Maine Avenue Fish Market in Washington DC

I remembered reading about the Maine Avenue Fish Market sometime in the past. While visiting Washington DC, I decided I should visit this place. The Maine Avenue Fish Market is the oldest seafood market in the country and consists of several floating barges filled with all sorts of seafood docked around a wharf. The floating seafood market setup was way cool and the place had a very unique feel.

I couldn't quite figure out if all of the barges here had the same owners or not. Captain White's seemed to be one of the big vendors here, but there were other names on the barges as well. Some barges only sold fresh fish for you to buy and cook at home, while others had pre-cooked seafood, and yet others cooked your food on the spot.

I went with a barge that cooked the seafood. Crabs seemed like the thing to get here. I went with a half dozen blue crabs. This seemed like a good deal for $7, plus the whole process of eating the crabs in a fish market was quite the experience.

The live crabs were hand picked, sprinkled with seasoning, and dropped into a steamer.

After about fifteen minutes, the crabs were cooked. They were placed in a paper bag and were ready to eat.

Besides my crabs, I also got a bowl of clam chowder here. The creamy soup was tasty with lots of pieces of clam and big chunks of potato.

To eat the crabs, there was a small dining area by the water. There were no seats. Everyone stood around counters smashing their crabs open with mallets and devouring the very fresh, sweet crab meat.

I very much enjoyed my visit to the Maine Avenue Fish Market. I suppose if you don't like seafood, this place wouldn't be for you, but why would you be going to a fish market in the first place? The whole setup of buying seafood from barges floating in the river was something that I've never seen before and was a fun experience.

It looks like Anthony Bourdain did a segment on the Maine Avenue Fish Market on an episode of No Reservations.

Palatka Blue Crab Festival 2010

I visited the 2010 Blue Crab Festival in Palatka, FL that happened over Memorial Day weekend. I had the full intention of eating crab prior to going, and it sounded even better when the price of blue crabs at one stand was lowered to $1.

When I went to buy the crabs, I found out they were putting the cooked crabs into plastic bags and handing them over. None of the normal crab eating equipment was supplied at the festival. There were no mallets, crackers, or little forks. If I wanted to eat the crabs as a late lunch/early dinner as I had planned, it would have required the removal of crab meat from the shells with my bare hands. This seemed like far too much work to make it worthwhile, so I gave up on my idea of having crab for dinner.

It was decided that rather than buying the evening's seafood from the festival, we would go to a nearby restaurant instead. Before leaving the festival though, I did buy a tray of these fresh cut potato chips, topped with sriracha. There were no hard shells that needed to be removed on these potatoes, thus making an ideal festival food.

I liked the Blue Crab Festival. It was in a great location along the St. Johns River in historic downtown Palatka. They had plenty of tents set up with people selling their wares and even a small carnival midway, but the food part just confused me. It was a blue crab festival, but yet only a single vendor was selling blue crabs, and they didn't supply the tools normally associated with eating the namesake seafood. Seems a bit strange that you can't physically eat blue crabs on the premises of a blue crab festival...