Baltimore Crabcakes of the Gods

Faidley’s
Lexington Market
400 W. Lexington St.
Baltimore, MD




Crabcakes are almost always on the itinerary for most tourists who venture to Maryland.

And most of those tourists want to sample said crabcakes at some bucolic locale overlooking the beautiful Chesapeake Bay where the crab meat came from.

Two problems with this strategy:

1. Crab meat doesn’t come from the Chesapeake Bay anymore.

2. The best crabcakes in Maryland cannot be found at any of the many overpriced waterfront crab houses lining the Bay shoreline.

If you want the best crabcake in Maryland -- hell, if you want the best crabcake on Earth -- you have to come here, Lexington Market, where few tourists venture.

The typical suburban tourists with little white kids in tow might be intimidated by the throngs of loud obnoxious unemployed loiterers blocking the sidewalks leading up to Lexington Market.

But for a Suit in Strange Places? It’s just another day on the road.

I was completely oblivious to all the shouting, screaming, jostling masses of urban Baltimore humanity and rap music all around me.

As one of the few tourists within a four block radius, I felt sorry for all those out-of-towners traipsing around the Inner Harbor five blocks south in a futile search for the quintessential Maryland crabcake.

I mean, other than the aquarium and the Babe Ruth Museum, Baltimore isn’t exactly a tourist Mecca anyway.

A trek to Lexington Market would be more enlightening -- and much more delicious.

For 234 years Lexington Market has been the place for natives of downtown Baltimore to come for everything from fresh produce to fresh raccoon meat.

But the most prominent vendor at the market is Faidley’s, a relative newcomer, having just arrived at the market 128 years ago.

Justifiably famous for its delicious lump crabcakes, Faidley’s is a holdover from the days when the nearby Chesapeake Bay teamed with blue crabs.

Now days your crab meat is more likely to come from the South Atlantic or Gulf coasts.

Like every other entrepreneur with any sense, the blue crabs have fled the union boss-dominated, high tax Leftist utopia of Maryland for friendly climates in Florida, Louisiana and Texas.

The crabs might now be imported from Right to Work states, but the folks here at Faidley’s haven’t forgotten how to construct a hell of a crabcake.

At $13 each, they aren’t exactly cheap eating, but trust me, the crabcakes will be worth every penny.

If you really want a discount, you can get a backfin crabcake for four bucks less, but I don’t recommend going cheap in this instance.

The lump crabcakes feature moist nuggets of luscious crab clinging together by a very light mixture of mayonnaise, mustard and breading.

With just the slightest touch of my plastic fork, the crab crumbled into luxurious tender lumps of delicious crab meat.

This is everything a crabcake should be.

In comparison, the creamy crab soup and fried onion rings were just ordinary.

And unfortunately, there is no waterfront view.

You have to stand in line to order, then stand in line to pay, then stand up at the communal raised tables to eat.

But it is not like eating crabcakes of the gods in the chaos of Lexington Market lacks charm.

Amid the hustle and bustle and displays of fresh fish and oysters, stand up dining at Faidley’s is a one-of-a-kind urban experience.

Just don’t forget to cap off your Lexington Market experience with Baltimore’s second most famous culinary attraction -- a Berger Cookie from Berger’s Bakery.

Both the bakery -- and its famous namesake cookie covered in a thick spread of chocolate frosting -- are Baltimore institutions.

I was glad I got to enjoy my Berger Cookie while it was still legal.

Apparently people in Baltimore are too stupid to realize that fudge covered shortbread is not health food, so the Obama Administration has proposed new regulations that would make Berger Cookies illegal.

Our Nanny State Dictator-in-Chief is now telling me what kind of cookie I can eat??

Well, eating the cookies won’t technically be illegal, but making them will be.

Proposed FDA regulations will ban the use of so called “transfats” which just happen to make the fudge in the famous cookies so delicious.

Charles DeBaufre, Jr., owner of Berger Bakery, says he’s tried tinkering with the century old recipe to comply with the proposed law change but can’t make them taste as good. So he’s threatened to shut the bakery down for good.

Thus a Baltimore icon just as important as Old Bay seasoning and Cal Ripken, Jr. could be banished to the dustbin of history just because our federal government thinks it knows better than we do what kind of food we should put in our mouth.

It’s only a matter of time now before the NSA shuts down this whole damn website.

