A guide to crustaceans and Polynesia on The Bay

Crab Decks & Tiki Bars of the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland Third Edition — book review

By Susan Elnic­ki Wade and Bill Wade; 480 pages; book pub­lished May 8, 2015, using the Cre­ate­Space Inde­pen­dent Pub­lish­ing Plat­form; Paper­back, $25.

This is a doorstop of a book, by which I mean it is quite hefty, and obvi­ous­ly a lot of work went into it. As it hap­pens, I’m review­ing the Mary­land Third Edi­tion. The book has a cou­ple of sis­ter pub­li­ca­tions: Crab Decks & Tiki Bars of the Chesa­peake Bay, Vir­ginia Sec­ond Edi­tion (with a third ver­sion of the Vir­ginia edi­tion due soon), and Chesa­peake Oys­ter Lovers’ Hand­book (we hope to pub­lish a review of that book in the near future). All  of these titles are by the hus­band and wife team of Susan Elnic­ki Wade and Bill Wade, who live in Wash­ing­ton, DC.  They are also at work on anoth­er book with the work­ing title of Booze on the Bay, to cov­er brew­eries, winer­ies and dis­til­leries in the Bay region.

The Index lists over 200 restau­rants by name. At first, though, it appears there are a lot more than that. But if you look care­ful­ly, only the bold-faced entries are cur­rent­ly oper­at­ing restau­rants. The many oth­er entries are either for restau­rants that have changed names, with a cross-ref­er­ence to the new name, or restau­rants that have gone out of busi­ness (indi­cat­ed by a skull and cross­bones rather than a page num­ber). This fea­ture will be use­ful for those look­ing for a favorite spot that’s sta­tus has changed.

Book organization

The book is orga­nized by geog­ra­phy, start­ing its list­ings of restau­rants and bars at Wash­ing­ton, D.C. and then work­ing its way down the Mary­land shore of the Potomac (includ­ing the mouth of the Wicomi­co Riv­er) to where it emp­ties into the Chesa­peake. Then it includes spots along the Patux­ent Riv­er, fol­lowed by the west­ern shore of the Chesa­peake from the mouth of the Potomac up to the Susque­han­na Riv­er, then back down the east­ern shore of the Mary­land part of The Bay. The authors spec­i­fied two cri­te­ria for inclu­sion in the book: 1. The restaurant/​bar must be near the water (either The Bay or one of its trib­u­taries); and 2. It must serve local crabs — seems rea­son­able to me. There is one addi­tion­al con­straint: each list­ing is lim­it­ed to just two pages.

Features

The book offers sev­er­al inter­est­ing fea­tures:

• Dri­ving dis­tances from Bal­ti­more, MD, Wash­ing­ton, DC, and Eas­t­on, MD.
• Lat­i­tude and lon­gi­tude of the loca­tion, the clos­est body of water, and whether or not they offer dock­age.
• A map of the loca­tion, show­ing a pin at the exact loca­tion on a large-scale map, with an inset small-scale map to give you a big-pic­ture view of the loca­tion.
• A 1 – 10 scale “atmos­phere meter,” with the casu­al end being a 1 on the scale (beers) and the for­mal end is a 10 on the scale (mar­ti­nis). Thumb­ing through the book, it appears most places are rat­ed at around 3, and I only spot­ted one place rat­ed a 10, or very for­mal.

If you’re look­ing for restau­rants and bars in South­ern Mary­land, then pages 18 – 165 are the ones for you (also, page 2 is a map that shows places in D.C., plus the upper Potomac). The list­ings of South­ern Mary­land spots encom­pass 70 restau­rants, or close to a third of the list­ings in the book.

If you’ve spent much time in South­ern Mary­land, then you’ve prob­a­bly seen most of the list­ed places, and prob­a­bly vis­it­ed more than a few of them. I know we have. The descrip­tions pro­vide an idea as to what the place is like, what its food is like, and per­haps a bit of his­to­ry as well.

Kudos

Giv­en the num­ber of places they’re track­ing, and how rel­a­tive­ly slow the book pro­duc­tion process can be, they offer updates to the list­ings on their web­site, which can be found by click­ing here.

The loca­tion and dock­age infor­ma­tion makes this a very use­ful book for boaters. The Index by Bod­ies of Water is anoth­er fea­ture that many boaters will appre­ci­ate, as they can then quick­ly find places near where they hap­pen to be afloat at the moment.

The sheer com­pre­hen­sive­ness of the vol­ume is a major plus.

Gripes

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, they don’t offer an e-book edi­tion. My Kin­dle longs for it.

If you’ve read some of my oth­er reviews, you’ll know I’ve com­plained about there being too much empha­sis on high-qual­i­ty paper and the repro­duc­tion of images, result­ing in unnec­es­sary high­er costs for both ship­ping and the book itself. In this case, the paper used is fine, and many of the pho­tographs look pret­ty good, but some of them look to have been scanned at a fair­ly low res­o­lu­tion, or poor con­trast, and there’s evi­dence of some streak­ing (per­haps that’s an arti­fact of the print­ing process used). It may be that low­er qual­i­ty pho­tos were all they had for some of the places, and they set them­selves a goal of at least one pho­to per busi­ness, so they had to use what was avail­able. There’s evi­dence of streak­ing in many of the maps, too.

Despite its three index­es, I think the book could use a more gen­er­al index, with list­ings along the lines of types of cui­sine (Greek, Ital­ian, and Irish [it’s always nice to know where the near­est Guin­ness may be found] being pos­si­bil­i­ties), and cer­tain dish­es, such as piz­za, burg­ers, hot dogs, oys­ters, clams, BBQ, etc.

Conclusion

My gripes are of the min­i­mal sort, and none of the things I point­ed out sig­nif­i­cant­ly detract from the val­ue of the book. I would cer­tain­ly rec­om­mend this book to any­one plan­ning to spend time search­ing out food and drink in South­ern Mary­land, or oth­er parts of The Bay for that mat­ter. And, it espe­cial­ly deserves a place aboard your sail­boat, trawler or cab­in cruis­er. ♦