The power and allure of Baltimore crab cake love and lore

We love bringing the best people in Baltimore together. There’s been a magazine story on the wall at Koco’s Pub for years that compares the Marcella Knight’s jumbo crab cake to the smoked version from our friend Chef Nancy Longo of Pierpoint. So, Nestor brought them together in Lauraville on the Maryland Crab Cake Tour for foodie fun.

Nancy Longo and Marcella Knight, both renowned for their Maryland crab cakes, discuss their unique recipes and the history of crab cakes. Nancy’s smoked crab cake at Pierpoint uses smoked crab meat, mayo, Dijon mustard, and minimal breading, while Marcella’s classic crab cake at Coco’s Pub relies on hand-cut bread for binding. They share stories about their culinary journeys, including Nancy’s 25-year tradition of making smoked crab cakes and Marcella’s use of minimal filler. Both emphasize the importance of community and charity, with Nancy’s Nurture Meals and Marcella’s Anderson Family Benefit highlighting their commitment to supporting those in need.

• [ ] @Nestor Aparicio – Coordinate with Nancy Longo to bring a crab cake to Ed Lauer after his recent heart transplant.
• [ ] Promote the Anderson Family Benefit event happening on November 16th, which includes live music, food, and a special beer brewed by Waverly Brewing.
• [ ] Expand the summer program to teach more kids about cooking and using real, fresh ingredients.

Introduction and Background of the Participants

• Speaker 1 introduces the segment, mentioning the Maryland lottery and Raven scratch-offs.
• Speaker 1 shares a story about a listener winning money during a live segment.
• Speaker 1 reminisces about his friendship with Nancy Longo and Marcella Knight, including their shared history at Deep Pasquale and the Emerald Tavern.
• Speaker 1 describes the sign at Koco’s Pub that says “Nice people only allowed” and asks Marcella about its origin.

Discussion on Crab Cakes and Food Competitions

• Speaker 1 introduces the topic of crab cakes, mentioning Nancy’s smoked crab cake at Pierpoint and Marcella’s classic crab cake at Coco’s Pub.
• Nancy Longo talks about her experience on food cooking shows, including winning a few times and being a mall chef.
• Nancy and Marcella discuss their mutual friend Jamie Lipinski and the flattering mention in an article comparing their restaurants.
• Nancy and Marcella agree that there is no real contest between their crab cakes, as preferences vary widely among people.

Nancy’s Smoked Crab Cake and Its Unique Features

• Nancy explains the process of making her smoked crab cake, which includes smoking the crab meat over fruit wood.
• Nancy describes the ingredients used in her smoked crab cake, such as real mayo, Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, Old Bay, and lemon juice.
• Nancy mentions that the smoked crab cake has been a regular item on the menu for 22 years and has a subtle smoky flavor.
• Marcella shares that her crab cake uses minimal filler, mainly hand-cut bread, to hold it together.

Personal Preferences and Experiences with Crab Cakes

• Speaker 1 shares a story about a bad crab cake experience in Potomac, Maryland, where the crab cake tasted like chicken salad.
• Nancy and Marcella discuss their preferences for crab cakes, including whether they like them pan-fried or broiled.
• Nancy mentions that her crab cakes cannot be fried or broiled without falling apart, so they are pan-fried in a high cast-iron pan.
• Marcella explains that her crab cakes are very big and require special handling to avoid falling apart.

Historical Context and Evolution of Crab Cakes

• Nancy shares the history of crab cakes, explaining that they originated as a poor man’s food made with corn pancakes and crab meat.
• Nancy describes how the crab cakes evolved from corn pancakes to using bread or crackers as filler.
• Nancy and Marcella discuss the various regional differences in crab cakes, such as the use of Ritz crackers on the Eastern Shore.
• Nancy mentions that her smoked crab cake lasts about five days longer than a regular crab cake due to the smoking process.

Community Involvement and Charity Work

• Nancy talks about her involvement in food charity work, including providing meals for families in need and working with organizations like St. Francis of Assisi.
• Nancy mentions her initiative, Nurture Meals, which provides food boxes to families facing hardships.
• Marcella discusses the Anderson Family Benefit, a fundraiser for a friend who suffered a heart attack and is the breadwinner for his family.
• The event includes five bands, special beer from Waverly Brewing, and food prepared by Eric.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Maryland crab cake, Pierpoint, Coco’s Pub, Nancy Longo, Marcella Knight, smoked crab cake, crab cake legacy, crab cake tour, crab cake history, crab cake variations, crab cake competition, crab cake recipes, crab cake sides, crab cake science, crab cake charity.

SPEAKERS

Marcella Knight, Speaker 1, Nancy Longo, Nestor J. Aparicio

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Nestor J. Aparicio  00:00

Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, am 1570 task, Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. We are positively here at Cocos. I got babies at table. One I got babies at table two, kids checking out the show here. Mom’s having a crap. We’re Coco’s. It’s all brought to you by the Maryland lottery. I have Raven scratch offs to give away. I had a lady come up and in the middle of the first segment, stopped my segment behind me, handed me her ticket in the middle of Greg and I talking, and I scanned it, she won 20 bucks. Then her girlfriend hands me the other ticket. I scanned it, she won five bucks. So I have nothing but winners here today, and I’ve got two of my favorite ladies together. There is a long story about Nancy Longo and I’s friendship, and we talked about that at Deep Pasquale last summer, and tasted the NFL and a restaurant, and Scott panian and our friends at a meat cheese and all of that. And Mars and I go back to her mom and her day drinking on Sundays, 30 years ago, before the Ravens came to town, up at the Emerald tavern, and there are guys outside running numbers and on the phone, I had my oiler helmet on. I was all footballed up, and I met Marsh, and we’ve been friends ever since. And they told me, Marcy’s mother has this incredible crab cake. It’s a place called Coco’s. It’s down. I almost grew up back here on Tyndale, right where I grew up as a kid, and and the two of you have been linked from the minute I walked in the door here, there’s a sign that says Nice. P only nice people allowed, and they still let us in. But there has been a sign on the door here, and I’m gonna bring this up Marsh. Can you tell me where this is for his GQ magazine?

