![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/colin08.jpg\" "\\"colin08\\"")
<\/a>We\u2019re eating crab cakes in Todd Jurich\u2019s Bistro in Norfolk, Virginia, when the waiter drops us with, \u201cThese are made with fresh crab from Maine.\u201d<\/p>\nBut this is Crabtown, USA! <\/em><\/p>\n \u201c<\/em>Chesapeake Bay crabs go dormant from December through February every year, so if you order these crabs during this period, they may be delicious, but they\u2019ll be frozen.\u201d<\/p>\n The waiter leans forward confidentially, as though he\u2019s about to give us black-market information or some letters of transit hidden inside his lapel. Think Peter Lorre in Casablanca<\/em>:<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re talking about fresh crab between December and February, it\u2019s usually going to be peekytoe crab. By the way, where are you folks from?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe peekytoe crab story is an interesting one,\u201d reports About.com. \u201cThese are Maine rock or sand crabs which were pretty much a throwaway by-product of lobster fishing before a brilliant marketing move changed their name to \u2018peekytoes\u2019 around 1997. They are classified as Cancer irroratus<\/em>, also known as bay crab and rock crab. Nowadays this crab [caught in traps set \u201820 to 40-feet deep\u2019] is highly sought by the most discriminating chefs around the world.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a couple of theories on how it became known as \u2018peekytoe crab.\u2019 Peekytoe is the slang name for these crabs in the lobster fishing villages of Maine. Rod Mitchell, owner of Browne Trading Company, a seafood wholesaler in Portland, is credited with the marketing genius of calling them by their slang name.\u201d<\/p>\n As Mitchell has told us [October 2006], \u201cI made up the name in 1988\u2026I knew a fisherman who always called them \u2018pick-id-toe\u2019 crabs because the back feet were turned in and pointed, and I changed the name to \u2018peekytoe.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The name has scuttled to stardom. And short of using expensive winter dredges, there\u2019s no way for mid-Atlantic states to extract their delicious blue crabs from the muddy beds where, like the rest of us, they dream of spring.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first restaurant to carry peekytoes was Jean-Louis at the Watergate [which closed in 1996 after the death of famed chef and founder Jean-Louis Palladin]. Now they\u2019re on the menus across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n Hmm. <\/em>Watergate\u2026Chesapeake Bay\u2026frozen local crabs in dormant months, Maine crabs substituted with nary a whisper in Foggy Bottom. Who knew there was more than one Watergate conspiracy?<\/p>\n Winterguide 2011 By Colin W. Sargent We\u2019re eating crab cakes in Todd Jurich\u2019s Bistro in Norfolk, Virginia, when the waiter drops us with, \u201cThese are made with fresh crab from Maine.\u201d But this is Crabtown, USA! \u201cChesapeake Bay crabs go dormant from December through February every year, so if you order these crabs during this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-3600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editor","tag-winterguide-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3600"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14497,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3600\/revisions\/14497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"