Maryland Crab Cake appears as a signature dish in 1 United States cities. See each city's local variant and where to eat it.
Maryland crab cake · Baltimore
The Baltimore crab cake is jumbo lump blue crab held together with almost no filler and broiled, not fried, so the sweet meat does the talking. The no-filler version is the local point of pride.
Crab cakes grew out of the Chesapeake's 19th-century oyster-and-crab economy, when Baltimore was the world's leading seafood-packing port. The Maryland style, jumbo lump bound with just egg, mustard and a little binder, then broiled, became fixed as the gold standard. Faidley's at Lexington Market, selling crab cakes since 1886, is often credited with setting the no-filler benchmark that locals still defend against fried, filler-heavy versions elsewhere.
Where to eat in Baltimore:
- Faidley's Seafood
- Gertrude's Chesapeake Kitchen
- Thames Street Oyster House
- True Chesapeake Oyster Co.