Nancy Longo  01:35

Is that what this was?

Speaker 1  01:40

GQ? This was go is that Southwest it was?

01:44

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It might have been air trans.

Speaker 1  01:47

So this has been on the wall here for, I don’t, two

01:50

decades. It’s forever, forever.

01:53

I have no idea.

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Nancy Longo  01:54

Definitely. It’s definitely from the 90s. All right, A

Nestor J. Aparicio  01:58

Tale of Two crab cakes, the fancy smoked crab cake at pure point. Who else smokes a crab cake side? You Nobody. Nobody tried it. And the bare bones classic at Coco’s pub go head to head. And they actually have the pictures in here. And then you guys both hate this. When you get paid, you were on chopped, but you hate getting pitted against other people, right?

Nancy Longo  02:23

I’ve done enough food cooking shows. I’m done. Oh, I’ve won a few times. As matter of fact, I used to be the pretty girl for Ready, set, cook, and I would go compete against people the malls in DC, Virginia, Maryland. You’re a mall chef. I was a mall

Speaker 1  02:40

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chef. I gotta spend more time. I don’t know enough about you, Nancy. You know what I’m I need to write. I thought you’re Irish. Now you’re telling me you’re Italian. Well, Marsh, you said the nicest thing, and you said this. You never met Nancy, you never been here, and you never like and that

Nancy Longo  02:57

was the reason why I needed to come here today. I told you she

Marcella Knight  02:59

really was. Well, we have a mutual friend, yes, Jamie Lipinski, yes, all right, and Jamie always talks about Nancy, and I’m sure to Nancy, she probably talks about me. And I gotta tell you when this, when this article came out, many years ago, we were so flattered that we were even like mentioned in an article and compared to you, because we heard so many good things about your restaurant.

Nancy Longo  03:29

I laugh because I have people that come here all the time, and then they take a picture of that and they send it, did you know about yeah, I’ve known about that. Did you know Yeah? They said, Do you know her? And I said, No, but I’m gonna meet her one day. I’m gonna go there, because these mutual friends. So when Nestor says, I Oh, absolutely, I will take time out to make this happen. Because, and it’s kind

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Marcella Knight  03:53

of really, it’s it’s not really a contest. It’s the point

Nancy Longo  03:58

about this whole article is explain that there are cakes. How many times you see a day where you see one of these people waiting on Facebook, one of those Maryland things, who’s got the best crab cake? You okay? Well, then you got the usuals, and you go, Okay, roll your eyes. Check out, because it’s subjective, which is exactly what this is about. Because some people go, I don’t want, I don’t want a big fat thing. I don’t necessarily want any breading at all, in which mine do not have any at all, or I don’t want whatever. And they like to smoke one because they drink a lot of bourbon or scotch. So there’s a there’s a lot of nuances. So people can pick and choose what they want. My thing is, is, if I had a stack of hers, and then I could give one of those, and one of those at my plate.

Nestor J. Aparicio  04:44

I had Andrew Zimmern on at the Super Bowl about five years. Is back when tasting NFL was still tasting NFL, before they screwed it up. Yep. And he came on my set with me, and we talked, and, you know, talking crab cakes and whatnot, is before I did a crab cake tour. Yeah, he’s like, only one way to make a crab cake. It. And I’m like, what I thought you were, like, a dude, a chef, the one way to make a crab cake. It’s a million ways to make a crab cake. And people come to me as the crab cake guy, and they say, which one’s the best? And I’m like, I like them all because I like crab cakes, but they’re all different. I’ve only had one crab cake I didn’t like in my life on this tour that I’ve been on for seven years, I got sent to a place, and I’m gonna tell you, you’re gonna laugh. It was in Potomac, Maryland, all right, so they have more money than us there. Promise you that. I promise you that. And I got sent there by the Restaurant Association on my first tour about four years ago. And I was doing a crab cake every day for 30 days. And this is like day 23 or day 24 so I’ve had a lot of crab cakes this point. I’ve done the show here. All my sponsors cost us faith, all the places we have great crab cakes in Baltimore. And now I’m down in montgomery county trying to find a crab cake. And I was doing one in every county. There’s 23 counties in the city. So part of my 30 crab cakes was, I was doing one in every county, which when Eric was when Eric was over talking about Frederick County and carrot County, like I had crab cakes all those places, but finding one in montgomery county, Restaurant Associates sent me to a place. I’m not going to out the place, because it was so bad that I don’t even want to tell you where it was. Yeah, there’s not a place you’re gonna go. But it was in a market in a really, really bougie high end, not like the Pasquale is, like, much more, not Italian. It was much more rough, like deli, deli, soups and

Nancy Longo  06:30

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sandwiches. It was a really big place on Rockville Pike.

