Urban Discoveries Baltimore

Oh, Baltimore, there is so much we love about you. We love that you’re self-deprecating: Hon Fest, Jon Waters, all those “Greatest City in America” benches. (Oh, wait, that was serious?) We love that you’re unpretentious, unlike those folks down in the federal city to our south. But most of all, we love the food. Blue Moon Café, Golden West, Woodberry Kitchen, Thairish… we could go on and on.   But when it comes to Baltimore cuisine, well, there’s just no way of getting around crabs.  And we’re totally in love with that.

The Sun’s Dining at Large blog recently pointed us in the direction of two-dollar crabs Tuesday night down at Ryleigh’s Oyster in Federal Hill. We’re going to go out on a limb and say that sounds like a pretty good deal. Toss in the same deal on the same night at Riptide by the Bay’s in Fells Point and Tuesday night starts looking like crab night in this town.

The other option is to host your own crab feast… and why wouldn’t you want to do that?  You get to do ridiculous, Chesapeake-only things like buying crabs by the bushel and drinking Natty Boh. There are way too many crab shacks and places to buy crabs in the area to list—we’re partial to LP Steamers, but we haven’t come close to trying them all—so we’re glad that ABC2 News did a good job with their round-up. For the record, a bushel usually contains somewhere between 60 and 70 crabs, enough to feed 10 to 12 people, more if crab isn’t the only thing on the menu. We recommend having the party outside during the daytime; crab picking can be messy business for the inexperienced. The experienced, however, can compete for the title of Miss Baltimore Crabs, a title worth having.

Posted in: Baltimore User's Guide, Federal Hill, Fells PointNo Comments