Food Trek: Baltimore, MD

This particular trip has been on the back burner a long time. I don't mean for a few months or years, I'm talking about the more-than-a-decade-ago kind of long time. I've been to this city before, but this time marks the fulfillment of an offer made during my freshman year of college. That's when my wonderful roommate, AJ from North Baltimore (pronounced "Balmer") County, offered to take me to eat Maryland Blue Crabs someday. It seemed innocent at the time I'll admit, and truthfully I forgot about it for a while, but you better believe that when she mentioned it again this past year, I wasn't going to delay my introduction to these crabs any further. That someday is now, but let's check out a few of the notable bites before the main course.

First stop: Woodberry Kitchen, an all-star dinner with tasty fresh food, spectacular ambiance, and great company. Of particular note was their devotion to hyper-local Chesapeake ingredients, like seafood, and summer fruits and veggies. Plus their inspired teetotalers menu was one of the best I've seen anywhere.

Strawberry buttermilk and 

brown butter ice cream

Cloud 9 - Rosehips, chamomile, peppermint
ice tea, steamed milk, and honey

I love backyard fire pits!
Especially with a tasty reminder that no S'more themed 
cupcake/brownie/cookie/candy will ever top the unadulterated original.

Oregon Ridge Park just north of Baltimore:
A welcome opportunity to get outside and burn some calories 

Meet Rae.
She is the one who convinced me a few years ago 
that owning a dog could be a good thing.

Rita's Water Ice is definitely a Philly thing, but with a strong franchise system on the East Coast I had little doubt that it would taste good in Maryland. Of course, we did eat it twice in one day just to make sure.

Iconic sign in the Baltimore Harbor:
I bought over 100 pounds (!) of this stuff during my time on the East Coast.

The Inner Harbor Marina

Ok, bring on the crabs! 

Well, hello there.

First our host called ahead to prospective eateries to determine the supply and size of the crabs, and whether they were light or heavy. The larger the crab, the fewer you have to pick through to fulfill your appetite. Light or heavy refers to the fact that crabs outgrow their shell, and once they have formed a new one, they may not actually fill it completely up with muscle (and the unfilled space is just water weight). So two crabs can look the same size, feel the same weight alive, but once steamed, the heavy crab will clearly weigh more and contain more meat, and the light crab will now weigh less due to the water loss during the cooking process.

Large-sized heavy crabs. More meat, less work.

Opening a crab to eat is fairly straightforward at the start. You flip it over, there's a little tab or key-like structure (see white underbelly in bottom left of the photo above), and once you pry that up, it's pretty easy to expose the inside of the crab for picking and eating. The second part, dealing with the legs and claws, takes some real finesse that clearly I did not master during this meal. To cleanly expose the delicious meat in each leg, there's an ideal angle and specific tension required, that only repeat visits can calibrate. Alternatively, you can resort to the inelegant crab mallet (below) typically used just for the claws, to essentially brute force chisel your way in.

With great power comes great responsibility.

When it comes to taste, the crab meat is a sweat and tender reward, and it's refreshing to encounter it outside the usual crab preparations, like crab cakes and dip. It doesn't require much accompaniment, though the crabs are traditionally served with Old Bay seasoning, a local Baltimore spice blend created over 70 years ago. The spice mix contains celery salt, paprika, mustard, bay leaf, plus quite a few other ingredients, and it's pretty tasty. In fact, I think I might use it as a new popcorn topping.

Textbook technique demonstrated by our instructors.

Clearly it takes some effort, but as a person who makes a lot of food from scratch, I whole-heartedly embrace this sort of situation. However, even if you are the impatient type, or you don't like to get your hands dirty, the communal nature of this special occasion-type meal and the good eats will definitely make for a great time.

The aftermath.

I equate this meal with the following metaphor: You are a little kid standing at the edge of a giant ball pit thinking, "So, I'm supposed to just jump in and have fun?" You don't know exactly what to do, or how to do it. You aren't really sure what's in there, but it sure looks like a good time. With some encouragement, you take the plunge. Before you know it, you are having such a great time that you can't wipe the smile off your face (or all the Old Bay seasoning), and you are going at it like a veteran. Then all of a sudden, it's over, and you think "I was really hoping that would never end".

*Thanks to AJ, her husband Mark, and her wonderful family Bubbe, Zayde, Rhonda, Matt, Jason, and Rae for our wonderful weekend (we missed you Courtney)!

Check out my other recent food treks:

New York, NY

Cambridge, MA