Nestor J. Aparicio  06:33

No, it’s not on Rockville Pike. This is out west on Potomac, like, where Dan Snyder’s mansion is. Like, there were all $30 million mansions. Like, literally, was that kind of place. Kind of place. I went in, and they had a thing on the wall, like the Anderson family benefit that I’m gonna with a QR code, and it said, we ship crab cakes. I’m like, well, he must be good if they’re shipping the damn things, right? So, you know, give me, give me crab cake. Because I was getting one. Everywhere I went, they put it in the bag for me. And I didn’t think anything of we were going to Jiffy Lube pavilion to see, like, sticks or something like that. We were like,

Nancy Longo  07:07

you’re having a crab cake and an oil change. Well,

Speaker 1  07:09

I took the crab cake out at the tailgate. I went down to the tailgate because I’m going all the way to hell, Manassas, Virginia. So I get down there, and we parked the car, and we got music going. We got beer tailgate. Jen’s got the chair out, you know? And I’m like, Yeah, we get it. I’m gonna tear into this crap game. Now, keep it in mind. This is my 24th crab cake in 24 days, right? So, you know, I’ve had, I had a lot of good ones. I had some, you know, okay, ones and fine. None of them were bad. I took a bite of this crab cake, and I had a fork, and I was poking around in it, because, like, a really, like a good female crab cake on the Eastern Shore, you’ll find the orange row in there. You’ll so I’m poking around to figure out what’s in it. And I looked at it, didn’t look like any kind of crab cake I ever had. And I took another bite of it, and I said to Jen, I’m like, I don’t, I don’t even know what I’m trying to identify what it was. And after the third bite, I realized they had taken a chicken salad recipe. I’m not kidding you. Nancy, look at this. Look. It had celery in it. I think it had like Craisins

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Nancy Longo  08:16

in it. They They were clearly not from

Speaker 1  08:18

this state, from anywhere I’ve ever been in my

08:21

life, they gave me the wrong thing.

Nancy Longo  08:25

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We already know if you put that stuff in there, you’re getting stabbed.

Speaker 1  08:30

I’m not boring to you. I mean, it’s I’m not doing stick. I’m telling you I went to

Nancy Longo  08:34

this place. I’m sorry. Did you? Did you recover from that?

Speaker 1  08:38

I think I told you this story. Did either of you ever get crabs at a brick east? Yes, I never have. I had never had crabs at a brick and I’m not bagging on a brick east at all. No, but I’m gonna

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Nancy Longo  08:50

say something come into my restaurant before they I

Speaker 1  08:53

waited my whole life to go to a brick East. And the number 10 bus used to go by there when I was a kid going to the city, and I knew where it was the brick in, the outside, beautiful, the stained glass on the windows. I had never, ever been there until I moved downtown about 20 years ago. Before they closed, my wife and I and Kenny ball game and hockey Meg walked over on a Sunday evening, and we were so geeked up for crabs. It’s a summer night. It was like August. I’m like, never been to a brick East I mean, I’ve had my crabs at the barn, and the cost all the places have crabs. Comrades had a million crabs. And I went and we ordered a dozen crabs, and they put them on the table, and I looked at them, and you know what I’m talking, but you got a brick scratch?

Nancy Longo  09:32

No, I grew up with bro Brooks when they were on Bel Air

09:35

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Road, that’s right, they put

Nancy Longo  09:39

white pepper on their cracks. Oh yeah, yeah, I did know that

Speaker 1  09:44

I’ve never been anywhere in my life before or since. And as a baseball guy, when I would talk to baseball players who came through Baltimore, I’m talking about in the 80s and 90s, they would all swear by obrickies Because a brick East was downtown and would recruit the. Them and bring players over, treat them, right, right? And they all okay. I gotta go back to a bricky thing. And I’m thinking to myself, I went there one time and I got their crabs, and they were not like Maryland crabs at all. They were it was a white pepper. I ate the crap. They didn’t taste bad. They were just different, yeah, and you it was more like eating a crab with black pepper instead of, like, what we would continue? Jo, well,

Nancy Longo  10:23

it picks up whatever you stick on top of it, clearly. And if you put crushed red pepper, you’re gonna get that very pungent. You get that white pepper. It’s it’s hotter than black pepper. You know, that’s the inside of the kernel, right?

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Speaker 1  10:36

It’s a spicy. It’s a spicy, yes, all I can tell you is, I sat there and ate four or five of the crabs, and I didn’t like the experience, because I like crabs the way I like them, right? Like I didn’t like the chicken salad in my crab cake,

Nancy Longo  10:50

but that was a that was a Maryland cake. But when you

Speaker 1  10:54

one time in your life, you’ve eaten something one way 1000 times, and then it comes a different way. The thing about it that stuck me was my fingers didn’t smell after I ate them like after I ate crabs. And on the way home, my fingers smelled like I didn’t eat crabs. And I thought that that was the 20 years later. It’s the one thing I would tell you that I would never go anywhere where crabs are served with white pepper. But I had there is a different way to do crabs, yeah, than the way we know

Nancy Longo  11:22

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how to do even I think they’ve been packaged as seasoning for a little while there. I think I remember saying the gross. I want

Speaker 1  11:28

to ask you literally this thing on the wall. By the way, Nancy long goes here from Pier point, she has finally met Marcella here from from Coco’s. I’m bringing people together because it’s Baltimore positive. It’s what we do smoked crab cake. So I see this on the wall here, and I say, I don’t know that I’ve ever had a smoked crab cake unless you made smoked crab cakes

Nancy Longo  11:49

the front door, the players were locked up. So I don’t mean like in jail, be at the booth, right? And so we had no player at our booth, and each booth would have a player. And so he walks in with Marty bass, and I was like, okay, cool, you too. Can she puts on us? You could be the entertainment players, and we’ll serve the food. So we did, because I got that gig, because they wanted me to make that smoked crab cake every year for 25 years, you made that every year, every year I was not allowed to make anything else. Well, I’m gonna read from this year we ran at them early in Indianapolis at

