A traditional San Francisco Crab Feed.

Photo from California Department of Fish & Game

In the 1950’s when I was in grade school once or twice a year we would get a call from my mother’s cousin in San Francisco and she and her husband would drive out to Niles, a small town where we lived in the East Bay now folded into the City of Fremont. It was usually a rainy Saturday or Sunday between St. Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick's Day. Late that afternoon my mother’s parents and other friends and cousins from both sides would pull into our long gravel driveway. The Martin’s would arrive with a large shopping bag with half a dozen round hard crusted loaves of Laraboru (sp?) Sour Dough French Bread and a gunny sack of Dungeness Crabs still warm from the steam pot where they were cooked. My parents would make sure the house was in order and dinning room table had the leaf in it. On these days a card table would be set up near it to hold what wouldn’t fit on the table. Unlike any other time the table would be covered with a thick layer of old newspapers not a table cloth. My mother would make a grocery run and make a big green salad and some other side dishes and bake pies for dessert. There would be wine, the heavy dark unfiltered old vines Zinfandel my Grandfather made every year from the grapes on a hillside in Woodside. There would also be white wine for my grandmother and the others who preferred it.

This traditional “crab feed” as it was always called was something that all the native Californians, both my Irish and Portuguese relatives loved and looked forward to as they had as long as anybody could remember. In New England they had clams and lobsters. In California we had pacific crab and abalone. The crab harvests are now bigger than ever but abalone is is now $50. a serving at the maybe half dozen places in the State that are able to buy it directly from divers.

In the kitchen the dozen crabs would be broken apart, the legs and claws going into big bowls or platters while my mother would break the meat out of the center of the crab and turn the ordinary green salad into a crab louis. Then the feast would begin. We would sit around the table with nutcrackers and metal picks and go after the meat in the legs and claws, the biggest pieces were in the claws. Each of us would make our special blend of condiments to go with the crab from bowls of lemon wedges, thick homemade chili sauce, horseradish, louie dressing, mayonnaise all with or without some tobasco sauce to bring it to the heat level they liked. The loaves of sour dough bread were sliced and we had butter not everyday margarine to spread on the slices. The crab was the main event, but the tangy chewy hard crispy crusted San Francisco sour dough was almost as much a treat since it was not available this far from the city at this time. We could by a good bread made in Oakland, but it never had or could have the “bite” of the real one baked in the city.

This was the 1950’s and dunginess crab was our favorite seafood and while not cheap, it was not so expensive that we didn’t have one or two of these crab dinners during the winter. In Maryland and Virginia families would do the same thing but with the little sweet blue crabs, in Florida they would feast on big thick shelled Stone Crab claws, in Louisiana at different times they would feast on crab or crayfish, gulf shrimp or oysters. The seafood would be boiled and eaten with gusto. Their tables were protected by a thick layer of newspapers too. And when dinner was over their would be a small mountain of shells that always brought on noisy brawl when the neighborhood cats gathered to fight over their crab feast.

As I wrote at the beginning, these were always gray rainy days, but they were also one of the high points of the year. A crab feed rate at the top feasts of the year along with my grandfather's Forth of July barbecue, Thanksgiving Day's turkey dinner and in early fall when my grandmother would cook the first wild mushrooms we would pick. My grandfather would go though the buckets of mushrooms and check each one and if it passed muster he put it into a basket, the doubtful ones went into the garbage.

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Only the locals know.

In most places there is an iconic local fast food item or two that everybody knows and assumes you do too. In LA I would nominate Tommy’s Chili Burgers and Pink’s Chili Dogs. In the Long Beach area it would be the Burger at Hof’s Hut, the iconic Southern California full dress hamburger -- what a New Yorker would call “one ‘a dem California salads on a poi’fectly good hamburger.” (New Yorkers like a burger with mustard and grilled onions just like they like Dogs with mustard & sauerkraut, punchy handfuls that would not get far on this sunny coast.)

Where I grew up on the Oakland side of San Francisco Bay our icon fast food was a Casper’s hot dog. Casper’s began in the 1930’s and the local chain is still owned by the grandchildren of the Armenian founders. Like most iconic handfuls, it is and was simplicity itself -- a very good real Frankfurter on a bun with it’s garnish. At Casper's the steamed sausages were put into a warm steamed bun, about three inches shorter than than the Dog. Then a smear of mustard went on one side, a smear of pickle relish on the other and the cook then sliced two half rounds of onion and two wedges of fresh tomato and slipped them on top of the Dog. That was it. The onions and tomatoes were always sliced when the dog was made. The perfect west coast hot dog and one with a natural casing and the juicy “snap” when you took your first bite. All the garnishes were supporting players to the high quality old country tasting Frankfurter.

Late at night, for lunch, for a snack the Casper’s dog was and remains the Gold Standard of hot dogs. Originally and when I was a kid, that was it, that was what they sold at Casper’s although you could get a bag of potato chips if you wanted and sodas in bottles. At this time it was like that at Tommy’s in LA too. Today the menu has opened up and Casper’s serves chicken dogs, a chili dog, polish sausages and hot links. Still with potato chips, no fries. (Tommy’s has added fries over the years). My parent’s like to stop for a night cap Hot Dog on the way home from a night in San Francisco.

What make a place iconic is the simplicity and directness of their specialty and the good sense and commitment not to mess with it. Longevity is a hallmark of this commitment: Casper’s has been serving their hot dog since 1934, Tommy’s has been serving their chili burger since 1946, Pinks since 1940. All are family owned and this is also important.

In Pasadena there are some very interesting local burger joints, Lucky Boy Burger on Arroyo Seco across the side street from Trader Joe's with it’s big very California hamburger and huge greasy sacks of very good onion rings. You will find a very similar big burger at The Hat although the Hat is better known for their lavish salty Pastrami Sandwich on a large French Roll. Not a deli pastrami sandwich for sure, but it is as good a pastrami sandwich as was ever made by the goyim. One thing the sandwich could use is a better mustard. The quality of the sandwich calls for one with bite and depth, I’d love it if they stepped up and at least offered Gulden’s spicy brown mustard.

Pie & Burger near Cal Tech makes a very west coast burger that is so messy it runs down you forearms, drips onto the counter and down your chin. One thing about Pie & Burger is that you expect to see the four guys from “Big Bang” at one of the tables toward the back of the place. I would expect the very rigid Sheldon would order a customized burger that was both less messy and less fun. Wolf Burgers on Lake street offers a very good burger you get to customize to your exact spec’s along with good breakfasts and a big menu for a burger joint. Wolf Burgers is a good laid back California place with a lot of live potted plants that offers high grade ingredients and really wants to make it exactly the way you want. They have a nice patio to eat al fresco in good weather, which is the usual kind in Pasadena to the envy of all eastern people who watch the New Years Day Rose Parade and hear about it being seventy degrees in Pasadena when they are freezing.

As I said almost every town has it’s favorite if not iconic burger or sandwich, I know there is a place in Sacramento that is famous for making burgers encased and surrounded by melted cheese, there are joints in the Twin Cities that make cheese burgers with the cheese melted inside the meat patty. There are places that flame broil their burgers instead of grilling them on the steel flat top grill. Please use the comments box below to let me know about the favorite if not iconic burgers and dogs from your hometown. I know I have barely scratched the surface. Imagination, a lucky accident or mistake, long time loyalty all make for unique and much loved inventions. There are a lot of them out there.

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