Chesapeake blue crab cake is a signature dish of United States; we have verified places to eat it in Washington DC. Plump lump-blue-crab cakes bound with the lightest possible mayo-and-cracker mixture and finished with Old Bay, the Chesapeake region's defining DC restaurant plate. Start with where to eat Chesapeake blue crab cake in Washington DC.
Chesapeake blue crab cake · Washington DC
Plump lump-blue-crab cakes bound with the lightest possible mayo-and-cracker mixture and finished with Old Bay, the Chesapeake region's defining DC restaurant plate.
The Chesapeake blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) has been the regional shellfish from Maryland to Virginia since pre-colonial times. The modern crab cake template, mostly meat with a near-invisible binder, dates from the 1930s Chesapeake Bay seafood houses; the Old Bay seasoning that finishes the cakes was invented in Baltimore in 1939 by German-immigrant Gustav Brunn. In DC, the high-end crab cake became a power-lunch dish in the postwar Capitol Hill steakhouses. Today Old Ebbitt Grill, founded 1856 and the city's oldest saloon, serves more than 1000 crab cakes a week. A standard order is two cakes broiled, never fried; the test of a kitchen is how invisible the binder is.
Where to eat in Washington DC:
- Old Ebbitt Grill
- The Salt Line
Where to eat Chesapeake blue crab cake in Washington DC: the editor picks