Speaker 1  12:29

this intimate, classy Fells Point joint Bistro. Sorry Nancy Longo named the state’s unofficial coronated crab cake Queen by Maryland magazine in 1991 infuses the classic crab cake with a smoky taste and a hint of sherry. Now she has Sherry in her cream crab soup over there. We already went through that the famed smoke version first appeared as a special item 22 years ago and quickly earned a spot in a regular lineup. Now you say it’s your quote here, we smoked the crab meat over fruit wood. The hell’s

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Nancy Longo  13:01

that like cherry or apple chips, cool it

Speaker 1  13:05

and then turn it into a crab cake with a very light smoked flavor, real mayo, Dijon mustard, and a right balance of Worcestershire sauce, Old Bay and lemon juice. Round out the dish sounds delicious, then that’s different. So Joanna Coco Vinos and her daughter, Marcella Knight are the women behind the behemoth crab cake. It means big. You

Nancy Longo  13:25

said Coke is your mother Italian. It’s Greek. Oh, there makes, explains everything. My friends over there were Greek. Okay, Nancy

13:37

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comes in the door Cocos and she knows

13:40

I don’t even know him.

Speaker 1  13:41

So with so little filler, people always ask, what keeps it together? We hand cut bread into the tiniest cubes we can. I didn’t even know these secrets about your crab cake to hold it all together using about 70 loaves of bread a week. More than that. Oh, way more.

Speaker 1  14:00

I would ask both of you this because my aunt, my deceased aunt from San Diego, my crazy aunt, Jane. She was nut ball Republican, but I loved her anyway. But she died about 20 years ago, and whenever I would go out to visit her, she was from Scranton, Pennsylvania, and she would she would salivate at her kitchen table in San Diego. She knew she could have ordered crab cakes online, but she would always say to me, want

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Speaker 1  14:26

to get back to Baltimore. I want to get one of those crab cakes with the crackers, and I want french fries and coleslaw. Like she would always say that to me, I don’t where did how did you’re the historian here, the crab cake, the mustard, the crackers, the saltines, and then the fact that coleslaw and french fries became the unofficial you know, we don’t eat asparagus. You nobody serves potato chips with a crab. You serve french fries and coleslaw. See, I’m

Nancy Longo  14:58

gonna make you crazy. You said so. About asparagus. Harford County, Halford County, in the late 1800s grew more white asparagus than anywhere else. Also was the largest Brussels sprout growing state in America.

Speaker 1  15:12

Asparagus makes my pizza smell funny. I don’t want to have any part of that. Yes, Funky.

Nancy Longo  15:17

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I like it now. I make my coleslaw out of the Brussels sprouts because I knew that historical thing. Oh, I love that. I’m into that. This really good sprouts. It’s really good. So we just make the regular coleslaw dressing, and all you gotta do is steam them and throw

Speaker 1  15:33

them in there. What’s your favorite thing to eat? Like, like, literally, like, what do you eat around the house? Like, would you put together something?

Nancy Longo  15:40

I mean, I like duck, I like fish.

Speaker 1  15:43

That’s it. Pretty much you don’t eat your own crab cakes

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Nancy Longo  15:47

much? No, I do occasionally. I do, do you eat your crab cakes? Not real often? No, it’s just you get you as a treat. If you see that stuff every single day, you’re like, I’m done. What is

Speaker 1  16:01

with my headset in your head? Every time you do a show, you just keep pulling the damn thing the wrong

Nancy Longo  16:08

way. Leave it alone. I’m not my head’s shaking too much, but that’s an interesting thing. So back to the thing where you said 70 loaves of bread about with Sure. So years ago, I worked for Stevie Martin, who was with something fishy. And her husband owned Martin seafood Billy, and she would tell me about these people that she knew on the eastern shore. And so Baltimore City was always a bread thing in your crab cake, but the Eastern Shore people used to use Ritz crackers. So there’s that, there’s a lot of places that the Ritz crackers is, if you pulverize them enough, they turn into almost like flour, like a paste, yep. And that is exactly what I use. Okay, so I’m a Ritz cracker person, but that is, that is a two different school thing. The other one is, is that the Ritz cracker will give it some of a buttery flavor to it, sure. So, you know, it’s a thing. How did that smoke thing come to be I was doing a bicentennial Federal Hill, the 200 year celebration, and they sent me to meet this woman who was a food historian. And I was reading all this stuff, and it was like, oh, no, refrigerators back in the day, they smoked everything preserved. So I went to I said, What happens if I put the crab meat in the smoker? I found out that it actually lasts about five days longer than a regular pound of crab meat. Put it into a crab cake, no other crazy stuff in there. And I started selling twice as many of them as the regular ones. And we were doing the shipping thing for a while too. Yeah, it is, it’s, it’s very, it’s very subtle. It’s been five years. We did taste NFL, so that’s why you can’t remember that, but you did have one. They also,

18:10

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I didn’t taste it as smoky, though,

Nancy Longo  18:12

because it’s so subtle, okay, but it gives it more of a sherry quality to it, or a bourbon, but it’s light. It’s not, it’s not a barbecue taste at all. And I think, well, for a while there harbor court was doing it, one of those other places out here, or the out the road was doing I was like, Oh, I guess they’re all into this. Now, it was just a thing

Speaker 1  18:36

that I did. You had made crab cakes the regular way before

Nancy Longo  18:40

that. I have a regular one on the menu and I have a smoke one on the menu, all right, and they can come and get one of each. The other thing is, is, is interesting, is she makes them, and you’re saying you’re putting bread in them, you can make them bigger and they stay together. If you don’t use any bread, you can’t, they don’t. You can’t make them big because they won’t stay together. It is. So ours are two smaller ones because I don’t put any bread in them. Ours

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Marcella Knight  19:05

is very difficult. And that’s what’s so time consuming about our crab cake making, is that we have to put the minimal amount of filler to hold it together. And that is not easy to do. No, you know, it’s

19:18

sort of like the glue or the paste.