Suit757 will be given a choice: go on a steady diet of carrot sticks and tofu or be sentenced for life to a FEMA Camp in Detroit.

Well, all I can say is, the Feds better come locked and loaded because they’ll have to pry my Berger Cookie from my cold, dead, chocolate stained fingers.

Rating: Bought the Shirt!

Georgia Coasting

Skipper’s Fish Camp
85 Screven St.
Darien, GA




“Guys, it just doesn’t get any better than this.”

Remember that iconic Old Milwaukee television commercial -- all the dudes sitting around a campfire on the beach, sun setting into the lake, knocking back cold ones?

Yeah. That’s what I was thinking to myself on this sunny spring afternoon as I sipped my ice cold Sweetwater 420 sitting on the back deck at Skipper’s Fish Camp.

Sun shining down, a cool breeze blowing off the Darien River, shrimp boats motoring by and Charlie Daniels and Hank Williams, Jr. on the outdoor sound system.

Ahhh, yeah.

It just doesn’t get any better than this.

Other than the Outlaw Country soundtrack, the only other sounds are the cries of the sea gulls and the
locals at the table next to me calling out their “hey y’alls” to the shrimpers who just tied up to the pilings across the salt marsh.

Darien, Georgia is a fleeting little coastal town, one of the few remaining still genuinely tied to the bounties of the surrounding waters.

The one block downtown consists of four or five buildings.

Just downhill toward the water’s edge lies Skipper’s and a row of shrimp boats -- an increasingly rare sight on the southeastern coastline.

Cold hard economics makes it difficult to cling to this fading, salty way of life.

With diesel at four bucks per gallon, it can cost several hundred dollars to fill a shrimp boat’s fuel tank for a day of trawling the coastal waters.

Even at the $11 per pound going retail rate for local jumbo shrimp, it’s hard to eke out much of a profit.

Worse yet, folks can go to the local Piggly Wiggly and buy shrimp for $3-$4 per pound.

Of course that bargain shrimp doesn’t come from the Darien River. It comes from a shrimp farm in Thailand.

Can you taste the difference?

Absolutely.

No comparison.

Local Georgia shrimp are firmer and sweeter.

Besides, seafood is supposed to come from the sea -- not some Third World farm on the other side of the planet where masses of frankenshrimp swim in their own waste.

But don’t worry about the health consequences of such shrimp factories. The fish food the shrimp are fed is spiked with mass amounts of anti-biotics -- so you won’t get sick.

Some Department of Agriculture bureaucrat would probably try to convince me this is “progress”.

No thanks.

Give me a plate of shrimp that came right out of the deep blue sea in front of me.

That’s what you get at Skipper’s Fish Camp where your meal probably came right off one of the boats docked out back.

A favorite way to enjoy local wild-caught shrimp here in the Low Country is shrimp and grits.

Skipper’s version piles a whole mess of shrimp in a bowl of cheese grits topped with smoky bacon.

I got my local shrimp blackened with a crab cake combo.

With a light peppery seasoning, my shrimp had a nice skillet char on the outside while remaining succulent and tender on the inside.

My crab cake was a Low Country version typical of this part of the coast.

Around the Chesapeake Bay, crab cakes tend to be baseball shaped mounds of moist crab meat faintly held together by mayonnaise and a few traces of bread crumbs.

They do crab cakes a bit differently down here.

Skipper’s crab cake was flattened rather than round, with more seasoning, less mayo and a nice dark crust from the skillet.

I’m not going to start any fist fights over which version I like better, but let’s just say any open-minded “when in Rome” crab cake connoisseur won’t be disappointed at Skipper’s.

Skipper’s sides were a highlight rather than an afterthought.

Collard greens chockfull of pork fat.

Sweet potato casserole mixed up with lots of pecans and brown sugar.

And top notch homemade onion rings. The batter compliments rather than overshadows the thick, sweet, juicy rings of local Vidalia onion.

Of course no trip to Coastal Georgia is complete without sampling some local alligator.

Skipper’s gator bites back as the tender greasy meat is deep fried and then tossed in a fiery hot buffalo sauce.

I had to order several pints of Georgia’s favorite craft brew, Sweetwater 420, to douse the flames.

Yep. Had to.

Drinking beer in the sun on a Wednesday afternoon. Local shrimp, crab and gator.

Nope. It doesn’t get much better.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt.

