Harris Crab House: More Fun than a Trip to the Shrink

Harris Crab House
433 Kent Narrow Way N.
Grasonville, MD






My Harris Crab House t-shirt sums it up perfectly:

“Group Therapy – One Bushel at a Time”

With a little waterman dude emblazoned on a big old bushel of freshly steamed Chesapeake Bay blue crabs.

(Spoiler Alert: I know I like to keep you in suspense until the end of the review, but…I bought the shirt.)

Some activities in life, like using a bathroom on a Regional Jet, man was meant to do alone.

But man is a social creature. We crave the company of other humans.

That is why other activities are best enjoyed in a group of friends.

Picking crabs is definitely one of those.

A crab feast is all about sitting outside on the water, passing around pitchers of cold beer, enjoying the sunshine and salty sea breeze and whiling away a lazy summer afternoon in conversation about matters simple or sublime, profound or frivolous.

Yeah, there is food involved. Sort of.

But a crab feast isn’t really about sustenance. It’s about the experience.

Group therapy.

Forget your daily routine, leave the laptop at home, power off your smart phone.

Get together with some friends you haven’t seen in a while, engage in dialogue that doesn’t involve thumbs on a tiny keyboard and hang out pounding away at bottom dwelling sea creatures with little wooden mallets.


The conversation, beer and sunshine provide the therapy. The crabs are just the excuse.

So for me, Harris’ perfect waterfront locale of its upstairs outdoor deck on Kent Narrows just over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge from Annapolis is justification enough to bestow upon Harris the title of quintessential Maryland crab house.

It just doesn’t get any better than this.

That being said, the tab for our group therapy (there were eight of us) came to $500.

Ouch.

So no matter how bucolic the setting, for that price, you better dump some decent crabs onto the table in front of us.

In the three or four times I’ve visited Harris, the place hasn’t let me down yet.

While the conversation at any crab feast usually remains appropriately light, controversy can erupt unexpectedly.

Our most contentious discussion on this Saturday afternoon dealt with this very subject -- critiquing Maryland’s famous crab houses.

One person in particular in our little party was aware of my alias as an internationally-known world-famous food critic -- and took exception to my panning of Cantler’s on the other side of the bridge.

Cantler’s is arguably the most popular crab house in Maryland, but my lone experience there left much to be desired. (Read about it here.)

My argumentative friend declared, “You can’t say Cantler’s has bad crabs. Nobody MAKES crabs! They just serve whatever is caught in the crab pot.”

While I conceded his point that crab houses don’t “make” crabs (a guy at a higher pay grade gets the credit for that), there are some important rules to follow when you make your living selling bushels of crabs that cost more than an early model Ford Focus.

First of all, the crabs need to be fresh -- as in still kicking and clawing for life when you put them in the steamer.

Second, you need to steam the crabs the exact number of moments that turn their shells from blue to red without transforming their delicate crabmeat into crabmush.

And finally, the steamed crabs should be served within minutes -- not hours or days -- after emerging from the steamer.

I’m happy to say, Harris has this process down to a science.

Our four dozen “large” crabs (Harris was out of the much more expensive “extra-large” and “jumbos”) were dumped upon our brown paper-covered picnic table in perfect condition.

Bright red, still warm and coated in Harris’ signature salty seasoning, these 48 crustaceans provided the table with an afternoon of picking, pounding and prying.

And even a little bit of crabmeat.

You’ll burn more calories than you consume.

But that’s why God invented hush puppies as well as crabs.

Harris serves excellent puppies, warm, doughy and sweet.

Even more sweet was the moist cake-like corn bread.

Of course the most important part of any crab feast is not the crabs. Or the hush puppies. Or even the conversation.

It’s the beer.

Harris has a decent selection of local craft beers available in the bottle.

My Lot No. 3 IPA from Evolution Brewing Company in Salisbury was a new one for me.

Of course you can never go wrong with a Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA from just down the Delmarva.

But let’s face it, if you are going to sit outside in the August sun all afternoon eating salt-coated crabs, even the most devout beer snob should switch eventually to pitchers of lower octane, lower priced good old American lager.