Nancy Longo  19:21

And if you make them either way, you can’t serve them right away. They got to set up for that stuff to meld together, or they just don’t do well.

Speaker 1  19:30

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The refrigeration part of the process is important, right? Yes, well, I like to get the science of all this, because people do say I make a good crab cake at home, or i i have this, or I have my recipe. I mean, if I were to make a crab cake at home, my mother would make it with, literally, bread crumbs,

Speaker 1  19:44

mustard, French’s mustard, because all we had to ask we didn’t have any bougie Dijon or any honey, this or this. Yeah,

Nancy Longo  19:51

I like. The reason why I like I use my M, a, i, L, L, E, because it has a horse radish flavor to it, which is. Cranks it up a little bit, so don’t put as much old ban and not as salty, interesting stuff.

Speaker 1  20:05

Well, we’re not only Easter Sure. They can be very your crab cake, Mars and I say it’s sweet as I would, as I would explain it sweet, but not wet, like I’m is it Pappas last wetter. It’s wetter. But also your crab cake for whatever reason. And I know you don’t want to hear this when I do pan fried at home, and I do sometimes that it doesn’t fall apart because it is bound together in some way. There are some places that they won’t fry. You a crap. I’d like a fried crab. I don’t either. I prefer fried to broil. I just

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Nancy Longo  20:39

do I like them pan fried. See, I can’t, mine cannot go in the deep fryer, or they blow up. Yeah, and they can’t go in the broiler. They fall apart. So what we do is get that cast iron pan really high so that the second you put it in there, it sears, flip it over, and they won’t fall apart. Otherwise they they’re falling apart. And nobody wants to fall in the park. Otherwise, just get a pile crab meat. A lot of places don’t fry them either,

Speaker 1  21:03

because it isn’t pretty, right? Your crab cakes are beautiful. They’re gigantic. I like the taste, right?

Marcella Knight  21:09

But you have to make them smaller to fry them, because ours is so big all the way inside. Yeah. So yeah,

Nancy Longo  21:17

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right, exactly. Then they will tell you,

Marcella Knight  21:20

and our kitchen so tiny that we can’t, you know, fry everything.

Nancy Longo  21:24

He’ll tell you that Mine’s probably not

Speaker 1  21:26

much bigger. Now I’m going to tell you something here as well. On the crab cake side, I know you’re the You’re the queen, the other queen of crab cakes that have faded leaves. The other name Nancy, the other

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Nancy Longo  21:36

Nancy. She’s another ind graduate. Boom, there you go.

Speaker 1  21:39

Ind girl sticking together through crab cakes. She educated me very early on the crab cake tour, before I started really doing a tour, I was doing a show at Fay Lee’s, and she brought me a crab cake. And I start BS in as I do,

Nancy Longo  21:52

and there’s a totally deep fried right?

Speaker 1  21:53

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They do Friday, they fry theirs so and very mustard for very different than smoke, very different and sweet, just different. She brought me crab cake, and I got talking to her and Bill, and we’re talking and we’re talking 45 minutes in, you guys, both notices I didn’t eat the food. So the crab cake sat there on the set and got cold, right? And I said, Ah, it’s cold. And I said, I said, you know, I’ll take it up. And she said me, no, no, you’re gonna eat that right now. And I’m like, why? She’s like, cold room temperature. You will taste the crab better than if you serve it sizzling hot. Now I did the same thing you did. I’m like, crazy old lady, you know, she laugh at that if I told her. So I said, crazy old lady. I had to apologize to her next time I had her on, I did the same. I took the fake news crab cake home, I heated it up, I brought it up to my office, and then I got distracted, and I sat there, and I sat there, and it got stone cold again. And before I said, I’m not gonna heat it up, she told me, eat it cold. Eat at room temperature. And I did, and it tasted better. And I wouldn’t recommend that in any particular way other than to say crab meat at room temperature is, I don’t say more preferable, but you will taste whatever is in it better than if it’s steaming

Nancy Longo  23:10

hot. The only thing I would disagree with the other parts are, is I think that I like the crispiness of it, and you’re not gonna get that once

Speaker 1  23:21

it’s cooled off. I agree with that, but I like a crispy, hot pan fried crab cake. I take Marcellus home and destroy him and send her pictures all the time

Nancy Longo  23:32

I do, what is that like? Crab cake porn? I’m teasing with no,

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Speaker 1  23:37

you know, there is a thing about like, I took her ribs out, and I told this in the last segment, took her ribs in her coleslaw home a couple weeks ago, and I de boned them, and I got Kings Hawaiian slider rolls. Yeah, oh my god, her ribs with her coleslaw. Forget it. But

Nancy Longo  23:53

that’s not the way she might do it. It’s like your wife when she would say to me, I need some of that fried chicken from

Speaker 1  24:00

you, right? I take her crab cake home, and it’s so big that it, I quarter it, I cut it into four, and I make English muffins. I make two ounce English muffin. Crab melts and I put sharp. Does that anymore. Burke’s used to do

Nancy Longo  24:16

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that. I know, especially I have a one. It’s a weird in the restaurant, we have a corn waffle, laying a waffle maker, and then the inside is hot crab dip. You have to come get one. What? Yes, explain this to me. It’s like a waffle, like a like a Belgian waffle, but it’s this thing. They make these waffle makers, and then the inside is hot crab dip, like you crab dip

Nancy Longo  24:43

having crackers with it, you just cut the waffle, and the crab dip floats out of it with it. Yes, you make this. Yes. What do you call it? Nancy state, crab waffle.

