appreciated was the blackened crabcake (I liked it, but was outvoted 3-1).

A pound of crab meat of any kind just doesn't cut it when all four of us are home. I will typically get a pound of either lump or jumbo from a seafood shop and a half pound of the other from Philip's shelf at Giant when it is on sale. (And sometimes I get an extra to put away for a couple of weeks.) I find that you need a little bit of the non-jumbo to hang on to the little bit of binder that I typically use.

My favorite crabcake season is coming up soon. I can pretty much count on the price of local meat coming down after Thanksgiving.

As an inveterate taster of crabcakes in foreign places when I'm on the road, it galls me that folks will try to charge $28.95 for "Maryland Style Crabcakes" that are 60% non-crab ingredients, and what crab is there is "Special" at best. (And if our Comptroller gets wind of this my travel expense account will be severely curtailed, I'm sure -- so let's just keep this between us!)

Oh, one more thing...avoid increasing the Old Bay amounts in recipes because you like spicy food. The salt in the Old Bay can make the crabcakes too salty if you do.

One of these days I'm going to get around to concocting my own Old Bay-style recipe, but without the salt so I can control that separately.

Hal and MD Canon - thanks for the tips.

Bucky,
As you can see, us MDers have some very specific ways to make crab cakes, and I am sure they are al excellent.

When you have them at your next party, or even if its just you and Mrs. Bucky, you will be the hit of the TBRS.

Cheers!

Hal, RtSO, and MD Canon, thanks as well for the tips. Gonna try to make my own as well using your tips.