Mina likes the crab hotpots in Chinatown on cold days. A favorite is the famous whole-roasted Dungeness crab paired with garlicky noodles at Thanh Long in the Outer Sunset. I've come to particularly admire how well Dungeness fits into the many Asian cuisines served in San Francisco restaurants. "Dungeness doesn't have the same sweetness or depth of flavor, but it takes on other flavors better than blue crab." At his San Francisco flagship, Michael Mina, he offers a salad of chilled Dungeness with avocado, persimmon, finger lime and orange-infused olive oil. "Dungeness is a lot more delicate than blue crab," Dunklin says, "so I tend to season it really lightly, serving butter alongside the legs or tossing the meat in a vinaigrette." I also loved the simplicity of the crab cocktail, with meaty hunks heaped into a glass dish and glossed with a bit of tomato-horseradish sauce. But the meat was surprisingly feathery and subtle. The Dungeness crabs were pudgy and round they looked like playground bullies compared with my lean Maryland swimmers. The cramped space and the bric-a-brac-lined walls reminded me of a Maryland hole-in-the-wall. I headed to a classic - Swan Oyster Depot. I'd just moved to San Francisco and knew I needed to embrace the local delicacy whose season - November through May - offers a clear Super Bowl advantage. Indeed, the blue crab gets subjected to a lot of wacky treatments in Baltimore, not just retro dishes like crab Imperial, a mayonnaise-glutted affair often used as a stuffing for local rockfish, but also crab fluff (essentially a giant savory fritter) and a pretzel slathered with crab dip, covered with cheese and broiled.Īfter a Baltimore upbringing, my first encounter with Dungeness crab seemed downright austere by comparison. He is from Louisiana and cooked in Dungeness-loving Seattle before becoming executive chef at Baltimore's B&O Restaurant. "Blue crab can hold up to a lot of different cooking processes and still retain its essential taste," says Thomas Dunklin, who knows his shellfish. It takes on other flavors well, but on its own is incredible." His Wit and Wisdom Tavern in Baltimore serves a commendable crab cake flanked by pickled vegetables and dressed up with hollandaise. "Jumbo lump, true Maryland crab is the pinnacle for crab cakes," says San Francisco chef Michael Mina, whose Mina Group operates two restaurants in Baltimore. (I suggest that visitors start with the weighty specimens at Faidley Seafood in the city's Lexington Market.) But there's little dispute, when comparing blue and Dungeness crabs, which one makes a better patty. Who makes the lumpiest crab cakes with the least amount of filler and the most precise seasoning is a subject of endless debate in Baltimore. He always ordered crab cakes and watched the rest of us build piles of picked-over carcasses and shells. My father, a native of the state, never warmed to this ritual.
DUNGENESS CRAB VS BLUE CRAB CRACK
We saved the claws for last, whacking them with the mallets just enough to crack the shell and unearth the dark, dense meat inside. We competed over who could extract the plumpest morsels.
DUNGENESS CRAB VS BLUE CRAB CRACKED
Next we cracked the body in two, scraped out the innards (Marylanders call it the "mustard") and went to work excavating the sweet, lumpy meat from the labyrinths of cartilage. Then we flipped the crab upside down to remove its "apron" underbelly, carefully plunging in the knife and pulling off the top shell. First we twisted off the claw and shells. Our server dumped the crabs, now russet-colored from cooking and crusted with Old Bay seasoning, onto the center of the table from a bucket, and my brother and I attacked. Our order was ready when we arrived, with a table lined with newspapers and set with wooden mallets and stubby knives. My mother would call ahead to reserve a dozen and a half jumbo crabs, the largest available, and they sold out fast. Prime East Coast crab season is the exact opposite of Dungeness - the months without an "R," May to August - so gorging on them is synonymous with summertime, and eating at a casual, bustling crab house is the quintessential hot weather meal. Callinectes sapidus - which translates from Latin as "beautiful, savory swimmer" - is found along the Atlantic coast from Nova Scotia to Argentina, but nowhere is it as highly prized as in the Chesapeake Bay, where blue crabs dwell in the shallow waters of tributaries and marshy estuaries.
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