Speaker 1  24:56

It’s good. It’s crab waffle. I never heard of a crab in my life. I do all kinds of there,

Nancy Longo  25:01

but I do all kinds of weird stuff. You come visit me some night, bring your wife, come down. I know

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Speaker 1  25:06

she’s experimental, man. She brings the kids down. How to cook. You know,

Nancy Longo  25:12

it’s like this. It’s it’s one thing when you own a restaurant and you’re an owner, and you’re into this, and you understand the business side of it, I’m really bad at that. We’ll admit that when it comes to being a chef, the minute you stop being thoughtful and creative and and stop being curious, you’re done, you’re done. You got to get out, because you just become miserable and hateful with what it is that you’re doing. And that’s part of people when they’re burnout. And that’s one of the reasons why I never wanted a big restaurant. I don’t I want to be like somebody called me tonight, they said, I want to come for my anniversary. Oh, well, that’s really sweet. Good thing. You told me there’s no menu. I’m going to make them a nice dinner. I can do that in a little teeny place. I can’t do that in a big place. So oftentimes chefs that are creative are better suited in smaller places. You just can’t, and we can’t do high volume, and you can keep everybody’s gonna die with more money me, you know, but I’m, I’m gonna done exactly what I wanted. And I told us, I told you, my job is, my job is to, you know, it’s my job to feed everybody. I’m trying to figure out now how I can get some sponsors to give me some money so I can give some boxes, some families that that, you know, again, here we go again. I mean, it wasn’t 20, 26,000 boxes during the pandemic and another 25,000 meals sponsored by my friend Andrew at Harvard Park garage. It was so joyful. I mean, you’re like, Oh, these people need food.

Speaker 1  26:48

I see chef Jose Andreas. I ate at his restaurant down in DC a couple weeks ago, and out in Vegas, if you get a chance to eat at any his places, he’s down in Jamaica. And you know how much I love Jamaica, DC, by the way, giving out food. I mean, he, I saw him this morning. He’s down in Jamaica feeding people. And I’m thinking to myself, you know, the food is so fundamental, you know, when it’s, you know, this guy running the country taking food away from Tuesday like and you and I have done Food Bank stuff and a cup of Super Bowl. And when I talked to Mars about that, we’re talking about that. We’re talking about St Francis of Assisi over here. Like you said, my thought that anybody would go to bed tonight with a with an empty stomach is that’s a sick feeling for all,

Nancy Longo  27:30

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there’s two things. One, Chef mentality. It’s my job to feed anyone. Two some days, there are some people that the only joy they get that day is some food. If that lives in your brain and swirls every day, it’s it’s hard for you to not think about food issues for people, which is why, I mean, you know, there isn’t been a food charity, you know that I haven’t been involved with, sure, absolutely, that’s what I meant. I’m trying to, I’m trying to find some new ones, because I just, you know, I did our daily bread for 25 years to roll for 25 years, every other one, like I said, they’re all more money because I’ve done what I wanted, and my and I put my money where my mouth is. I get a kid. I’m right now. I’m hurting. I have a I have a customer. Let me cook for husband’s got dementia, is in the hospital, and she finally broke down in tears. She’s like, I can’t I don’t know how to deal with this, but I’ve been doing their meals for two years now because she can’t let him out of her sight. Well, I told somebody I’m doing stuff for her because her dad needs to be low sodium. Or I got some other friends of mine who who are trying to figure out what they’re allergic to, and I, I’m creating recipes in my brain daily to try to figure out how to make something taste good when she can’t have anything in it. So there’s a there’s a whole nother science to that, but that that also goes back into that crab cake, is back to every single person who has a family story about a crab cake and where they lived and what they put in. So you go French is we got great Poupon. We got my think about all the nuances just with mustard alone in a crab cake. It’s crazy. And everybody has their own they like, and that’s why, when people start with that crap with who’s got the best crab cake, I ain’t even stepping into that insult, yeah, I mean, because they’re all different. They’re all a story from somebody’s family, every single one of Okay, so let’s see if she knows this story. Do you know where crab cake came from? I think I told you this before. It was poor man’s food. This is the best story ever. It was a poor This is no so I was very good friends with Paul prunell for many years. We would talk, and he would say to me, I can’t understand. You can never tell me, Nancy, where did crab cake come from? Couple years ago, I kept digging and digging and digging and research after he passed, because it just made me crazy. Turned out that the slave trade, who used to work the waterfront in Louisiana, would make corn pancakes and they would stuff. Crab meat in them. So they had these pancakes with crab meat in them, as they occasionally would pass through the Chesapeake back to Canada. They would stop, and they would talk these watermen. And they were like, well, you could make these things here, because you have corn and you have crab and they did. So that was the thing here. So corn cakes are a thing in Maryland, but what they did was they eventually just kept taking and putting more crab meat in them, until they made a crab cake out of it, and then they switched it from the corn to the crackers of the bread. So it was

Speaker 1  30:36

like a what do they call those things at the fair, where they take the hot dog and dip it in the No, it wasn’t like

Nancy Longo  30:42

that corn cake. Oh, my God. I think that made a couple of those super so it’s like a pancake. It’s like a regular pancake, but you puree silver Queen corn in it and some chives, a little cream, and make them into these fluffy, beautiful little pancakes. Oh, my mom. My mom said there was crab in it, yes. And then they, and then they the Waterman here eventually just stopped putting the corn in and turn them into a grab gate. So that’s where it came from. Well, I

