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...