And that is basically how the afternoon unfolded.


We left the suits at home, put on our flip-flops, passed around cheap pitchers of Coors Light, soaked up the salt air and retold those decade old stories -- some of which even have a bit of truth to them.

Group therapy.

Yeah, $500 is a steep price to pay for an afternoon of hanging out on the Chesapeake.

But it’s a hell of a lot more fun than an appointment with your shrink.

Rating: I Already Told You -- Bought the Shirt!

Soft Shell Crabs -- Get Them While You Can!!

Lowery’s
528 N. Church Lane
Tappahanock, VA




I’m a marketer’s dream.

Tell me something is “scarce”, “in limited supply” or “available for a short time ONLY”, I’m a sucker every time.

That probably explains why I spend so much time in the “Seasonal Beer” aisle of my local Total Wine.

I’ve just got to stock up now for summer on that “limited edition” Harpoon Summer Ale. (Note to local beer distributor: you better replenish your supply, because I just cleaned you out.)

While brewers will always entice me with their seasonal offerings that go down perfectly with a hot backyard barbeque in summer or a cozy fire at Christmas, I’m a sucker for seasonal foods too.

That must explain my obsession with soft shell crabs.

Soft shells are fleeting creatures, available for only a few hours during a few months of the year.

Now that’s what I call limited edition!

Traditional holds that you can only get fresh soft shell crabs for a few weeks after the first full moon of May. That is certainly when they are most prevalent on the menu boards of Chesapeake Bay restaurants.

In reality, you can still get them throughout the summer. (Just don’t tell the soft shells’ V.P. of Marketing.)

All crabs go through a few moltings during their lifespan, where they plump up and slip out of their hard shell and immediately begin growing a new shell.

And that’s all a soft shell crab is -- just a regular ol’ blue crab found so prevalent in southern coastal waters -- going through change of life.

Waterman around the Chesapeake Bay quickly figured out that if you time it just right, before the new hard shell forms, you can fry up and eat a soft crab whole.

Whole?

Yep. Belly, back, legs and all. Just bite right into him.

That’s a hell of a lot less work than all that cracking, hammering, pounding, poking and picking required to extract the meat from a hard crab.

A soft shell crab sandwich is a lazy man’s crab feast.

Maybe that’s the real reason I love them so much.

Delicious, luscious fresh blue crab -- without all the work.

Passing through the small eastern Virginia town of Tappahanock in late May, I knew Lowery’s would be the perfect place to find soft shells.

Lowery’s has been serving up the bounty of the Virginia coast since 1938 just a stone’s throw from the mighty Rappahannock River which empties into the Chesapeake Bay 30 miles southeast of here.

Dark, cozy and old school with nautical knickknacks and paintings of watermen on the wall, the average age of the customer base rivals the age of the restaurant itself.

If you want hip and young, well, Lowery’s isn’t going to be your kind of place.

However, rumor has it that there is a tiki bar around back that can get somewhat lively (or as lively as anything gets in Tappahanock) during happy hour.

As usual, it was a work day for Suit757, so I’ll probably never know for sure.

I knew I came to the right place as soon as I walked through the front door when I read the hand written sheet of paper tacked up next to the hostess stand reading “fresh local soft shells available.”

Yes!!!

I was so excited.

Lowery’s version didn’t disappoint.

One of the largest soft shells I’ve ever seen, perfectly fried in a nice tasty batter, placed on a toasted bun with lettuce, tomato and a slather of tartar sauce.

Eating a soft shell crab sandwich is just fun -- like eating a big delicious bug.

Crispy fried legs dangling out of the bun on all sides, I felt a sense of jubilation just picking the crustacean up and holding the sucker in front my face.

Of course the best part of all is biting into that bad boy. No shells or bones to worry about -- just pure fresh crab meat.

Just before the still alive soft crab goes into the fryer, the cook slices off the crab’s face and scrapes out the lungs and hind quarters so you don’t have to worry about consuming anything you shouldn’t.

Just bite into it.