Speaker 1  31:12

was gonna say, but by the way, that’s her voice. Marcy’s here from, from Coco’s, where Coco’s is all brought to you by the Maryland lottery. There’s been a thing on the wall here from an airline, from go magazine, A Tale of Two, crab cakes, Pierpoint and Coco’s pub. It’s been on the wall forever. These ladies have never met each other. I happen to know and love them both and bring them together. But here’s what I would say about restaurants, and this is my observation at your front door, at this seat, or when I come in here, people come, and when they come, they’re either hungry or they’re buying food for their family or whatever. But there’s a happiness involved in destination dining, wherever it is, right like and I am that guy when I show up at the door, my favorite places to eat that I haven’t been to in a month a year. I’m on the road somewhere a couple weeks ago, I’m going out at San Francisco. My friend as a Mexican when I get to the front door of his restaurant and I walk through, there’s just this feeling, right? I mean, you know that this human emotion that’s tied to the memories of the place, the food, the people, the taste of that crab cake and Cocos that I want, the taste of that thing that I haven’t had at Pier point that I want. And I think there’s people coming in the door, you see that there’s a sense of happiness, that people are happy before they even get here. You want to make them happy on the way out, but they’re happy at the thought the whole notion of they got in their car, they drove over, they went online, whatever they’re doing, they’re excited, yeah, to eat your food and they and they get a crab cake anywhere in town, but they want

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Nancy Longo  32:38

yours. You know, very colorful, bright and inviting in here. And I don’t know why I’ve never here before. Do not ask me. Oh, I probably for a different reason. God rest. So when my husband was still alive, he was allergic to crab and his dying on crap. So they would say, Steve, do you realize you’re dating her, the crab cake queen, and you’re allergic, he goes, I know he said, she makes me other things. One less person. She has to make a crap Yeah, one less crab cake I gotta make. But it was always funny thing. So we would never go to any crap places because he was allergic.

Speaker 1  33:18

My wife doesn’t love seafood, so it’s not our first die

Nancy Longo  33:21

that happened from a girl from New England. She just, if

Speaker 1  33:25

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there were a restaurant that’s a seafood restaurant, it probably wouldn’t be our first choice, because she would think

Nancy Longo  33:30

why? She used to tell me that she would come in and get fried chicken,

Speaker 1  33:32

right? That’s right, there you go, but that she’s crap. She she likes crab cakes now she did the first 15 years. I think her bone marrow transplant completely changed her

Nancy Longo  33:41

well, they say it will, well, she’s a different person. She gets there for changes your hair color, changes its texture, changes other stuff.

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Speaker 1  33:47

Yeah, it does change your palette. She likes seafood more. Now, I think that’s a good thing. Nancy long goes here. She is the queen of pure boy restaurant. Marsh is here. She’s the queen of Cocos. All right. So charity stuff. I want Marsh talk about your Anderson family benefit, because Eric did that. I want to make sure we’re promoting this, because it is. It’s next weekend. It’s November 16. This is someone who worked here. This is a really near and dear thing to your heart, and you’re taking the day off of your Cocos, and everybody’s participating in this thing, including five bands, right? Yes,

Marcella Knight  34:15

yes. So actually, Paul used to play in a band, so he’s gonna hopefully be on the drums. Oh, okay. They’re probably thinking he might like grab some drums. I like to see that. So they have five bands. And Paul used to 10 bar here. He was here, I think, for four to five years left during covid, went to work at 412, roofing. But he’s still near and dear to our heart. One’s part of our family. You’re always part of our family here. And yeah, he suffered a major heart heart attack, and spent about three months in the hospital. And so his friend, he’s the, you know, he’s the breadwinner for his family takes. He’s the big family man does. Everything for them. And so with him being out of commission has really put a hurting on all them. So we’re doing this fundraiser for him, and Eric is doing all the food. And Waverly brewing is brewing a special beer just for this. I got

Speaker 1  35:13

a special glass for this too, right here. There it is, right? Yeah, beautiful. And,

Marcella Knight  35:17

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you know, we had that logo design that’s actually Paul in the logo, playing the

35:20

drums up. I was wondering that crazy

Nancy Longo  35:24

arms up. Yeah, all right,

Marcella Knight  35:26

yeah, he’s a great guy. His family’s great and, yeah, we’re very excited. So it is Sunday, November 16.

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Speaker 1  35:33

Music is going to be good. The beer is going to be cold, the food’s going to be great as well. That’s what are you doing? That’s good. I know you’re always you’re making boxes. You teaching kids.

Nancy Longo  35:41

Still, we are still doing this stuff for the kids. I would love to expand it next summer so we can get some more. So we did St Francis for years. But there’s other centers who have kids. And you know what? We have no more culinary schools. So if we bring these kids in and we’re teaching them about real food, because we don’t do any junk food in this thing at all. The kids literally learned how to make pasta from scratch. They learned how to bone up chickens. These kids were making Indian food. Well, I need adult ones too. And so I would like to be able to get some more kids. I would like to find some more centers, so maybe I can expand on that. But otherwise, we’re still doing I have a thing called nurture meals, and the nurture meals has money in it. And if someone tells me of a family their house burned down or something happened to them, they get a box of food. We send it to their house, and they don’t pay for it. So we’re in the middle redoing our entire website, so they’ll be able to get through to us that way to do it so that we can start giving some more people some more food. But you know that that’s pretty much what’s going on. You know? Otherwise, it’s plugging away. I’m 36 years of cooking food.

