G&M Restaurant Crab Cakes

[Roundwood]

Whenever I need a "Crab Cake Fix", I stop at G&M Restaurant in Linthicum, Maryland. For the past two visits I noticed a significant change in the Crab Cakes. They seem to be using more filler now and it has effected the cakes taste. Has anyone else noticed this or is it my imagination.

[cb1]

Roundwood, if you want to stay close to G&M I would suggest Gunnings. If you are willing to travel 30 minutes or so to the south, Edgewater Restaurant. Old school really good crab cakes. There are places north of you that are supposed to be good too, so I'm sure others will chime in with the Baltimore recs

[flavrmeistr]

Gunnings is better than G&H or Timbuktu. Faidley's are better than all of those, but smaller.

[JonParker]

Given the price of domestic crab, smaller is better, unless it's *really* expensive. I really hate people judging crab cakes by saying "they're huge" when that almost always means they're made with tasteless imported crab.

[ivysmom]

JonParker - thank you for bringing up a very important point. People (and restaurants) too often rave about the size of the crabcake. But as you point out, with the price of crabmeat, a BIG crabcake is likely made with very inferior crabmeat (& filler). We had a very good crabcake from the Friendly Farms stand at the MD Wine Festival, a bit of filler but not much, crabmeat was very sweet. And the size of the cake was about right for the price.

-----
Friendly Farm
17434 Foreston Rd, Upperco, MD 21155

[hon]

What Jon said!
I would add to the crabcake list:
Henningers Tavern
Mamas on the Half Shell,
the already mentioned Dudas
The Ocean pride
Conrad's Crabs (carryout only)

[grandma_suzee]

Jumping on BW for Dudas - Tuesday is Crabcake night at Dudas. Thumbs Up. Bring $$ for Pawking! Ick to GM :/

[JonParker]

I consider G&M to be the worst crab cake I ever had. It's been a while since I've been there, and I wouldn't be willing to give them a chance unless people I trust told me that they'd vastly improved. My G&M crabcakes were a doughy, tasteless mess.

Are you tied to that area? There are places where you can get really great crab cakes if you're willing to let people know what area you're most interested in and how far you're willing to travel.

[ospreycove]

Might be it is the Frozen Pastuerized Imported Crab Meat. It looks like backfin jumbo lump domestic crab meat; but it has no taste.Mostly this product is from China or Vietnam I find it isn't worth using in anything calling for crabmeat. domestic fresh unpastuerized crab meat is becoming scarce and prohibitively expensive.

[JonParker]

That's part of it, but I've had swimmer crab cakes that weren't bad for what they were, if you go in not expecting it to taste like blue crab. G&M's crab cake was just unpleasant in every respect.

[Roundwood]

Jon....where would you suggest for a really good crab cake...have wheels, will travel.

[gregb]

I know I'm not Jon, but in Balt City the best crab cake IMO is Duda's in Fells Point.

G&M's crab cakes are downright bad. Anyone who would argue with that either hasn't been there is years or just has never had a good crab cake.

[JonParker]

Faidley's in Lexington Market uses all blue crab, and while they can be inconsistent, it's still one of the finest crab cakes on earth. Be sure to grab a couple of coddies to go with.

The other really superior, albeit expensive crab cake is from The Prime Rib. It's pricey, but delicious.

-----
Lexington Market
400 W Lexington St, Baltimore, MD 21201

[Joe H]

The Narrows.

[BookGuy]

A friend took me there on Friday before we headed to an Orioes game. The waiter touted the crab cakes so we both had the crab cake sandwich which was quite a bit of crab cake but which seemed to be relatively tasteless. The sandwich platter was extremely cheap, so I guess we deserved what we got. From what was coming out of the kitchen, the portions are large. Perhaps they will get around to good eventually.

[Dennis S]

Doubt it. They've been at it long enough. Plus, for some reason they do good enough business, so - why change?

To move to better product would mean increasing the prices which would confuse their loyal base and drive them away. It would take a long time for those with taste to give them another chance, and in that stretch of time they'd probably find it hard to keep the doors open. It is what it is.