Getting Crabby
My favorite place to eat blue crabs is at a creaking shack on the outskirts of one of those pathologically quaint Eastern Shore towns that sell teddy bears decked out in pink tights and tutus or cut-out wooden hearts painted with sayings like "Mommy's Little Angel." Eating crabs there sometimes feels like the only way to make these locales palatable.
But short of making that trek to the eastern side of the Chesapeake, I'm often lost for good crab houses closer to the D.C. area. Perhaps this dearth is due to catch limits placed on crabbers or because these joints are messy affairs that run counter to the button-down, stuffed-shirt self-importance of District dining. Whatever the reason, I'm often forced to get my blue-crab fix far outside the Beltway, like this weekend when my wife, Carrie, and I stopped at Captain Jerry's in Laurel.
Captain Jerry's (sometimes spelled "Cap't Jerry's" or even "Captain, Jerry's") isn't much to look at. It's a wooden A-frame structure—with the requisite nautical theme—on the outer fringes of a shopping center that blasts your nostrils with fish as soon as you walk in the door. But the joint serves up blue crabs right. You can get an unlimited supply of small jimmies for $25, and it comes with an equally unlimited supply of fries and hush puppies, which is good because those fried goodies turn either soggy or rock-hard as you devote your efforts to breaking apart shellfish.
But here's my thing about all-you-can-eat blue crab dining: It combines one of the worst traits of American dining (gut-busting gluttony) with one of best traits of European dining (long, leisurely meals). It's also distinctively primal: You have to tear apart one crustacean after another to get your fill. I understand how this brutality toward acquiring the flesh translates into a brutality toward seasoning and eating the flesh. But this blue-crab season, I'd like to lobby for a little restraint on dredging your shreds of sweet meat in clarified butter or Old Bay or a doctored-up white vinegar. (Yeah, yeah, I know it tastes good, but the tiny forkfuls of meat then smack only of butter, celery-and-spice, or hot vinegar.)
After all, would you drench Kobe beef in A-1 sauce? Didn't think so.
7:18 pm
Sigh.
Having grown up in the kind of place you describe in such scathing terms, I can only shake my head in pity. When I write home to describe DC I don't find it necessary to describe 14th or U Streets as "one of those pathologically hip boutique strips that sell poorly silk screened 'Che' onesies or ipod cases constructed from hotglued felt scraps. Getting drunk there sometimes is the only way to make these locales palatable."
I might have grown up in what William D. Schaefer so scornfully referred to as a s***house, but lord at least I have enough sense to reserve my contempt for people who have truly earned it. I understand that we all need to get paid and/or get our name out in this town, the s*** slinging market is competitive, but it'd be nice if bloggers at the WCP would take a bit of Elwood P. Dowd's advice from his mother: "My mother used to say to me, 'Elwood' -- she always called me Elwood -- 'Elwood, in this world you must be oh-so clever, or oh-so pleasant.' For years I was clever. I'd recommend pleasant -- and you may quote me."
Stick to crabs and leave the people on the Eastern Shore and their crafts alone, will you? Like being underemployed, underinsured, undereducated, underfunded, stomped all over by disdainful, condescending summer vactationers, and more recently, colonized by neocons like Rumsfeld and Cheney isn't bad enough, now they have to be insulted by FOOD BLOGGERS? If you don't have bigger fish to fry, you've got problems I can't help you with.
PS Good luck to you in your decision whether or not to have "a snot nosed screaming droolbag" and your quest to be treated with fitting deference by the customers of Balducci's, but I might point out that karma is a boomerang.
7:33 pm
Men are more likely to get a good amount of crabs over in Maryland.
8:24 pm
I love A1 sauce. Preferably slathering Kobe beef sliders at Barclay Prime.
8:52 pm
Hey Country Roads;
I'm not sure it's a crime--punishable by bad karma! (think I can buy a jar of Good Karma in St. Micheal's tied up with a pink ribbon stamped with prancing bunnies?--to dislike a how small American towns substitute their own rough-and-tumble histories for a sort of bogus Main Street USA selling a whitewashed image of Mayberry RFD to those naive enough to buy it. But I could be wrong. I could end up shoveling your shit in the next life.
