Crabby Crab Crab at Oceanaire

Before last night, I hadn’t ever been to The Oceanaire restaurant, in the Galleria. It wasn’t even really on my radar. Well, hello! Where have I been? Last night they had a little media dinner in honor of Florida stone crabs, and guess what? It was great. Not only did we eat stone crabs (only one, sadly, and it was already peeled), we ate dungeness crab, Alaskan king crab, and the most fantastic lump crab cake. If I had more gas, more money and more time, I would go there for lunch and eat this every day.
Jump for more on a guy they keep in the walk-in and chef Chad Kelley’s star turn.

They have a guy whose job is “fish butcher.” He works in the walk-in refrigerator (total brrrr!) all day, cutting up whole fish into the beautiful fillets, etc., that we get to eat. They claim he’s the only one in the city…does anyone know of another one?

Chef Chad Kelley told us he’s a movie star in the making–he’s going to be on the Discovery Channel’s show “The Deadliest Catch” this March. Unless it gets cut, he says. But the Alaskan king crab we ate came from the “Time Bandit,” which is one of the boats in the show. This excited many males at the table.

After all the crab, they plunked down huge slabs of key lime pie in front of us for dessert. It was good, but I’ve heard the Baked Alaska is the dessert to order. Next time.