Rachel Troyer watched the video with a mix of pride and something else.
Keith Lee, a self-taught food critic, had visited the Rosedale crab house where she’s the general manager, and then posted about it on TikTok to his 16.5 million followers. By Thursday morning, around a dozen of her friends, family members and co-workers had sent the video to her about his trip to Kahler’s Crabhouse.
“It was definitely a ‘pinch me’ moment,” Troyer said.
But watching Lee’s family members struggle with and smash the steamed crustaceans in the back of a van, Troyer winced. At one point, Lee’s wife, Ronni, placed two palms down on the crab as though performing chest compressions, cracking the body. “I want to invite them back and show them the correct way,” to pick crabs, Troyer said.
Her feelings were echoed by many who watched Lee’s recent installment from the crab house. “Every Marylander is dying inside watching them crack their crabs,” commented one. Said another: “The crab opening … my Maryland heart screamed.”
Lee, who has a shellfish allergy and didn’t eat the crabs himself, stopped by Rosedale on a whirlwind trip through the area. Earlier this week, the Las Vegas resident also posted a glowing endorsement of Baltimore’s Rooted Rotisserie, leading to a flood of reservations at the tiny Hollins Market restaurant. On Thursday afternoon, one Kahler’s customer said he had come in after his wife watched Lee’s video.
The challenge of picking a steamed crab is the subject of a poem by Kondwani Fidel, who compares Baltimore to its favorite crustacean. “If you’ve never eaten a crab before you won’t know how by just looking at it,” Fidel wrote.
At Kahler’s, servers routinely offer crab-picking tutorials to customers from out of town. The crab house has seen an uptick in visitors recently thanks in part to being featured in viral videos from influencers like Consquilla Carey, a hairstylist who frequently posts from the restaurant. During a recent stop at the restaurant, diners had come from Virginia and Florida.
While there are some basic principles to picking crabs — don’t eat the lungs, for one — there’s more than one right way to eat them.
Kahler’s manager Natalie Kamberger demonstrated one, flipping a steamed crab on its back and peeling off the apron. Cracking it open, she picked off the lungs and used a knife to scoop out the innards, which were piping hot.
“Some people take the claws off first,” she said. But she doesn’t; she cracks the crab in half down the middle. From there, the skilled crab picker can grab a claw near where it meets the body so that it pulls out a perfect chunk of crabmeat.
There’s a case to be made that the best technique for picking crabs is whatever works. Lee’s video depicts his family members enjoying large pieces of crabmeat — they praise its flavor as fresh and well seasoned (Kahler’s uses their own special blend, not Old Bay, Troyer said).
In the case of Lee’s family, “They did what they needed to do to get it done,” Troyer said, “but there’s much easier ways.”
