Jimmy’s Famous Seafood carries on

Battles with PETA don’t deter restaurant from its crab mission

Picture it: Hillcrest Heights, Md., summer of 19-- … well, never mind the year.

A young boy is taken by his parents to something called a crab feast. Beneath a tent outside his local Catholic church, he watches in horror as grownups pound, rip and chomp their way through mounds of crab carcasses. The child longs to flee the horrid sights, sounds and smells.

Flash forward to Baltimore 2018, where that now-grown-up boy, perhaps the only Marylander averse to crabs, dines at Jimmy’s Famous Seafood, the long-standing restaurant engaged in a billboardand-social-media fray with PETA all about, yes, crabs.

PETA, you will recall, started it with the giant sign depicting a still-living crab and the message: “I’m ME, Not MEAT. See the individual. Go vegan.” Jimmy’s response, printed alongside the photo of a ready-for-eating crustacean: “SteaMEd crabs. Here to stay. Get Famous.”

Me, I’d prefer a fight over crab cakes, which I can deal with more easily, but the brouhaha made me curious about the action at Jimmy’s, a proudly family-run operation that opened in 1974.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to tackle the hapless crabs myself, but I brought along a trusty, crab-crazy ally to do the pummeling and tearing. I also took comfort in knowing that Jimmy’s menu includes lots of beyond-crab items to keep me otherwise engaged.

As it turned out, the steamed crabs we ordered left us imagining a billboard that said: “MEH.”

Although the presentation was promising, with an ear of corn and potatoes sharing the pot with half a dozen medium-to-large crabs, the extracted meat didn’t have much taste or texture. Maybe that explains the undistinguished flavor of the broiled crab cake that accompanied a turf-and-surf entree. Just an