TILGHMAN ISLAND - As Cornell Hunter finished his lunch, he sat back and engaged in the arbitrary yet habit-forming pastime of rating crab cakes.
Always a popular regional undertaking, crab-cake rating reaches its height in the coming weeks. The crab-eating cognoscente know that the weeks after Labor Day are when the waters of the Chesapeake Bay begin to cool, the crabs begin to fatten and their meat becomes sweeter.
Looking at the remnants of the crab cake that sat before him in Harrison's Chesapeake House restaurant, Hunter declared, "It was one of the best I have eaten in the past six months." Hunter, a Northrop Grumman retiree from Baltimore, declined to give his age, but said he had been eating crab cakes for "over 43 years."
He said the dish was well worth the 80-mile trek that he had made from Baltimore on Saturday, traveling on a tour bus that took a detour to Tilghman Island on its way for Atlantic City. "It had a good, country style taste," Hunter said.
The capricious nature of crab-cake rating became apparent as Zenette Mullen, another day-tripper from Baltimore who sat a few tables away from Hunter, offered a different assessment of the same dish. The Harrison's crab cake was good, she said. But, she felt it did not quite measure up to her favorites at Romanos restaurant in Glen Burnie, G & M Restaurant and Lounge in Linthicum Heights, Sea King restaurant in Randallstown, or for that matter, the crab cakes that she had feasted on the night before at the Windsor Inn in Woodlawn.
Still another view came from Joseph Lee who rated the crab cake as "pretty good ... it had that taste that I love." Yet Lee, who cooks for himself, a skill he learned 58 years ago as a 17- year-old soldier in World War II, said he would rank the Harrison crab cake as third on his list of favorites. Second place, he said, would go the one served at Faidley's Seafood in Baltimore's Lexington Market. And first place would go to the ones he makes with cracker crumbs at his West Baltimore home.
Eaters who venture into the realm of rating crab cakes learn to tread softly. There are some matters of technique to deal with - whether the binder is made with bread crumbs or crackers, whether the crabs hail from local waters or from afar, and whether the cooking method is frying or broiling. But the realm is awash with personal preferences, traditions and "momma saids."
