Feasting on crab: Soft on the outside, amazing within

As did most restaurants, we fried the crabs so that the sheath of crunchy breading could slightly obscure the reality of eating an exoskeleton. The freshest ones tasted so sweet and the meat had such a lush, juicy texture that eating it became a joyful act of consumption. I think of it, loosely, like the savory version of biting into a chocolate bunny and finding it solid rather than the expected brittle shell.

I had not witnessed such soft-shell mania again until I visited Charleston in mid-April, during the first blowout week of “softie” season there. I spent a weekend evening restaurant-hopping with my friend Hanna Raskin, the restaurant critic for the Post and Courier newspaper, who is half my weight but has twice my appetite. We ate and drank a little at one bar and then a little at the next, until I cried uncle.

By the second stop, it became clear we were on a soft-shell crab crawl. There is no saying no to something that has such a short season — typically three to six weeks — and is so unlike any other food.

The bar was set high right at the beginning, as we drank daiquiris at the Ordinary, a well-loved seafooderia-oyster bar, and split a soft-shell sandwich. I recall a fried crab snuggled between two slices of thick toast with fresh mayo, lettuce and a preternaturally ripe April tomato. It was the kind of overstuffed sandwich that chose not to dissolve into a pile of mush in your hands, and so I found myself eating my half with a kind of rhythmic, grunting gusto, not wanting to ever place it back on the plate.

Both the crisp batter on the crab and the golden toast on the bread drew your attention away from the texture of the shell, which is composed mainly of calcium and chitin, a polysaccharide that I think is what calls to mind the texture of plastic straws.

A softie sandwich at the bar at Leon’s Fine Poultry & Oysters contained a thick smear of pimento cheese — interesting, but a bit rococo for my taste. Even so, the crab was so fresh I could still feel that toe-curling pleasure of the first bite through the thorax. (When it comes to soft-shells, we are all either claw people or thorax people.)

And so it went. I hit the wall late that evening, as we sat down to an entree of fried soft-shells in a sweet Asian chili sauce at Xiao Bao Biscuit.

Soft-shells are all over Atlanta, and I’ve gathered up some preparations around town. I don’t know how long the season will last, so please forgive me if, by the time you read this, the choices are fewer. Or if, in my quest to eat as many as I can, I’ve personally finished them all off.