Crab

Phillips Crab Deck is now open in Annapolis. The 140-seat terrace restaurant, which opened very quietly on Aug. 16, marks Phillips Seafood's return to Annapolis -- in  the same Dock Street location that it left in 2009. It was replaced there by Hell Point Seafood, which shut its doors in late February of this year. Phillips Crab Deck, which is open daily for lunch and dinner beginning at 11:30 a.m., occupies only one of three buildings -- 14 Dock St. -- that housed the Phillips Annapolis Harbor Restaurant and then Hell Point Seafood.

The Maryland State Fair begins on Friday, and the Midway will again be the place for perennial favorites such as funnel cake and Italian sausage. But there are a few new twists for 2012, according to Jim Ingram of Deggeller Attractions, the Stuart, Fla.-based carnival company that stocks the Midway with rides, amusements and food. Making their Timonium debut will be two new chicken booths, one selling a variety of wings with fresh-cut fries and the other chicken-on-a-stick with ribbon fries.

The Orioles put an interesting spin on how they decided the draft order for their annual team fantasy football draft this past weekend - with the help of some Maryland blue crabs. Reliever Darren O'Day wanted to do something more exciting than just picking names out of a hat. At first, O'Day was thinking about having a snail race, but he soon found out snails aren't that easy to purchase. “It's hard to buy them,” O'Day said of the snails. “I was looking out looking in the garden, and I looked down in the harbor because I live right down by the water and I saw crabs everywhere.

Would you rather be loved or respected? The Mo's group of seafood restaurants and markets gets a lot of the former and not much of the latter. When Anthony Bourdain chose Mo's to represent Baltimore dining on a 2009 "No Reservations" episode, Baltimore foodies were annoyed. Why Mo's, of all places? Mo's might not be where you'd send someone to form a lasting impression of Maryland seafood. But two locations near the Inner Harbor have outlived a number of highfalutin seafood restaurants that weren't as smart about catering to tourist tastes.

More crabs to catch and fewer rules by which to catch 'em. That'd be the Holy Grail for Chesapeake watermen. It's why top crabbers in Maryland, from Havre de Grace to Smith Island, have been traveling monthly, for the past 18 months, to long and sometimes contentious meetings with state regulators. Their Blue Crab Design Team is a unique and immensely hopeful development in the long history of harvesting the bay's seafood. I give watermen and Maryland's Department of Natural Resources lots of credit for trying it. The goal is to break with the commercial fisheries management that's been traditional here and other places - regulators trying to make it harder to fish for watermen who in turn try to fish harder.

Chefs are getting ready to throw down their best crab dishes at the Crab Bash. On Tuesday night, 10 regional chefs will compete in a Best Crab Dish contest at the third annual Crab Bash hosted by the B&O American Brasserie and the Hotel Monaco Baltimore . The event is a benefit for the National Aquarium.   The very best thing about the Crab Bash -- it's True Blue certified, so every crab thing you taste will have been made with...

Is that Maryland crab meat in your crab cake, or is it from parts unknown? Some diners can tell the difference between Maryland and imported crab meat with one bite. Some folks don't care much, but diners who do now have a way of finding restaurants that promise to serve exclusively Maryland crab meat. Launched this spring by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the True Blue program allows restaurants serving DNR-verified Maryland blue crab products to use a special logo in marketing or advertising the product to diners.

The Barn Crab House, the longtime Carney destination for steamed crabs and live music, has closed.  The Facebook page for the venue was boiling over with concern on Tuesday morning, and later in the day, Paul Wisner, one of the Barn's current co-owners, sent out an email confirming the news: "I regret to inform everyone that due to circumstances beyond my control, management and extenuating circumstances over the past year that has just recently...

More than 50 restaurants have signed onto the Maryland's 'True Blue' certification program and marketing campaign. Launched this spring by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the 'True Blue' certification program allows restaurants serving DNR-verified Maryland blue crab products to use a special logo in marketing or advertising the product. 'True Blue' wasn't so much designed to convert restaurant owners and diners to Maryland crab meat as it was to help diners who want Maryland crab meat find restaurants that serve it. “We're not saying that imported crab meat can't be delicious,” said DNR Fisheries Marketing Director Steve Vilnit when the program was announced.

I have lived in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed for more than 30 years, and I have cracked dozens of crabs in the summertime, but I am embarrassed to say that until recently, I had never been crabbing. I don't mean tying a chicken neck to a piece of string and hanging it off the side of a dock while sitting next to a cooler of beer and a boom box. I mean real crabbing, like a real waterman. Over the years, almost all the crabs I have eaten have been from a pile in the middle of my friend Betsy's dining room table, straight from the crab pot in her back yard, the rewards of regular Sunday morning crabbing trips.