Pabst Blue Ribbon, Scrapple and the Downfall of NASCAR

Countrie Eatery
950 North State St.
Dover, DE




This was almost the year I said, “Forget it.”

Almost.

Like a battered wife with low self esteem, I keep coming back for more.

I’ve been making the trek up the Eastern Shore for a decade now to sit in the June sun, drink beer and watch the spring NASCAR race at the Dover International Speedway.

But this was the year I had decided I’d had enough.

Enough of the political correctness, boring races and reality TV hosts who pass as modern day racers.

But in the end it was my Dover pre-race ritual and visions of those twin Delmarva Peninsula specialties of scrapple and crab cakes that prodded me to bite the bullet and renew my tickets for 2012.

That, and the fact that Dover was offering the tickets for HALF PRICE this year in a desperate attempt to fill all the empty seats at Dover Downs.

I’m an old school NASCAR fan. To prove it, I wore my two decade old Alan Kulwicki 1992 Hooters Winston Cup Championship t-shirt this year.

I’ve been following NASCAR since I was a kid in the good ol’ days back in the mid eighties.

Back when Earnhardt still drove the Wrangler Jeans car and Terry Labonte won the Winston Cup Championship in a car sponsored by Piedmont Airlines.

Back when the drivers were good ol’ Southern boys more interested in banging fenders and winning races than hawking insurance and Disney movies on TV before jetting off to their Manhattan penthouses.

Back when NASCAR raced on fun door-handle-to-door-handle tracks across the South like Rockingham, Hickory, Wilkesboro and South Boston.

Back when the sponsor of the series was a cigarette, the best drivers had a Southern drawl and the winner got to make out with the trophy girl in Victory Lane.

The good ol’ days.

My first race was at Martinsville. On the backstretch in chicken bone alley. For thirty bucks, you could claim any piece of concrete twenty feet behind the catch fence.

After a day of racing, one half of my face would be burnt red from the sun and the other coated black in tire rubber and brake dust, ears ringing for days.

It took a certain amount of open mindedness and courage to venture north into enemy territory past the Dixieland landmark “The South Ends Here” sign on US 13 to watch a race at Dover.

During the sport’s heyday in the 90s, the fun of watching rough and tumble drivers bang and bump around the race track caught on across the country.

Even a few open minded Yankees took notice.

Dover’s stands began to fill with newly converted race fans from the big cities like Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia -- even New York City.

Granted, it’s an eclectic mix.

But even the Yankees seemed to appreciate what made NASCAR special.

The first time I took my fellow redneck, Suit69, to a race at Dover, I tried to prepare him for the probability of being surrounded by Yankee race fans.

“They talk funny, but they at least try to fit in,” I explained. “They may not own a gaudy Dale Earnhardt Intimidator Seven Time Champion shirt, but they know enough to show up in whatever ratty old t-shirt they can pull out of the back of their Manhattan loft closet.”

“And they drink American beer like everyone else. These aren’t the Heineken-drinkin’ Yankees Pat Green sings about”, I assured him.

What happened after we took our seats that day in Dover should have been all the indication I needed of the coming collapse of the sport.

Sure enough, we were suddenly surrounded by New York City government union workers wearing NYPD t-shirts and bandanas. No sooner did they start yelling in a thick Chuck Schumer accent to hand them a beer, than the guy with the cooler and the union brotherhood t-shirt starts passing out cans of Heineken.

Suit69 just stared at me dumbfounded.

“I’m sorry,” is all I could muster.

I should have canceled my season tickets on the spot.

But I didn’t.

NASCAR should send a thank you note to the Countrie Eatery less than a mile south of the Dover track.

Because whenever I think about how boring the races at Dover have become, I keep coming back to the fun of my pre-Dover ritual.

There’s just something exciting about lining your stomach with chopped up pig parts and crab meat before a long day of sitting in the sun and drinking massive quantities of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Call it tradition.

I call it the best part of race day.

“The Little Creek and a side of scrapple.” When my waitress appeared, I didn’t even need to look at the menu.

The Little Creek is two poached eggs over a Chesapeake Bay crab cake and an English muffin, smothered in hollandaise sauce.

A steal for ten bucks.

You’d pay double that for the crab cakes alone at some fancy seafood joint on the shores of the Chesapeake.

These crab cakes are the real deal too. A decent amount of seasoned breadcrumbs, but plenty of local crab meat too.

The egg and hollandaise sauce add a heavy accent to the delicate crab flavor without overpowering it.

