Why no love for a great crab cake in foodie venues?

Why is a great crab cake a largely a suburban restaurant thing? At least in the upper mid west. Assume its different on the east coast. I’m hoping most pure chef driven foodie restaurants askew them only because of the cost of making a truly great crab cakes is spendy if you use 90%+ real fresh LUMP carb meat in the cake as should be done. I’m hoping its not because the restaurant and its patrons turn up a nose at crab cakes. I’ll admit, crab cakes, to some degree, get a deservedly bad wrap because the majority of restaurants who make them, don’t actually use lump crab and if they do, they use it way too sparingly. Then just to kill the dish completely, they over bake it like a French fry. A crab cake should NOT be a; dried up, crispy, hockey puck. It should be moist and on the verge of falling apart. I’m a foodie and frequent the chefy places but when it comes to seafood, keep it simple and fresh and don’t skimp with crappy ingredients. So, is it because the cost of the ingredients are too high, they perish easily or is it just not cool to serve a great crab cake in a chef driven restaurant? I’d pay $18-$20 any day for a great crab cake done right over most scallop dishes.

From the consumer side - there are a lot of poorly made crab cakes. Other places charge $18-20 for a really small one. But I agree, a well done crab cake is a wonderful thing - and when I know a place does one well, I am all in.

The problem with most crab cakes is that they beat up the crab lumps so it is not recognizable in the cake. I had a recipe that used lump or jumbo lump with wonder white bread as the binder. The wonder white bread held it together to cook and more or less dissolved into the cake so all that was left were the crab lumps and other ingredients.

And then there is this one, a staple at every CLONYC dinner since CLONYC 12.
NYC North Square’s lobster and crab cake with seaweed-vegetable salad & Thai curry coconut sauce, deftly done and always a favorite.
yum.
crablobster.jpg

I feel the same about a nice crab salad sandwich on a croissant… I’ve yet to find any place in Portland that makes one, and for me there is simply no better summer lunch than one… Sad!

I generally avoid ordering crab out in the world, I think it’s a delicate flavor and most chefs over complicate the dishes such that you lose the flavor. Luckily it’s easy to buy and make crab at home.

Andrew is on to the cause, in my opinion. Crab is too delicate to get lost in a cake, so instead crab more often shows up in more elegant, cold preparations such as in a salad.

Also, I can’t see how a 2, 4 oz crab cakes could possibly be any less than $30 given good picked meat is at least $26/lb.

Take those two together and you can see how crab has gotten priced out of a sub optimal prep.

Following the crab theme, we regularly make Crab Rolls, similar to the New England Lobster roll. Jumbo lump crab, bit of diced celery, S/P, mayo and served in a butter grilled split top hot dog roll.

Legal Sea Foods rendition is mainly softly formed crab and mayo without a bread binder. Personally I love their version for its lightness and purity. Complete dinner with two lovely portions is less then $30and is available as a single cake appetizer.

Legals are surprisingly good. In general, once you have them on Baltimore, you are spoiled for life - only Baltimore (and DC) in general for me.

I also think that the further away you are from the source of really good, fresh crab meat, the more likely the crab is to be sub-optimal, which in turn is likely to lead to crab cakes that have too much filler.

Bruce

One pound of lump crab is good for about six decently sized crab cakes. So at what can $30/pound (retail) here far from any coastline, people may just decide the margin isn’t there unless the dish is priced high. Some places use backfin meat because it is cheaper. And, if handled delicately, backfin can work just fine. But I’d rather clean lump crab meat than backfin crab meat.

Shaws in Chicago used to do a pure lump crab cake with creme fraiche as the binder. No bread. It was fantastic.

that’s the le bec fin recipe. I can post if you like.

I like the idea of creme fraiche as a binder (instead of mayo). When I make them, I use sour cream.

The best I’ve had were at Jonathan’s The Rub in Houston. The place has had some “interesting” reviews throughout the years, but the crab cakes were stupendous. A solid BYOB spot when we were tired of the usual suspects closer to the center of town.

Yes please

I like crab cakes, had some good examples in a place near my old office in Brickell, Miami. Atlantic or something similar.

They don’t really exist in Europe, different crabs with smaller meat. It would be a shame to serve a European brown crab in that way imho.

OK. I’ll go through my cookbooks tonight. I have at least a dozen crab cake recipes I like but my favorites are Tom Douglas, Ray’s Boat house of Seattle, Andre Soltner of Lutece, and the aforementioned Le Bec Fin recipe by Georges Perrier.

To answer the OP: Crabs don’t live in the upper midwest, so I guess that’s why. On all three coasts, various species of crab are available live and fresh. Crab is a perfect food, when fresh caught, boiled, and cracked. Adding bread crumbs and mayonnaise, then frying fresh crab is an abomination. [cheers.gif]

Guys, I know Minneapolis St Paul is flyover country for some of you but we have an Intl airport, almost 4 million people in the metro area and get fresh fish flown in daily. I’m sure the coast has a slight edge on selection but I’m not sure we are a wasteland for good fresh product. I ate out at 3 different places in Baltimore last time I was there and never found a crab cake that equaled Oceanaire’s in Minneapolis.