Feeling crabby
I AM EATING whole fried crab in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco, famous for, well, whole fried crab. I am intrigued. How do you fry a whole crab in the shell, and how do you eat it? I grew up here, eating Dungeness at every opportunity, but never fried.
I found this restaurant online, close to my layover hotel where I’ve actually never slept. I always went home to stay with my mother, a wonderful benefit of working for an airline, getting paid while visiting family, joining my crew at the airport the next morning. Unfortunately, my mother died the year before and I haven’t been back to San Francisco since, too many memories, too depressing, too sad. Too empty.
The street level of the restaurant is a bar, downstairs the dining room. I am escorted down a staircase and seated in a large room filled with many tables all occupied with Chinese diners, their children scampering around. I am the only Caucasian in the room.
I order one whole fried Dungeness crab. The server brings me a crisply folded white linen napkin, a pair of chopsticks, a cup of tea and a teapot for refills. No crab cracker, no little fork or metal pick to remove crab from shell, just chopsticks.
The crab is delivered to my table. It’s big, spectacular, displayed beautifully on a plate. It has been dipped in a light batter and fried whole in the shell. The server removes the large outer shell with a flourish and now I am on my own, just me, my crab and my chopsticks.
I have no idea how to eat a crab with chopsticks. I look furtively around the room at the other diners, expertly plucking pieces of crab from the shell with their chopsticks, popping a piece into their mouths or giving some to their children. The little kids use their chopsticks as adeptly as their parents. I don’t want to make a fool out of myself or attract any more attention than I already have. I dive in.
The fried outer part is greasy, slippery, hard to hold on to. I extract pieces of sweet, delectable crab from the body, the legs, the claws. It is delicious, like no crab I’ve ever eaten. I use my chopsticks, my fingers, my teeth, pull crab out of the shell any way I can, not caring what I look like or who’s watching. There are bits of crab EVERYWHERE, on the plate, on the table, on my hands. There is crab in my hair! There is even crab in my purse, sitting on the empty chair beside me.
Once I have finished, the server brings the check with a little hot towel and a fortune cookie. I wipe my hands, pay the bill, get up to go to the restroom to wash my hands. That little hot towel is way too small for the destruction I have created. The floor is oily, greasy, slippery from all that frying. I skate to the bathroom, sliding along, holding onto the wall, praying I don’t fall.
My fortune cookie reads “In your lifetime you will travel to many exotic places”.