Speaker 1  36:57

This is the 10th Anniversary, this month, of my wife almost not surviving her second leukemia mess, but made it through. And Nance was adamant. She would send me texts eight o’clock every night. I’m down at the hospital. You’re hungry. You’re coming by for food tonight. You cut you’re hungry. And I’d say, no, no, no. What am I the sponsor give me? And somebody sent me over food now you’re coming down here after so I’d wind up if I felt lonely, Nancy would have television on, bitching about politics because Trump was running the country, and we would be sitting and like hanging out and eating some food, you know, and you took good care of me, and I appreciate

Nancy Longo  37:31

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there is nothing wrong with both sides, both political parties. The only problem is, is that when we decide that people don’t need any health care and they don’t need any food, or we make their food insecurity much bigger, then I got a problem. And I don’t care what side of the aisle you’re on, I will call you out, because food is a God given, right? It really is. And we, we, we’re having bigger problems these days now because people are eating so much packaged foods and stuff that we’re we’re ratcheting up the dimension people, because they’re getting plastic in their brain. So I’m, like, if we cook more people, more homemade, cooked meals, farm

38:10

the table,

Nancy Longo  38:12

well, that or, like, if you buy these, if you buy these meals that we’re doing, we’re not giving them to you in plastic. We’re not doing that. We’re not cooking them in plastic. So, you know, but, but you remember, probably remember this one, this good one, when you were Italian kid, they say, Oh, your grandmother was making the sauce, right? Oh, yeah, you know that the aluminum comes off and ruins your brain. You will get aluminum and your food was gonna wreck

Marcella Knight  38:35

your brain. I do believe that you heard that dementia is caused by people eating so much processed food? It is it

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Speaker 1  38:42

positive? I don’t disagree with that. That’s why I come to you come to Cocos. Eat fresh, pointy, fresh.

Nancy Longo  38:49

You just gotta, you just gotta not have that stuff in your system.

Speaker 1  38:53

Well, here’s the thing for me, I come in the door here only nice people out of Coco’s right on the right, there is a sign that’s and I would always look up and say, Do you know Nancy and Marsh, like I everybody I know knows Nancy. Have you been over Coco’s? I’ve been everywhere. I haven’t been to Coco. So today I changed that change. It’s great to see you as always. Great to see Marsh. Get on out support the Anderson family benefit as well. Next weekend, on the 16th, you got no excuse. The Ravens don’t play until 430 the event starts at one. It’s right at Union brewing, the cold beer. Union Avenue, my bad Waverly brewing, my bad

Nancy Longo  39:31

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union Waverly Avenue, Avenue in Union

Speaker 1  39:34

No. Union Avenue Waverly, don’t confuse me, damn it. Nancy’s here. Mars is here. My thanks to everybody here at Cocos, at Greg Abel come by earlier on today, as well as Lisa Matthews from love ride. And I do want to give a shout out, because we talked so much about heart. We talked so much about family. My dude, Ed Lauer, got a fresh heart last night, heart transplant.

Speaker 1  39:55

I’ve been a mess all day. So he’s doing. Good. We’re gonna go see him. So we’re gonna do a benefit for Ed to Lauer. Power is what we’re gonna call it. So what the minute he can eat a crab cake, damn it. I’m gonna bring him one for Coco. So I gotta sign off. We’re gonna be back on Friday at Pizza John’s in Essex. I have some great guests. Luke’s coming by because

Nancy Longo  40:16

he loves pizza. John, no, that’s another one. A pizza tour,

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40:19

one at a time. Man, I got oysters

Nancy Longo  40:22

for the pizza tour.

Speaker 1  40:24

Deepest squalies Text me yesterday, and they’ve invited me back, so I’m gonna be back.

Marcella Knight  40:29

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Their pizza is the best. I was gonna say. You know, I love their food, but I’ve never had their pizza. Oh, Jesus,

Nancy Longo  40:33

you’re gonna meet me down there and have a

Speaker 1  40:35

pizza with me. By the way, the one time I did my show at deepest squalies, her old man’s

Nancy Longo  40:40

out in the lobby the best, wow. Your

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Speaker 1  40:43

husband loves right? Yeah, the neighborhood down there, yeah, you guys were neighbors, yeah, yeah. Baltimore, you didn’t flood

Nancy Longo  40:56

last week. I’m a good place to hide, but you we yeah, we didn’t have it in the building, but we did. I couldn’t get down. We call that Lake alasana, yeah, because the water sits, if it moved and ran, then it would be a river. But since it sits, it’s Lake Allison. I used to talk. I used to talk to Sergio from, you know, over little Italian surgeon, I would go, how’s it at that end of Lake Alice?

Speaker 1  41:26

All right, no more floods, no more natural disasters. Come on out to Cocos and enjoy yourself. You can always order crap kicks online. If you’re getting involved with the holidays and shipping, make sure you get that in early, right? Yes, absolutely. All right, give him a chance to Christmas is around. The chance to ship you those delicious 11 ounce, gigantic softball crab cakes anywhere in the world. Or do what I do, quarter them up, fry them in a pan, and just don’t tell Mars about I am Nestor. We are W NST am 15,

41:51

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01, the smoker. Yeah, don’t get

Speaker 1  41:55

me started. I’m gonna have a crap. I’m gonna have another crab cake tour. I’ll be going around. Have you all together? Yeah, smoked crab. If

Nancy Longo  42:01

you put them all in one we should be at all in one room, like all the crab cakes that we

Speaker 1  42:05

put an end to the whole rumor. There’s

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Nancy Longo  42:08

only one, all of them all at one time.

42:12

I can’t eat all that way too much. We’d

Nancy Longo  42:15

have to get, like, an audience, but we could get some people, and then we could give them money to a charity.

Speaker 1  42:19

I like that idea, all right, I like that idea. Back for more. We are W, N, S, D, A in 1570 to Baltimore, crab cake tour wrapping up. Stay with us. You.