Which is exactly what I did.

The legs were crispy. The body soft and moist.

Of course there was that slight tug from the soft skin that serves as a molting crab’s only protection against the dangers of being a soft, delicious maritime creature alone in the wilds of the Chesapeake Bay.

It is that yin and yang of textures of a soft shell crab that can be somewhat off putting to land lubbers, Yankees, Obama voters and other such joy killers.

But I try not to hang out with people like that.

Lowery’s other food items were just as delicious, if not quite as seasonally exclusive.

The crab dip was almost pure crab meat, with the cheeses and seasonings serving strictly as background music.

The rolls were warm, fresh out of the oven.

Sweet candied yams and crunchy, creamy cole slaw rounded out a fantastic meal.

Lowery’s isn’t cheap.

The Soft shell sandwich was $12. The crab dip was $15. The crab cake sandwich was $14.

But all of it was good.

I don’t get as irritated by the big bill at the end when I enjoy a meal this much.

After all, dining at Lowery’s is once-n-a-lifetime opportunity available to an exclusive but discerning subset of diners who just happened to be passing by during the extremely limited soft shell crab season.

Yep. I fall for it every time.

And this time, I’m glad I did.

Rating: Seriously Thought about Buying Shirt.

Tiki Bar Damnation

Tim’s Rivershore
1510 Cherry Hill Rd.
Dumfries, VA





To paraphrase the great Hank Williams, Jr., “Send me to hell or Northern Virginia, it would be about the same to me.”

Hank was actually singing about New York City, but to me, this place is even worse.

As Suit757, I’ve literally been everywhere in this great country of ours, but the LAST PLACE I would choose to live is the vast suburban hell that lies just south of our nation’s capital.

Too many cars. Too many strip malls. Too many medians. Too many people.

And those people?

The most reprehensible of the human species -- bureaucrats.

Surrounding in you in your eight lane-wide traffic gridlock are all variety of bureaucrats -- the liberty robbers who run the TSA, EPA and IRS.

The people who get paid with my tax money to tell me how much toothpaste I can pack in my garment bag, what I am allowed to build on my own property and how much of my income I have to hand over to them to pay for all this raping of my freedom.

And don’t even get me going about all those self-important people who work for Congress crafting new laws to tell me how to live my life.

Or the millions of federal contractors feeding at the federal trough who self-righteously proclaim, “I don’t work for the government -- I’m a private contractor.”

Yeah, okay, Edward Snowden, same difference.

So where do uptight, self-important bureaucrats go to let off steam on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Northern Virginia?

Tim’s Rivershore on the Potomac River. That’s where.

So while visiting Suit757’s favorite posse of Northern Virginia bureaucrats, Hill staffers and federal contractors, we all decided to head down the winding, twisting roads that lead to the sandy shores of the Potomac just outside of Dumfries, Virginia.

The on-line reviews of Tim’s Rivershore really weren’t that great.

Most of the negative reviews clearly were written by prissy bureaucrats and cited the slow service, loud music, drunken crowds and slutty bikini-clad girls stumbling off the boats tied up to the dock.

Uh. Yeah.

I was thinking the same thing.

THIS PLACE SOUNDS FREAKING AWESOME!!

Tim’s didn’t disappoint.

This place is a pre-bureaucracy anomaly.

There is no way the bureaucrats at the Army Corp of Engineers would allow this place even to be built right on the sandy shores of the Potomac today.

And where are the bureaucrats to shut down the fun-loving sounds of people drinking, laughing and having a good time?

And isn’t there some sort of noise ordinance in Prince William County to prevent a live band from entertaining the crowds from a makeshift stage out on the dock?

And who is going to regulate the blood alcohol content all those drunken boaters stumbling up Tim’s dock to feast on crabs and pitchers of beer?

Worst of all, there’s GOT TO BE some sort of law to stop people from crossing the extremely active Amtrak and CSX railroad tracks that separate Tim’s from the dirt parking lot in the woods.

Someone could get hurt.

Or splattered, even.

That’s the irony of Tim’s.

