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!

A Southern Fried Shout Out to the Lowly Catfish

Little Libby’s Catfish
234 Lime Quarry Rd.
Madison, AL





I feel obligated to defend the honor of catfish.

Let me guess?

You consider the bottom dweller of the South’s muddy waters to be lower class food.

Right?

Reality TV shows featuring rednecks “noodling” in swampy waters for giant catfish with their bare hands probably do nothing to help catfish’s rep.

But the fact is, fish of all kinds have gone from poor man’s food to the most expensive protein at your local Piggy Wiggly.

Wild caught fish goes for $12 to $25 per pound retail in our current Bernanke Bubble economy.

Even lowly species like catfish now can cost more than New York Strip.

So I think it’s about time catfish gets its due.

Besides, almost all catfish you eat these days comes from carefully regulated farms here in the American South.

Normally, I not a big fan of farm-raised fish, but in the case of catfish, which will eat just about anything in the wild, including the fists of fat sweaty bubbas on TV, maybe it’s not such a bad idea.

I’ll take farm-raised fish from right here in Alabama over farm-raised fish like tilapia raised in China -- any day.

Maybe I’m a bit naïve, but I trust the good-ole boys here in Alabama to know how to properly raise a tasty catfish more than a bunch of Commies half way around the world.

Little Libby’s, here in Madison, Alabama, is a bustling joint tucked behind the interstate near the Huntsville Airport.

Damn convenient for Suit757. And a nice oasis in this thriving metro area in northern Alabama.

Huntsville is so freshly scrubbed and gleaming and thriving, it’s easy to forget you are even in Alabama.

Unfortunately, progress in America usually means lots of traffic, well-manicured medians, landscaped strip malls and national chain restaurants as far as the eye can see.

In Huntsville, all this “progress”, so called, is financed by a steady flow of federal tax dollars.

Thanks to NASA and multiple federal military installations and contractors, “Rocket City” gets more than its fair share of slop from the federal trough.

So, if nothing else, a stop for lunch at Little Libby’s provides a welcome return to real Alabama.

While catfish is no longer a bargain, at least Little Libby’s gives you your money’s worth.

For $16, I got an overflowing plate of two big fried catfish filets, two small deviled crabs, a pair of hush puppies, a bowl of cole slaw and a pile of onion rings.

Whew!

At least I won’t have to eat again today.

The catfish were moist and flaky, encrusted in a crunchy, mildly seasoned corn meal batter.

Pretty tasty. But even better with a few dashes of Louisiana Hot Sauce.

The deviled crabs packed a flavor wallop.

Deviled crabs are a Southern specialty. Two tiny hard crab shells encase a crab-flavored breading that is deep fried.

Kinda like a really bready, spicy crab cake stuffed into a crab carcass.

Admittedly, the actual crab is an afterthought here. The overwhelming flavors are onion, garlic and celery salt.

Any true crab connoisseur from the Chesapeake Bay used to big clumps of white delicate crab meat would probably shrink away in horror.

But I would dare Mr. Crabby Pants to tell me deviled crab doesn’t TASTE good.

You can’t tell me it doesn’t -- despite the fact that there isn’t much actual crab within deviled crab.

The cool, crunchy cole slaw was decent. The onion rings were just okay.

The hush puppies were a disappointment. Doughy and bland, they were just taking up precious stomach vacancy.

Overall, Little Libby’s Catfish was an adequate lunch stop on the way to the airport, a nice taste of Southern fried seafood in an otherwise soulless boiler-plate North Alabama metropolis.

I was glad I stopped by.

I set out with two goals.

Feed my face.

Defend the honor of catfish.

On both counts, mission accomplished.

Rating: Would Wear a Free 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.

To Tomato or Not to Tomato? That is the Question in Carolina

Tarheel Q
6835 West Old US Hwy. 64
Lexington, NC






Barbeque can get down right complicated in the Tar Heel State.

The next time you hear someone tell you they serve “Carolina-style” barbeque, don’t let them off the hook.