11:05 am
It's not a crime to dislike how stay at home hipster moms staple two pieces of cloth together and call it a handbag, and the entire 'enterprise' a 'part time job', but you know what, I don't (usually) bother to trash them either. We all do our little thing.
Now you can make a big deal about it and call the jars of jam revisionist history, but you know what? It really isn't, because people actually do put up preserves. And I don't know if you've been down there lately, but it's kind of hard to make a living off the water and land anymore so we end up catering to the housewives of Bethesda who will find it all very precious. But don't worry, I'll tell my friends who are still trying to make it farming to make a special jar of chow chow for those of you who'd prefer to "keep it real", stamped with pictures of victims of shootings, lynchings, and typhoid. It'll be on the shelf marked "What To Buy For That Special Someone In Your Life Who Really Gets It. You know, the guy who ruins Christmas."
I'm saying a lot of this tongue in cheek, but I think sometimes you people forget that when you pack your bags and go home, we do continue to live and work on the Eastern Shore. It's not like after Labor Day we vanish into the mist like Brigadoon till folks from your side of the world start showing up again... and we are perfectly aware that it's not Mayberry. It's a real place just as much as DC is, though most people who see it from the perspective of the tour bus probably don't realize that. Having lived in both DC and on the Eastern Shore, I've tended to blame that on the laziness of tourists rather than the companies who cater to them though. When snow globes of the Washington Monument are filled with crack, I'll cede your point. But till then, people like to ENJOY themselves on vacation and maybe forget how troubled the world is... there is plenty of time for that at home.
But, maybe I'm wrong and the Eastern Shore should open up a slavery theme park.
11:36 am
Country Roads;
You seem to be mistaking an aside--an aside based on my own prejudices and preferences at that--for real social commentary, which I suspect I'm about as qualified as you in that area. I have no doubt I'd like many of the people who live on the Eastern Shore--maybe even you, despite your annoying way of purposely distorting commentary like some Republican campaign machinist--but I still don't have to like the image they're selling. It's pretty simple that.
By the way, you can have the last word if you'd like, which I suspect you do.
11:55 am
Your aside annoyed me! I don't have to feel any worse about commenting on it than you do for writing about it in the first place. I think I just wish for two things, 1) that people cut the Eastern Shore and its bad crafts some slack, and 2) that bloggers in general would write with (and it pains me to say this) a kinder, gentler sensibility rather than going with what's cheap and easy. I know that there's pressure to contribute a lot of material that is BOLD and INCISIVE and limited time to do it, but come on! Think of the people you're making fun of. Really. Don't you think you could have made your point with less condescension? Maybe not. It's definitely a common stylistic thing* these days, but I feel like it's more pervasive on the web than in print... yet another thing I'm not qualified to be the judge of I guess.
* I almost said "crutch" there, but figured that if being kinder and gentler is my vision for the future of the internet I should practice what I preach.
1:01 pm
growing up in virginia beach, some of my fondest memories were crabbing with my father off the lynnhaven pier. for hours upon hours, i'd make the rounds on the traps as my brother fished to his heart's content. with overcrabbing, pollution, or whatever, it's just not the same as it used to be... the days of walking off with a bushel or two are gone. but i love crab season like no other, and to fill the void, a dozen from the quarterdeck in arlington will do. i've done the all you can eat, and it's a disgrace to the crab. rather than pick it clean like it deserves, i discard the mush for the firm backfin meat and ignore the savory, thin leg meat all together because they're usually cooked with so much sodium my lips pucker at the thought.
my love for home abounds, but i'll be the first to admit the boardwalk is trash. the tourist wares are a sight sore on eyes and have nothing to do with the peace i find toe deep in sand with the ocean roaring to meet me. as a local i know the place to enjoy the ocean is above 42nd street, preferably above 60th street. and if a navy tender has just come ashore, forget going to the bars at all. i take criticism of va beach begrudgingly, but i can't deny the truth.
it's home to me and i smile at the thought, but i'm still grown enough to hear how others may see it. and in fact i like knowing there's a part only for the locals in an undeniably tourist town.