It’s a Northern Virginia oasis of bureaucracy-free bliss patronized by nothing but fun-loving bureaucrats.

The reviews were spot on.

Tim’s is loud and crowded. And the service is slow as hell.

But that’s okay.

This isn’t the kind of place to come for a quick bite on the way to catch a flight.

You come here to drink beer in the sun, kick off your flop-flops, stick your toes in the rivershore sand and spend the afternoon hanging out with good friends.

Even if they are a bunch of damn bureaucrats.

The slow service can’t be blamed on our waitress. Amid the chaos, she was efficient, friendly and apologetic for the disorganization in the various kitchens, bars and steamers producing our beer and crab feast.

Appetizers came after entrées. Entrees came before side dishes. Pitchers of beer came sporadically when needed.

Our one crustacean-averse companion didn’t get her crab cakes until an hour after the rest of us had been devouring a mountain of steamed crab carcasses.

But somehow we all got what we wanted (eventually) and had a good time wiling away the afternoon as the sun set behind the railroad tracks.

The crabs were somewhat of a let-down.

Our waitress informed us that all Tim’s had left were “medium” crabs.

That’s not good.

Picking crabs is hard enough work as it is. You want some actual crab meat reward for all that effort.

I always order the Large or Jumbo, no matter the astronomical cost. (I’ve coughed up ten bucks per crab before, believe it or not.)

Crab picking is a once or twice a year occasion for Suit757. I’ll gladly splurge to ensure a high crab meat-to-effort exerted ratio.

Unfortunately, a few moments after placing our order, our waitress reappeared and apologetically informed us that the mediums were all gone too.

Now we were relegated to the small crabs.

They were like trying to extract meat from overgrown crawfish.

I think I burned more calories than I actually consumed.

But they seemed to be properly steamed and well-seasoned, although we did find a few duds with no meat at all.

To compensate for the missing crab meat, we ordered various trays of steamed clams, mussels and bacon-wrapped scallops, all of which were good -- but a poor substitute for a crab feast.

Thank goodness for the hush puppies, beer and nice waterfront views. Because my attempts to extract much sustenance from these puny critters was mostly futile.

The hush puppies were crispy and sweet -- just the way they should be. We ordered several baskets over the course of the evening.

Sometimes the hush puppies appeared out of the kitchen almost immediately. Other times it took half an hour -- which was a bit irritating because being hush puppyless is a serious problem.

You see, hush puppies play an important role in any crab feast -- running interference for all those pitchers of beer trying hard to enter my Suit757 bloodstream.

Sixteen dollar pitchers of Kona Big Wave Golden Ale were the popular choice among the lackluster selection of drafts.

Kona is the brewery that started on the Big Island in Hawaii, but has since been commandeered by Anheuser-Busch, which explains why bottles of Kona now state they are brewed in New Hampshire, of all places.

But hey, you have to work with what you’ve got.

Under a state of suspended disbelief, I could pretend I was drinking an exotic microbrew from a tropical South Seas island under the yellow and red plastic palm trees ringing Tim’s tiki bar.

This was actually my first chance to try Kona’s Big Wave.

A little fruitier and tarter than the more ubiquitous Kona Long Board Lager, this ale was a perfectly acceptable group compromise for a table of disparate beer drinkers.

That is until our one “Bud Light Only” dork (there’s always one in every crowd of bureaucrats) insisted on having his way.

At that point the law of diminishing returns had long since set in, so I didn’t even put up a fight.

Besides, who could argue in such a sudsy, blissful state of mind as the sky turned pink above the shimmering waters of the Potomac?

Tim’s Rivershore makes you forget all that…

…the sporadic service…

…the tiny crabs…

…the tyranny of the “Bud Light Only” guy…

…the Nanny State bureaucrats surrounding me.

As we stumbled back across the railroad tracks and snapped pictures of the dangerous Amtrak train roaring past, I thought Tim’s just might be that one long lost oasis in the hell that is Northern Virginia.

Well, if I am damned to eternity in Northern Virginia, at least you know where you can find me.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt.