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The Crab Cake Monster:  A Tale from Sonoma

8/17/05

My third wedding of the summer was the wedding of James "Jim" Tybur and his lovely now-wife Marie Gupta.  I wasn't on the invite for this one; my friend Jennifer (friends call her JY) said hey, that Justin guy loves weddings...so, why not have him tag along?  Besides, it's in San Francisco, so this should be a walk in the park.

I knew Jim back in school; we played ball together, and I got to know him a little better when I was living out in California since we ran in a similar UVA circle, along with Eric "Steak" Tracy and the Mueller boys.  Good guy.  One of those nice guys that seems to end up with a great-paying job, a big house, a beautiful wife, the big piece of chicken.  Sure, he's not a great b-ball player, but he'll still end up with the big piece of chicken and that's fine by Jim.

Even if I was still living in San Francisco, I would still have been on the B or C list of potential invitees for this wedding, so it was cool to get the back-in invite through a friend since it would be a place where I would know a bunch of people.  Familiar faces were everywhere.  A girl that lived in my first-year dorm was in attendance; my fourth-year class president was there with his boyfriend; naturally, Steak was there, maybe my most random of friends due to how often I get to see him; hell, even Chinh "Bobby" Le was hangin' out, with a beautiful girlfriend that doubled as his co-worker.  (Oh, Chinh, you sly, dirty dog, you!)

Certainly the most ritzy of the ceremonies I will be hitting this year, Jim and Marie (or maybe it was Marie, along with Jim) picked the Gloria Ferrer winery in Sonoma, CA for their reception, following a three-hour layover after their wedding rites ceremony was performed.  You can probably look at me and tell that since my normal tastes include Mountain Dew, Kiwi Strawberry Snapple and the occasional glass of Tropical Punch Kool-Aid, I don't know a good bottle of pinot noir from the backside of your grandmother's ass...my wine knowledge is equally as coarse and I am therefore resigned to being the guy at most wineries that sips wine like he has no idea what he is doing.

Earlier in the day, JY and I hit four wineries near our hotel, and the ensuing comedy involved JY--who actually knows and understands a bit about how wines are made, how to look like a reasonably-professional taster, etc.--tasting wines at the various wineries while I was the guy that played along, pretending to understand scent and the difference between a "cab", a "pinot", a "merlot", and a "sauvignon."  I couldn't have been any more of a prototype for dead weight; for a second, I thought I saw JY whip out a bodybag, I was so useless.

So, I was prepared for a reception that mirrored my daytime experience--frou-frou people, expensive-looking dinner plates complete with meals that take up only a fifth of the total plate space, a plethora of wines at my disposal and microbrews to complement the more independent nature of the scene.  While my fears were realized in some respects--I was told that we were drinking pretty chic-chic wine, which went right over my head--I got lucky in the area that is becoming more and more clutch as I hit more and more weddings each year...

The crab cakes were fuckin' MONEY!

Now, these weren't crab-cake-dip-at-the-Storms-wedding good, or even as good as the crab cakes that were being served at my boy K-Prenoveau's wedding earlier this summer.  But, in a situation where I need a good crab cake to carry me through the day, this stuff delivered the goods on a grand scale.

Much to my chagrin, these Sonoma crab cakes were "pre-dolloped", meaning that someone had gone off and decided how much tartar/remoulade hybrid sauce should be put on each cake.  Talk about overstepping your bounds; who the hell do you think you are, Pre-Dollop Crab Cake Man, deciding how much lemony tartar I want on my crab sample?  Do you not understand that some of us like to drown our hors d'oeuvres in as much dipping sauce as possible?  Is this some way you are trying to skimp on remoulade sauce by pre-dolloping, after having to shell out big cash to get the crab cakes in the first place?

Sure, the pre-dollop activity is egregious, but more importantly, it doesn't allow me the time I need to make friendly banter with the servers that are ranging the floor with their appetite-killing mini-treats.  I need that extra four-to-ten seconds to take a napkin, get two (more likely three) cakes and dip them in the sauce of choice, while introducing myself to my new best friend.  You see, crab cake eating at a wedding cocktail hour is so similar to dating, or building a relationship, or even negotiating the price of a new car that it is almost scary.

You spend most of that hour making your server feel the love; the hand on the shoulder ("Hey Bob, thanks for bringing those [cakes] over to me.  Don't be a stranger, eh chief?"), the eye contact across the room that almost screams "Daddy's hungry for three more crab cakes", the occasional greasing of the palm when the cakes are, ahem, ALL GONE FOR THE EVENING and you need your boy to come through with just a half dozen more scrumtulicious crab cakes.

Note:  even if it seems like the crab cakes are ALL GONE FOR THE EVENING, trust me, they aren't.  Wedding servers are notorious for feeling like they deserve more than the $100-$200/night fee, a free dinner, booze that they can often take home, and appetizers galore, so they will often leave aside a few crab cake leftovers for the staff, say a plate or two, for their own consumption.  Your chance to get a few of those crab cakes is brief, but if you get in good with a particular server and you don't mind putting even $5 in his breast pocket, I'm telling you, it's worth it.  (No, I didn't do that at the wedding in Sonoma, because I was there as the guest as someone else and I didn't want to be "that guy."  But if JY wasn't around, it was on!)

If you play your cards right, you are nearly full from just the crab cakes by the end of the cocktail hour, plus you can have a few drinks and not feel the buzz because you have been frontloading your booze with so much crab cake.  Sure, some of the people standing around you are naturally going to be upset at you for eating at least a small share of their potential crab cake pre-dinner, but it's every man for himself out there...as a great man once said,

"Greed...is good.  Greed is right.  Greed works."

After loading up on the cakes (by my count, I had 14 total...and, I think Steak had more), dinner is a breeze, no matter how good or bad it is, because you are already pretty much done eating by the time you have finished your salad.  This turned out to be money in my case, because the entree was a chicken dish stuffed with pine nuts; since I am allergic to nuts, I got my dinner switched to the vegetarian option (this, in and of itself, is almost worth an essay of its own), a plate of very attractive risotto.  I've never had rice that comforted the palette so well, but since it wasn't very big and I wasn't very hungry, it was a match made in heaven.

Sure, the wedding, reception and post-reception hang time at the hotel with Steak and the gang was cool...but, I think that the Tybur wedding really solidified the importance of the crab cake--and, good hors d'oeuvres in general.  I guess free is free, but if free is free AND tasty, well you can't beat that, now can you?  Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got another wedding to rampage in Wisconsin!!

 

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell & Longer Community Trust:

• Scoring with a girl that tried to go back to her room but realized she had lost her room key...which you had snatched and hid in a drawer yourself:  Opening Weekend

• Having someone comment on the bennies of a goatee:  $9.50 Show

• Swing dancing:  Matinee

• That new show "Wanted" on TNT:  Rental

• Having your fiancée call off the engagement four months before game time:  Hard Vice

 

justin@bellviewmovies.com