Pinch me! Crabs are in

The newspaper-covered tables that sported crawfish earlier this year are finally heavy with Louisiana’s late summer bounty: crabs. The season got off to a late start, but is expected to yield an increasing supply of rich, full crustaceans to keep serious pickers busy, says Tony’s Seafood owner Bill Pizzolato.

From year to year, it’s anyone’s guess when crabs are in full swing, says Pizzolato, who watches weather reports and checks in with regional scouts to track the movements of blue crabs in the state’s waterways. The opening of the Bonnet Carré Spillway this spring introduced more fresh water into some of those lakes and streams, he says, changing the salinity and forcing crabs to seek out brackish water elsewhere. Crabs were elusive early on, but are now bountiful.

In a given season, Tony’s can sell up to 35,000 pounds of crab a week, Pizzolato says. But before that happens, the veteran Plank Road purveyor has sleuthed around to find the state’s meatiest crabs. “There’s nothing worse than opening up a crab and finding it light and empty,” he says.

Tony’s crab reconnaissance includes sampling the catch from places like Lake Pontchartrain and Cypremort Point. By now, Pizzolato and his siblings, who run the business started by his father in 1959, can tell the density of a crab just by listening to it scurrying in a crate. This sort of testing—as well as tasting—goes on several times throughout the season, says Pizzolato, since the bounty from each waterway can ebb and flow.

5215 Plank Rd.

357-9669

Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Friday and Saturday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Sunday, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.

“If one area dries up, or if the crabs aren’t as full, we can pull from somewhere else,” he says.

Crab season officially spans March through November, but summer is when large numbers are running, and when aficionados start hounding markets and restaurants. Louisiana leads the nation in production most years, with 50 million pounds of hard shell crabs and 100,000 pounds of soft shells. Pizzolato says much of the early catch heads to the Eastern seaboard to supplement what the Chesapeake Bay provides.

It’s not complicated, but picking crabs takes longer than separating tail-from-body on a crawfish or peeling shrimp. Pizzolato advises removing the hard shell on top, pulling off the sinewy lungs and breaking the critter in half. Then, peer into the side and coax out pockets of sweet, delicate meat. tonyseafood.com