I have lived in Baltimore for only four years, but already I feel considerable affection for this large city (population 651,154), located about halfway down the East Coast of the United States. One of the things I love most about my new hometown is its harbor, where the comings and goings of sailboats, freighters, water taxis, garbage scows and kayaks provide steady entertainment for those who like to watch nautical traffic. From my house in the neighborhood known as Federal Hill, I can walk to the harbor in only a couple of minutes.
I can also walk in about 15 minutes to Camden Yards, the stadium where the Orioles, our local baseball team, play. To be honest, I have done this only once, and I have never strolled over to the stadium that our football team (the Ravens) calls home.
On the other hand, I have been to the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall to listen to Baltimore’s Orchestra perform, and I also find the city’s two major art museums impressive. Baltimore may not offer the complete array of opportunities for cultural enrichment as, say, New York, where I used to live, but there is certainly plenty to hold one’s interest here.
One of Baltimore’s main attractions is its world-famous aquarium, where I frequently take out-of-town guests. The manta rays are so entertaining as they glide effortlessly through the water like gigantic aqueous birds. The most popular sea creatures in the aquarium are undoubtedly the dolphins, whose lovable faces and beautifully choreographed antics never fail to attract a crowd. Part of the fun comes when they catch and gulp down the fish that are tossed to them as a reward for a good performance.
While the favorite food of dolphins is squid and crustaceans, most Baltimoreans also love calamari and shellfish. But the seafood item Baltimore is especially famous for is crab. We eat them with both hard shells and soft. We dish up crab soup (tomato and cream based), and we make all manner of salads with crab as the main ingredient. Most of all, however, our reputation rests on crab cakes.
Every Baltimore cook worth his or her salt has a favorite crab cake recipe, and passions run high about the choice of ingredients. Diced bell pepper or celery? Finely minced onion? A dash of dried red pepper flakes? I like to keep it simple: a little mayonnaise to bind the crabmeat together, salt, pepper, a light coating of fresh breadcrumbs for a crispy texture when the cakes have been sauteed or broiled, and that’s all I really want. Savored with a glass of crisp Sauvignon Blanc from Sancerre or New Zealand, this is pretty heady fare.
The problem is, my hankering for crab cake simplicity condemns me to be viewed as an outsider. True Baltimoreans might be willing to eschew most embellishments in a crab cake, but one thing their palates demand is Old Bay Seasoning. Old Bay was developed by a German immigrant named Gustav Brunn, who arrived in Baltimore in 1939, bringing with him a hand-operated spice grinder and the dream of establishing a spice business in his adopted country. Bunn worked hard at blending together dozens of different spices until, finally, he was ready to launch the finished product. Lucky for him, local gastronomes took to his Old Bay Seasoning immediately, and soon the taste of Brunn’s spicy melange became synonymous with crab meat, not just in the Chesapeake Bay region but all along the coast through Virginia as well.
Not only has Old Bay become synonymous with crab, it now tends to make its way into all manner of other foods as well.
Around here one finds this rather aggressive seasoning — a mixture of salt, celery salt, cloves, allspice, cardamom, ginger, hot pepper flakes plus a host of other spices — in everything from steamed shrimp to poultry to burgers. (“Try it on French Fries with vinegar!” trumpets one of the many Web sites that promote and sell Old Bay, which is today owned and trademarked by the McCormick Company.)
Perhaps because it tends to be dispensed with a heavy hand, or perhaps because I didn’t grow up with it during my childhood, I somehow fail to fully appreciate Old Bay, which seems to overwhelm whatever other flavors might be lurking in the dishes it infuses. However, when used judiciously, Old Bay can add considerable pizzazz to certain dishes. Shrimp salad, for one, can often profit from a dash of Old Bay Seasoning, as I discovered one Valentine’s Day shortly after I moved to Baltimore. To mark the amorous holiday my husband (then fiance) and I treated ourselves to an ultra-romantic dinner, which began with a shrimp salad whose flavors were set off by just a hint of Old Bay Seasoning. To accompany this fine first course we had a bottle of Cuvee Les Amour Pinot Blanc from Alsace’s estimable producer Hugel. The wine’s soft, mellifluous character enhanced the inherent richness of the shrimp, while spirited hints of spiciness in the Old Bay called forth a zesty array of flavors in the wine that might have lain dormant if not aroused in this manner. This striking synergy between food and wine reflected in a mysterious way our own romantic inclination to each bring out the best in the other.
Baltimore is famous for its crab houses. In these informal restaurants famously furnished with brown paper tablecloths, diners pound whole boiled or steamed crabs with wooden mallets to get at the succulent morsels of meat hidden in claws and carapace. While most local crab places load crustaceans with a heavy jolt of the unmistakable Old Bay Seasoning, Obrycki’s Crab House, the most renowned of the genre, prefers to season the jimmies (male crabs) and sooks (females) with its own house-made peppery blend of spices.
Among Baltimore’s “white tablecloth” restaurants, where crab cakes rather than whole crabs in the shell are the norm, and where forks rather than wooden mallets are the eating utensil of choice, Old Bay isn’t much in evidence. At Charleston, arguably Baltimore’s toniest restaurant (with one of the finest wine list in town), co-owner/chef Cindy Wolf shook her head vigorously when I asked her if she put Maryland’s beloved spice in her crab cakes. “Absolutely not. No way. We don’t even have a can of the stuff on our premises,” she stated emphatically.
There is no Old Bay in evidence at Ixia, where Chef Kevin Miller describes his food as “Mediterranean fusion” and where the theatrical decor might be termed “Speakeasy Moderne.” Instead, Miller accents his crab cakes with cilantro, lime juice, mustard and siracha (a type of Asian hot sauce).
When I put the question of crab cakes to Deborah Mazzoleni, co-owner of the hip bistro The Bicycle, she winces. “Maryland has destroyed its crab population by over-harvesting and polluting the bay,” she says. “It is rare that you would ever eat Maryland crab in Maryland.” Most crab consumed in these parts, she continues, comes from Louisiana, and even from as far away as Thailand or Mexico. When I mention Old Bay Seasoning, however, Mazzoleni’s spirits rise.
She wouldn’t pair it with crab, she says, but she loves it with fried chicken. “And pan sauteed zucchini with Old Bay is to die for,” she adds.
I’m not sure which wine Mazzoleni might recommend serving with that zucchini, but there are plenty of choices from The Bicycle’s appealing (and fairly priced) wine list. In addition to the regular extensive and eclectic selections — which range from Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc (New Zealand, $40), to Jaboulet Crozes Hermitages, Les Jalets (Northern Rhone, $23), to Chehalen Pinot Noir (Oregon, $40) — there is a separate list comprising 18 wines at $18 each. Among the selections are McDowell Syrah (California), Catena Alomos Ridge Malbec (Argentina) and Lagaria Pinot Grigio (Italy).
