Bring us another dozen!

Yes, it's nearing the end of summer. And in Maryland that can mean only one thing - the peak of blue crab season. I realized that I didn't have any crabs yet this season (not even a crab cake) last week, and this definitely needed to be remedied. Luckily for me, while reading The DCist, I saw that the Washington Post published their Best Bets 2005 list. I had hit paydirt. Being new to the DC area, I had no idea where to go for good crabs - I know a couple of places in Baltimore. And though it's not outside of my nature to drive for good food, I wanted to find somewhere more local.

So here is this year's list of the top crab places. The fact the Phillips Seafood is on the list disturbed me a little. But I read the review for the Bethesda Crab House and decided - YES, we must go get crabs! So JS and I made a plan, reserved our crab feast for Friday at 7pm, and ventured off to find this Best Bet.

Well, this place was a little hard to find. First - Parking in Bethesda SUCKS. Be also, we originally thought we had passed it. We drove by a whole bunch of restaurants and thought that this place surely had to have been on that block. But no. We continued our way down Bethesda Avenue, and began to worry when we started to approach car dealerships... where the hell is this place? Well, situated at the end of a block of car dealerships and garages, was the crab house. Little, old bar like, faux paneled walls, newspaper on the tables, and absolutely packed. This was definitely the place.

JS and I ordered our crab feast - all you can eat "small" crabs, corn on the cob and slaw. The slaw was barely passable. The corn was perfect - Maryland being the home of the best white corn. And their "small" crabs were closer in size to the mediums, so all the better for us. I had heard it was a good season (last season was particularly excellent, so I was hoping for at least that much), but I wasn't prepared for just how good. We got our crabs, grabbed our mallets and started smashing.

By the end, I had consumed a nice round dozen along with 2 ears of corn and JS (more of a crab novice, but definitely getting the hang of it) had 9 with 4 ears of corn. We were stuffed and oh, so happy. So for any of my dear friend not in Maryland with easy access to these wonders of yumminess - come down and visit before the end of October (and that's really beginning to push it). We want to go back to the Crab House, and we want to bring friends!