Our annual survey of seafood in Southeast Louisiana this year counts down the 33 best seafood species enjoyed in our restaurants, seafood markets, and homes. For the full survey so far, click here. Or use the links at the bottom to move up and down the list.
#28: Alaskan King Crab
It may surprise some eaters that Alaskan king crab makes this list of best seafoods available around New Orleans at all. I see their point. Most Alaska king crab is not very good. That's the kind that was frozen who knows when and cooked who knows how. Those are the crab legs you see on boofays. It's pretty tasteless.
However, in the short season for Alaska king crab, a few seafood distributors get it down here fresh. Taste that, and you understand how king crab came to be famous. It's sweet, full of the flavor of the sea, and wonderful, eaten with just a little drawn butter, or nothing at all. You will get this only sporadically, when the fishing boats are active in the winter. There are three varieties--red, golden, and blue, with red being the best.
But you're lucky to get fresh king crab at all. The population crashed in the 1980s, and it's been hard to find since. A few restaurants--Notably GW Fins and Lilette--still get good king crab when it's available. Enjoy it while it's there, and get ready for a price much higher than you remember from when you first learned to eat it, in those cheapo steakhouses in the 1980s.
Unacceptable Alternative. Snow crab legs have filled the gap left by Alaskan king crab in the aforementioned low-end steak joints and casino buffets. Snow crab is only very distantly related to king crab, and tastes nothing like it. It doesn't taste like much at all, in fact.
