Fest Features Crab Cake To End All Crab Cakes

Hankering For A 240-pounder? Try Hampden This Weekend

Baltimore could set a delicious world record this weekend.

At the annual Honfest in Hampden, an Old Bay-seasoned veteran will attempt to top his title Saturday for the world's largest crab cake.

That would be 240 pounds of seafood goodness.

If it makes the Guinness World Records list - or even if it doesn't - hundreds of people will be able to have a bite of the huge creation to benefit Special Olympics of Maryland.

"I am very excited that we are producing the world's largest crab cake ever," says Denise Whiting, the festival organizer and owner of Cafe Hon. "We call the festival Baltimore's best time, and wouldn't Baltimore's best time include crab cakes?"

Honfest runs from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and from noon to 6 p.m. Sunday along four blocks of 36th Street, also known as "The Avenue."

Other attractions include a "glamour lounge," billed as a place to apply a little (or a lot) of makeup and perhaps a requisite beehive wig; the attitude-fueled "Best Hon" contest; regional art; and a scavenger hunt sponsored by the Pompeian olive oil company.

Jim Cupp, a sales manager for Handy International, a seafood-processing company in Crisfield, will attempt to best the crab cake record he set last year at Dover Downs.

That 235-pound crab Goliath earned Cupp bragging rights - though he's not a bragging sort of guy. He'll only allow that he considers his record-making "kind of cool." His wife, he adds, "doesn't particularly care for the crab cake thing."

Guinness is a tad funny about its crab cake statistics. The record keepers insist on calling it a "fish cake," which really only increases the competition.

"It could be a crab cake, a salmon cake, a tuna cake, a shrimp cake," Cupp says, adding that if Guinness separated out all of those types of cakes, it would have "a Bubba Gump scenario" on its hands.

He and a team of volunteers will start cooking the crab cake - right on the street - at about 4 a.m. If all goes as planned, it should be ready to eat at about 1 p.m.

Lump, backfin and special crab will mix with pasteurized egg, bread crumbs, mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, green onion and, as Cupp says, "just a touch of hot sauce."

Don't worry, there will also be Old Bay. He's not crazy. This is Baltimore, after all. This is Honfest.

All of those ingredients will cook up slowly in a huge, $10,000 custom pan.

There will be a videographer and a certified scale on hand to make sure the crab cake is, sizewise, legit.

Tastewise, it will be up to the masses.

For $10 each, people will be able to buy sandwiches made from the potentially record-breaking crab cake. All of the proceeds will benefit Special Olympics because all of the hundreds of pounds of crab involved were donated by Cupp's company, Handy.

There will also be T-shirts and hats for sale to mark the potentially record-breaking occasion.

Cupp promises he won't only be making fish cake history, but something pretty tasty. People ate up every last crumb of his last effort.

If you go

Honfest starts at 11 a.m. Saturday and continues Sunday along 36th Street in Hampden. Free. Call 410-440-8088 or go to honfest.net.