Winterguide 2011

By Colin W. Sargent

We’re eating crab cakes in Todd Jurich’s Bistro in Norfolk, Virginia, when the waiter drops us with, “These are made with fresh crab from Maine.”

But this is Crabtown, USA!

“Chesapeake Bay crabs go dormant from December through February every year, so if you order these crabs during this period, they may be delicious, but they’ll be frozen.”

The waiter leans forward confidentially, as though he’s about to give us black-market information or some letters of transit hidden inside his lapel. Think Peter Lorre in Casablanca:

“If you’re talking about fresh crab between December and February, it’s usually going to be peekytoe crab. By the way, where are you folks from?”

“The peekytoe crab story is an interesting one,” reports About.com. “These are Maine rock or sand crabs which were pretty much a throwaway by-product of lobster fishing before a brilliant marketing move changed their name to ‘peekytoes’ around 1997. They are classified as Cancer irroratus, also known as bay crab and rock crab. Nowadays this crab [caught in traps set ‘20 to 40-feet deep’] is highly sought by the most discriminating chefs around the world.

“There are a couple of theories on how it became known as ‘peekytoe crab.’ Peekytoe is the slang name for these crabs in the lobster fishing villages of Maine. Rod Mitchell, owner of Browne Trading Company, a seafood wholesaler in Portland, is credited with the marketing genius of calling them by their slang name.”

As Mitchell has told us [October 2006], “I made up the name in 1988…I knew a fisherman who always called them ‘pick-id-toe’ crabs because the back feet were turned in and pointed, and I changed the name to ‘peekytoe.’”

The name has scuttled to stardom. And short of using expensive winter dredges, there’s no way for mid-Atlantic states to extract their delicious blue crabs from the muddy beds where, like the rest of us, they dream of spring.

“The first restaurant to carry peekytoes was Jean-Louis at the Watergate [which closed in 1996 after the death of famed chef and founder Jean-Louis Palladin]. Now they’re on the menus across the country.”

Hmm. Watergate…Chesapeake Bay…frozen local crabs in dormant months, Maine crabs substituted with nary a whisper in Foggy Bottom. Who knew there was more than one Watergate conspiracy?