But the highlight of the day is that other specialty of the Delmarva Peninsula – one that doesn’t swim in the Bay.

Scrapple. Everything but the oink.

I’ve famously detailed my Suit757 fascination with this lowly loaf of chopped up pig parts in a previous review from the other side of the bay.

I’ll spare you the gory piggy details this time.

Suffice to say, the Countrie Eatery’s version of pig loaf doesn’t disappoint.

Thin sliced and fried until crisp, this scrapple has a fun texture. Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside and porky flavored throughout, scrapple is like a poor man’s sausage.

And a great way to prepare for consuming a 30 pack of PBR.

My fellow astute NASCAR fans began to empty out the cozy dining room just as I was polishing off my last few bites of pig parts.

I was so happy, I could just turn around and head south on Route 13 satisfied, past the more comforting “The South Starts Here Sign”, race or not.

“This is why I keep renewing my Dover tickets,” I said to my equally satisfied race companion.

It turns out even with half priced tickets, NASCAR still couldn’t come close to selling out the race. A little over half full, at best.

Of course this is no surprise to any long time fans.

Everything fun about the sport as been driven out in a politically correct suicide pact.

A sport that rose to prominence powered by tobacco money now bans smoking.

A sport founded in the South by good ol’ boys driving fast cars wouldn’t even let golf champion Bubba Watson drive his replica of the “General Lee” in a parade lap earlier this year.

A sport featuring 43 cars racing 200 miles per hour and collectively burning fuel at a gallon per second, now scolds its fans to “Go Green.”

A sport that rose to popularity on “stock cars” banging and bumping to “checkers or wreckers” finishes now mandates identical cookie cutter cars that can’t pass or wreck.

Every move made by the Hollywood suits who now run NASCAR has replaced “fun” with “boring.”

No wonder there are so many empty seats at Dover.

Memo to the suits in the air conditioned skyboxes: fun is better than boring.

This shouldn’t be that damn complicated.

But I’m afraid any hope of turning this sport around died in Turn 4 of the Daytona International Speedway on February 18, 2001 when Dale Earnhardt hit the wall.

The Intimidator would never have tolerated the decline of the sport he loved.

Instead, the sport is now dominated by corporate-polished Yankees straight out of a Dale Carnegie class like Jimmie Johnson – the antithesis of Dale Earnhardt and everything that made the sport so popular in the first place.

The very personification of boring.

Sure enough, after a 13 car pileup on Lap 9, the race settled into a mundane exercise of watching Jimmie Johnson drive around in front of the pack for 400 miles in his “special” car advertizing the new Disney movie “Madagascar 3”.

All I can say is, thank God for good weather and beer.

Fortunately, the powers that be haven’t mustered the courage to ban beer. Not yet.

Oh, they’ve tried.

After September 11, NASCAR clamped down, banning hard side coolers and limiting fans to about a six pack. For “security”. (Where have we seen this movie before?)

I guess they were afraid Osama bin Laden might show up at a NASCAR race and try to hit someone over the head with his dangerous hard side Igloo cooler.

Fortunately, Dover is still independently owned. You can bring in pretty much whatever the hell you want.

In fact, unzipping my cooler to reveal to the gate inspector my stash of nothing but ice and 15 cans of PBR, he just smiled and said, “Be careful coming back down the stairs.”

That’s what I like about Dover.

The NASCAR officials who sanction the events may be doing everything in their power to destroy the sport, but Dover still clings to a few vestiges of the good ol’ days.

Like my pre-race traditions of scrapple and crab cakes at the Countrie Eatery on race morning.

Go ahead. Call me a traditionalist.

As long as the Countrie Eatery’s still open and as long as they’ll still let me sit in the sun, drink beer and watch the cars run around the Monster Mile, I’ll probably keep coming back.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt.

Seafood Worth Bragging About

Horn Harbor
836 Horn Harbor Rd.
Burgess, VA



The middle of nowhere.

It’s the best of places and the worst of places to find great places to eat and drink.

Some of this country’s most legendary seafood shacks, fish camps, BBQ joints and redneck bars are located down dirt roads and on backwater inlets far from anywhere.

The middle of nowhere. That’s where you’ll find them.

And that’s exactly where you will find the Horn Harbor House Seafood Restaurant, a middle of nowhere restaurant, on a middle of nowhere body of water down at the end of the middle of nowhere Northern Neck in the most middle of nowhere section of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

No body just “passes through” the Northern Neck on his way to somewhere else.

There is no somewhere else to go. The Northern Neck is a dead end.

Keep going until you can’t go any further and you’ll run into Horn Harbor -- at the dead end of a back woods farm road at the dead end of this peninsula by the Chesapeake Bay.

But as I’ve discovered the hard way over the years, just because most legendary eating and drinking joints are located in the middle of nowhere, doesn’t mean that every middle of nowhere joint is legendary.

Far from it.

The Horn Harbor House is a perfect example.

On previous visits to Horn Harbor, I’d get all giddy with excitement about the possibilities of this place.

Horn Harbor LOOKS like it should be legendary.

Sitting hard against the Great Wicomico River smack dab in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay’s seafood bounty, patronized by farmers, watermen and other assorted salty rough necks, this should be the kind of place that serves the very best the surrounding waters have to offer at bargain basement prices.

The kind of place you brag about to your friends when they commit a crime like ordering the “Seafood Trio” at your neighborhood Applebee’s.

“Dude, what are you doing?”

Suit757 can be somewhat obnoxious about these sorts of things.

“I need to take you to this place I know right on the Chesapeake Bay where the oysters are the size of your flip-flop and they pluck the crabs fresh out of the water. All you can eat for ten bucks. And one dollar drafts too!”

Well, okay, those kind of places are getting harder to find. But you know what I’m talking about.

For centuries, oysters were the primary industry of the Northern Neck. The rivers and inlets of this remote section of the bay produce some of the best oysters you can find.

And you can’t drop a chicken neck into the water in these parts without attracting an assembly of Chesapeake Bay blue crabs.

I mean, you’ll pay an arm and a leg for good Chesapeake Bay seafood like that at a restaurant in New York City.

But right here on the banks of the bay, where they just have to reach over and pluck it out of the water? It should be dirt cheap, right?

Not exactly.

My prior visits to Horn Harbor (maybe a decade ago) left me with nothing but soul crushing disappointment.

Memories of a half dozen tiny rubbery fried oysters thrown on a paper plate for twenty bucks produced great resistance to any repeat patronage.

But the promise of new management prodded me to give the place another try.

That, and the fact that there is absolutely nowhere else to eat in the entirety of Northumberland County.

When I come to a waterfront seafood restaurant like this there is no question where I’m going to sit.

Outside. Right on the water.

As the Great Wicomico lapped against the pilings and deck boards under my feet, I breathed in the thick salt air and took a big swig of my 22 ounce Sierra Nevada draft.

Nice.

Sierra Nevada? In the Northern Neck?

Maybe this place has turned around.

Any lingering doubts were erased by the time the appetizers arrived.

A generous plate of crispy calamari was accompanied by delicious chunky homemade marinara.

My oyster stew, a Northern Neck tradition for centuries, was even better.

Butter. Cream. Oysters. Parsley. That’s it.

Simple and uncluttered, this oyster stew allowed the star of the show to shine – big plump Rappahannock River oysters. A perfect dish on a cool, dark autumn evening sitting on the water.

Just when I thought life can’t get any better, it did.

My fried oysters and crab cake dinner presented themselves tableside.

Those tiny oysters on a paper plate? Just a distant bad memory.

For about the same price, these reincarnated Horn Harbor oysters were presented on a bright cobalt blue fish-shaped plate accompanied by cole slaw and decent hush puppies.

The fried oysters were hefty, juicy and salty, encased in a crunchy batter. Fried seafood perfection.

As good as those oysters were, nothing could prepare me for my first forkful of crab cake as I punctured the fried crispy exterior to get to the soft succulence within.

Big clumps of fresh crab meat, perfectly seasoned with Old Bay and held together by just the scantest trace of bread crumbs, these are the crab cakes I dream about when I am far from the shores of the Chesapeake.

By the time I polished off my seafood feast, downed my last swig of Sierra Nevada and paid my tab, I was excited.

Real excited.

I have a new place to brag about. And a new reason to be obnoxious.

“Dude. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

“I know this little place right on the Chesapeake Bay where you can get the best oysters and crab cakes you’ll ever eat. You can sit right outside on the water. With Sierra Nevada on tap!

“But don’t worry. Keep living in your timid little Red Lobster/Golden Coral world. You’d never find it any way.

“It’s in the middle of nowhere.”

Rating: Bought the Shirt!