Okay okay. I did go to Annapo­lis and enjoy the lovely down­town area. But the real rea­son for the short trip out to Annapo­lis? Jimmy Cantler’s Road­side Inn. Basi­cally, crabs.

We arrived around 7pm on a Sun­day evening, and were noti­fied of a 90 minute wait. 90 min­utes wait­ing for a small restau­rant — any restau­rant — in the Dis­trict would cause out­rage. But here at Cantler’s, where it was clear folks came from far and wide to have a crack at the crabs, it was just another nor­mal night. And frankly, bet­ter than the two-hour esti­mated wait that I later overheard.

The inside of the restau­rant was pretty much what I though a crab restau­rant in Mary­land should look: slightly dank, musty from the smell of crabs, long wooden tables cov­ered with butcher paper and piles of clam car­casses. The loud buzz of con­ver­sa­tion was only inter­rupted by the pound­ing of mal­lets, and the occa­sional bouts of laugh­ter from groups of friends. A huge bar on the left half of the restau­rant pro­vided a rowdy dine-at-the-bar option, with other patrons hov­er­ing behind bar stools call­ing out for beers while they waited.

The weather out­side was pleas­ant, so we man­aged to get in our orders for sev­eral cans of beer at the bar, and then joined the other crowds of peo­ple in the park­ing lot and down along the water­front, where we watched a Cantler’s employee sort­ing fresh caught blue crabs (so small com­pared to their Pacific brethren!) in what I call the ‘crab stag­ing area’.

Our lit­tle group of four found a nice, removed spot on the dock, where we watched boats com­ing in and out for gas and for crabs. We made it through two cans of Fat Tire, each, and a sun­set in the hour+ wait.

When we were finally seated, we were starv­ing. The menu was fairly exten­sive, with more options I would have guessed. There was quite a var­ied seafood selec­tion, includ­ing crab cakes, mus­sels, king crab legs, steam­ers, shrimp, fried fish, and more. There were also non-seafood options for peo­ple who were crazy enough to go to a crab joint and not like crab or fish.

Crabs were sold accord­ing to size, and depend­ing on the catch that day. Our server informed us of what was avail­able: Large, and Extra Large. By the 1/2 dozen, dozen, and bushel. I’m going to blame our hunger and over-eagerness to eat crabs, but for our party of four we ordered an appe­tizer of black­ened rock­fish bites over coleslaw, fol­lowed by a dozen (half Large, half Extra Large) Old Bay sea­soned steamed crabs, along with hush pup­pies and four ears of steamed corn. Oh, and a rack of ribs.

When our crabs arrived on a large red cafe­te­ria tray, they were promptly dumped onto our butcher paper-lined table. Free for all! Equipped with a mal­let and pick each, what fol­lowed was noth­ing short of ugly. Kind of rem­i­nis­cent of another one of my recent crustacean-involved gas­tro­nomic endeavors.…

I’m used to eat­ing crabs from the Pacific, which have much harder shells, are larger, and thus have more meat that is slightly tougher. These crabs were small in com­par­i­son, but the meat that I man­aged to extract was ten­der, and oh-so-flaky! The prob­lem is the shells were doused with what must have been a met­ric ton of Old Bay sea­son­ing. By the end of my third crab, I could barely feel my lips, as they were numb from an excess of salt.

We did it, though.

We fin­ished off the dozen crabs, and only had half a rack of ribs left over. Not bad for a party of four, of which two per­sons sup­pos­edly don’t really like crab. I’ll admit, I did try to over-compensate. Also, my hands, which were cov­ered in crab juice, rib sauce, and sea­son­ing, made it rather dif­fi­cult to take a decent photo.

Here is where we indulged our bellies:

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