[title type="h5"]
Saturday, August 1, 2015.
Crabby's Shack For A Burger. Fried Pickles. Artichoke Hearts.[/title]
Today's WWL radio show doesn't begin until five this afternoon. giving me the entire day free. Mary Ann and I meet up at Crabby's Shack in Madisonville. Weren't we in there just last night? Yes, but the two restaurants have nothing in common. I am thinking about having a roast beef poor boy, but I'm distracted by, of all things, the hamburger. Keith Young, who owns Crabby's as well as the steak house that bears his name, began his career in his family's Slidell steakhouse. That business started out in the 1960s as a hamburger specialist. The burgers at Young's were so good that, decades after the restaurant served its last one, their customers are still asking why they don't bring back the hamburgers.
In his own place, Keith Young put a hamburger on his lunch menu, where it is much liked. The Marys--especially the older one--are my gauge of hamburger excellence, and they say Keith Young's are in the upper echelon.
I ask the waiter at Crabby's whether the hamburger here is the same as the one at Keith Young's. "You know how Mr. Keith is," he says. "He only uses the best of everything."
I order a hamburger poor boy, of which Mary Ann is very happy to accept half in lieu of her own entree. She fills out her menu with a basket of fried artichoke hearts. I get some fried pickle slices for first a snack then as a garnish for the hamburger. All of this is high kitsch, of course, but it hits the spot. We both wonder why more hamburger poor boys are not served in sandwich shops. We decide it's because not many shops have raw materials as good as those Keith Young buys.
Mary Leigh is across the lake working on her pastries. She comes home at the perfect moment. I have just finished the radio show, and my appetite has ramped up enough to go for ML's plan that we go to the good old Acme for supper. I order a half-dozen raw oysters. The server brings a half-dozen (seven actually) grilled oysters. I see what I expect from that effort: this is the time of year when oysters shrivel distressingly as they cook. I eat them anyway, and just let the swap slide. But somehow the manager--who knows us well as regulars--gets wind of the problem and brings me a platter of eight medium-size, cold, delicious raw oysters. Which I enjoy greatly, with a side salad. MA gets her favorite wedge salad. We joke around more than usual, and it recalls for me all the wonderful weekend time we spent when she was a little girl and loved spending time with Daddy.
