Crack Into Crab Season

Wtih the Dungeness season under way, we catch a ride with a crab fisherman on the steep and lonely swells of the Pacific as he wrestles in the goods. Then we're off to the docks, where the feisty haul is weighed and packed for delivery. Finally we land at Walnut Creek Yacht Club to cook up our catch using the recipes of chef Kevin Weinberg. Come along for a ride and a meal of a lifetime.

Photography by Mitch Tobias

(page 3 of 3)

Chapter Three. Sweet Eating

You talk to people from the east coast, they’ll tell you, ‘Oh no, blue crab’s better,’ and I’m like, ‘You’ve got to be out of your mind,’ ” scoffs executive chef Kevin Weinberg as he sits at a booth inside his sailing-themed restaurant in downtown Walnut Creek. “You get one fat Dungeness crab, two pounds, and you have a nice big meal with big chunks of meat. You have to go through eight little blue crabs to do that.”

Yet despite the fact that quality Dungeness is available nearly year-round, the Walnut Creek Yacht Club places it on the menu only from November through March, when the Bay Area catch is in full season. That’s partly in support of the local crab fishing industry and partly because eating Dungeness during the holiday season is a longtime Bay Area tradition.

When Weinberg moved to this area, in time to spend his junior and senior years at Las Lomas High, he and his family embraced the unique local customs of cracked crab before Christmas and Thanksgiving, and cioppino on Christmas day. That association with the holidays makes the Dungeness season resonate particularly strongly here.

“It’s cultural, it’s what you grew up with,” he says. “When the crab season opens in the Bay Area—that’s when a lot of people get excited, even though you can get it throughout the rest of the year. It’s kind of our season and our crab.”

Weinberg says the first few weeks of the season are hectic. The restaurant routinely sells out of crabs and can go through as many as 50 per day all the way through New Year’s. The most popular version, by far, remains the classic, messy cracked crab.

“It’s tasty. You’re cracking crab and you’re eating, and you’re laughing and you’re sharing—it’s tactile,” he says. “Everyone has their own thing with the cracked crab. Some people like to crack and clean it all, and have a big pile of meat and eat it; some people do little bits as they go. Some like it cold, some like it hot, some like it with mayonnaise, and some like it with melted butter.”

Weinberg, along with his business partner, Ellen McCarty, started Walnut Creek Yacht Club in 1997, in large part because his brother-in-law owns Osprey, where they get all their product. Beyond the family connection, Weinberg also agrees with his seafood supplier’s focus on working with small-scale local fishermen because they tend to fish in a more sustainable manner.

And just as important come Dungeness season, these fishermen tend to supply the freshest, liveliest crustaceans, which make the best eating.

“It’s nice because we buy everything live and cook everything here,” says Weinberg. “You’re getting it from the crabber to the wholesaler to us, so it’s a short chain.”