Quest for the Best Crab Cake - Issue No.1

I wanted this first issue to be special, was originally planning to write it over the weekend -- but due to some previously-contracted obligation, I will be strapped for time and unable to make this first review as in-depth as I want it to be. Anyway, I guess that's fine, the reality is, this is the best that I can do writing-wise so really, I was just BS-ing. Moving on.

Last Wednesday, my department treated out a customer to lunch. It was his birthday a couple of days back and since he is a pretty OK customer, my boss decided to take him out. I was there for the free lunch, of course. We went to this place:

It's a cool place... it has decent water views, patio dining, and has been in business for a bit (Oracle is nearby so it's never short of people on business lunches or dinners).

On to the really good stuff, so I ordered "Fresh Dungeness Crab Cakes". It has organic greens, crab-avocado salad, organic cherry tomatoes and "Louis" dressing. The sad part was that I didn't get to take a picture of the [spoiler alert] scrumptious meal. I guess I was a bit embarrassed to do it since it was kind of a business lunch.

The presentation was great. Two crab cakes (drizzled with the "Louis" dressing) were placed on top of the bed of greens, a good scoop of the crab-avocado salad sat between them. Crab-avocado salad was great. Very light and the avocado was the right amount, not too overpowering with it's creaminess. The crab cakes were utterly delightful. The crust was perfect, the crab meat "almost" perfect. The dressing was great (a little goes a long way). And yes, I did clean my plate pretty well... not a morsel of anything left. One big negative though: they didn't use lump crab meat. I guess that's the most they can do with with mostly frozen Dungeness crab available in the market. Oh well, I still have to take points off for that.

Verdict:


May I also suggest their Shrimp bisque. It was so good. I personally will go back and try the other seafood dishes.

Crab cakes and me

On my profile, I mentioned that I like crab cakes. Let me retract that, I don't just like crab cakes... I LOVE crab cakes. And with this love for crab cakes, I thought I should go on a quest to find the best one out there. Well, "relatively" the best one, since it would be the best according to my taste alone.

I have been planning to formally document this quest and thanks to this blog that no one ever reads, I will have the ability to grade crab cakes on an ongoing basis... until I croak, probably (unless my kin wants to take on the daunting task). Anyway, I like keeping things as simple as possible, so I figured that I should grade the crab cakes on a scale of one crab for awful to five crabs for excellent.

The lovely crab*

And for the worst of the worst, the most dreadful crab cake, a special grade of imitation crab would be awarded:

The despicable imitation crab

*I had to make my own on MS Paint... I initially used this thing that I got off Google but I think he sells it to people, so to avoid future lawsuits, I decided to draw my own. The same cannot be said about the imitation crab... I can't draw junk like that.

My first review will be posted soon. I just had a big lunch earlier with people from work. Review to follow.