I promise, no crab puns

If one is going to eat in Baltimore, one is advised to have their food involve crab in some way. This is a far superior what to get involved in the goings on than to just buy a shirt with a picture of a crab on it (no, really).

I had done a bit or research before the trip and had found a couple of places that were known to have excellent crabs. I picked one out at random, which was located about 10 minutes from the hotel, and which turned out to be the same place we went when we last visited as a family 6 or 8 years ago.

No matter, because I don't think we'd been out for this kind of food since then. This place is on the upscale side for a crab place, but it's still a brown paper on the table, mallets, and bucket for the shells setup. My companions had other ideas about what to eat, but I was getting your down and dirty hardshell crabs with the crab boil all over them. No king crab legs or any of that stuff.

When I lived in Philly back around 1980, our house (I shared a house with 5 other grad students and we sometimes did stuff as a group) would go to a place in Queen Village called Walt's King of Crabs, which I don't think exists anymore. We'd stand on a line outside for a half hour or so, then order up some crabs and cheap beer and have a good old time. Been to DiNardo's a few times too, but not recently. There's a whole thing to eating boiled crabs. They're messy and hard to eat, but the occasional rewards are wonderful.

While Ronnie and Celia dined on softshell crabs and steak and (crab)cake respectively, the waitress came along with a tray and dumped 6 big hot crabs in front of me. This was great fun for the others. They laughed at me and put on a little puppet show, but eventually I got to eating them.

If you've not done this before, eating crabs is its own thing. You pretty much have to rip the things apart, and smash the parts you can't rip with a wooden mallet. It's kind of barbaric, but strangely satisfying in a way that must be evolutionarily significant. There's some technique to it, but the general idea is to throw away the parts with no meat and then break the shells apart in a way that exposes the good stuff as easily as possible. I have no idea if this is a net gain or loss of calories. It seems to take a significant amount of energy relative to how much food you get, so it's important to have some cole slaw and french fries or onion rings to accompany it (I went for the rings, which were huge and excellent). And the best way to make sure that it's all done properly is to have some beer, cheap or otherwise, to wash it down.

It takes a pretty long time and is incomparably messy, but is very satisfying, and it was a nice way to spend the evening.