Your next question should be, “Which Carolina style?”

As in, Eastern Carolina Barbeque or Western Carolina Barbeque?

Wars have been fought over less weighty disputes.

Eastern Carolina barbeque dates to Colonial times when the early settlers believed that tomatoes were poisonous. The only trace of red you’ll find in Eastern ‘que are flecks of pepper.

“Down East” around Wilson, Ayden and Rocky Mount, they smoke the whole hog, snout to tail, then drench the chopped up pig meat in a sauce of nothing more than peppery vinegar. It’s an acquired taste, for sure, especially if you are used to the ketchupy BBQ sauces of Memphis, Kansas City and Dallas.

Me? I guess I’m kind of a barbeque tramp. I like ‘em all.

Sure some barbeque is better than others, but there is no such thing as BAD smoked pig.

Here in Western North Carolina, the pit masters are much less tomatophobic.

Only the shoulder of the hog is smoked, and it is drenched in a vinegar sauce sweetened with a touch of tomato and sugar.

This Western Carolina barbeque style originated right here in Lexington, North Carolina about 100 years ago when Jesse Swicegood and Sid Weaver set up a barbeque pit in front of the Davidson County Court House on the days when the farmers from the surrounding fields would come to town.

Today, Lexington, a town of about 20,000 hungry souls, boasts nearly two dozen barbeque joints – the most per capita in America.

Welcome to the barbeque capital of the world!

I’ve always been partial to Western Carolina – or Lexington style – barbeque. I like a balance between the pucker of vinegar and the sweet of the tomato.

And that’s what you get here at Tarheel Q.

Of course Tarheel Q isn’t exactly in Lexington. It’s about ten miles west of town out over the hills and through the tobacco fields, hard against the Yadkin River.

You know it’s got to be good when your barbeque joint is out in the sticks.

The smoke billowing from the chimney and the wood pile of chopped hickory out back serve as further reminder that this is the real deal.

In fact, the only flaw I could find in Tarheel Q’s authentic barbeque credentials was that the place seemed a bit too clean – and new.

Well, it turns out, there’s a good reason for that.

Tarheel Q burned to the ground about a year or two ago and was recently rebuilt.

Call it an occupational hazard for an enterprise built around burning hickory 18 hours per day. Every day.

In my book, that makes Tarheel Q the Steve Earle of Western Carolina barbeque joints.

You know how you can’t be truly considered a critically-acclaimed legitimate outlaw country songwriter until you’ve served a prison sentence for heroin addiction? Somehow, that makes you deep.

Same thing with barbeque joints. You officially earn your street cred after you’ve been burnt down and rebuilt at least once or twice.

But Tarheel Q earns its cred in Suit757’s book with its outstanding barbeque.

Strictly segregated by gender, the ladies serve the customers in the front of the house while the men tend to the fire, smoke and danger in the back.

Just as it should be.

As I sat at the counter, I watched them wielding their knives, chop, chop, chopping my fresh-from-the-smoker pork into tender bites.

A giant mound of chopped pork squooshed between two woefully inadequate Marita "Southern Bread" hamburger buns came out rapped in wax paper. The sandwich was topped with cole slaw (a Carolina tradition) and just a touch of Tarheel Q’s famous sauce.

The sauce was much sweeter than I expected for a barbeque sandwich within the state of North Carolina.

But it was delicious.

In fact, on request, my waitress brought me a mini jar of heated sauce to further soak my pig meat.

The thin sauce just melted right into the meat, further contributing to my Merita bun disintegration. Eventually, I gave up and just started using my fork.

But the thin, sweet sauce was a delicious accompaniment to the tender smoky pork. A top notch variation on Western Carolina que.

The boat of warm hush puppies on the side was top notch too – sweet like cake with a crunchy bite. No way could I finish them all.

Those good ol’ boys Down East might frown upon Tarheel Q’s brand of barbeque, but it earns five stars in my book.

After all, it’s not worth going to war over.

But then again, all’s fair in love and barbeque.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt.