Nothing says true Baltimore love on Valentine’s Day like crab cakes. Let our beloved proprietor Marcella Knight and Ko-host show and tell you about what she loves about making people when they come to her legendary little pub in Lauraville. And how ordering ahead and grabbing them to go on the side door has become a boon to her business and makes folks all over town aware of the Mayor’s favorite crab cake.
Nestor Aparicio and Marcella Knight discuss the unique aspects of Koco’s Pub, including its small kitchen and signature crab cakes. They reminisce about their long-standing friendship and the pub’s community atmosphere. Marcella shares details about their recent 10-day closure and the popularity of their cream of crab soup, which is Eric’s recipe. They talk about the challenges of handling Valentine’s Day orders, with a significant increase in demand post-COVID. Nestor suggests a “crab melt” burger for a future event. They also touch on Marcella’s recent trip to the Cayman Islands and their efforts to support the community, including donations to the Maryland Food Bank.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
crab cake, cream of crab, coconut shrimp, Greek salad, celebrity burger, pineapple teriyaki, community gathering, Valentine’s Day, shipping crab cakes, food rescue, good news channel, Maryland lottery, Super Bowl tour, Maryland Food Bank, Cayman Islands
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Marcella Knight
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, AM, 1570 Taos in Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. We are halfway through, literally halfway through, halfway through the week, a cup of soup or bold as our crab cake towards all presented by our friends at the Maryland lottery. In conjunction with wise markets making that happen, also liberty, pure solutions is involved. We’re here at Coco’s pop, one of my all time favorite places. I had a Greek salad. I had the coconut shrimp. I am I’m gonna lodge a complaint with ownership here about the coconut shrimp in a minute. But I also have a cream of crab soup. I’m gonna be doing a couple Super Bowl Summer Tour in August. I’m gonna be going all over the state with the Maryland lottery looking at cream of crab. Maryland crab might eat some oyster stew. Is there any other way to make crab other than cream a crab or Maryland crab Mars?
Marcella Knight 00:49
I guess you could have crab chowder. Maybe
Nestor Aparicio 00:55
corn. Corn. You know what? The only thing might make this better be corn. I’d be honest with you, have the best cream of crab soup that I know of that’s no disrespect of other
Marcella Knight 01:03
places, potatoes would be good in it too, because I love spun
Nestor Aparicio 01:08
potatoes, crab and corn in a cream, yeah? Like a
Marcella Knight 01:13
chowder with some sherry? Absolutely, we put Sherry in
Nestor Aparicio 01:17
ours. Well, that’s the one. That’s why it tastes good, yeah? Right.
Marcella Knight 01:21
I have to come in there, like, do you put Sherry in your cream of crowded I’m like, as we do with our we’ll take it. Let’s
Nestor Aparicio 01:26
talk. We’ll get through a lot of things here. Marcella Knight is our my friend, Marcy, we’ve known each other forever. Emerald tavern. Harvey, all that I mentioned scunny today, and you knew Scotty, and they’re having the big auction for Nacho mamas. Um, recipes and things that are on your menu. Your place is unique to me in that you have this small, tiny galley kitchen. You have the small place. You have these giant crab cake things here. I don’t know there’s any other business like yours. And I look at your menu and say, Why is what’s on your menu? On your menu, and when do I get to decide what’s on burger night? For one, I want to have a celebrity burger night. Is what I want to do. We can do that. I don’t know what’s on it yet, but I want to think about it. Okay, so you
Marcella Knight 02:05
want to pick your own burger you wouldn’t? You want to pick your own burger special? Yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 02:09
probably would be some pineapple teriyaki. It’d be something. Okay, we’ve done that before. I know it’s good. I had it here. Didn’t you grill the pineapple? Yes, yeah. See, I remember I did have, yeah, I did have it here. So I know what I’m talking about. So a business for you, you shut down last week. I mean,
Marcella Knight 02:27
you were, we were closed for 10 days. This is what
Nestor Aparicio 02:31
makes this place special, as I came in today, and, you know, from front to back, first thing, one of your staff members realized that I didn’t bring the pillow from my my hump, my rump, and I sit the seats here are like church pews, yeah, and my I don’t have a lot of cushion back here. I think everybody knows that, and my wife certainly knows that. She makes fun of me, so it hurts my butt in my back a little bit. So I’ve been sitting on my jacket. But your staff knows me so well, they don’t just know that. I’m gonna order the Greek salad, I’m gonna get the coconut shrimp. You’re gonna bring your own pillow. Talk about the coconut shrimp, but they they’re like, Dude, you don’t have a pillow for your butt. I’m like, maybe I left it in the trunk. And I did, and I checked. You’re trying to get me. I sat on a sweatshirt here one year.
Marcella Knight 03:17
They are and all, but you have to take it with you. I
Nestor Aparicio 03:19
gotta complain. I had lunch with John Hoey at the bar, and he came in, like, quarter to 12. We were going to do the show, and I’m like, now, I love John from the Y we did a beautiful segment about the city, and we sat and he got a crab cake, because that’s what he get here. I got to cook in a shrimp and I got the and you’re cooking like that stuck in my teeth. Dumb as logic to complain. I just got it out. I’ve done two hours of radio. Said something, I got floss. I can’t do it on the air. I was in a segment like this. What makes your crab soup so good? Give me I want some recipes from you, because they’re all your mothers, right? Like you didn’t come up with any of this,
Marcella Knight 03:56
right? No, well, actually, the cream of crab soup is, is my kitchen manager, Eric’s recipe. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 04:01
I’ve had Eric want to show you. Tell him, yeah, yeah, compliment
Marcella Knight 04:05
his mom’s, all right, the cream is Eric’s
Nestor Aparicio 04:08
my wife made Marilyn cream, or Marilyn crab, not cream, Maryland crab. She’s made it after my crab cake tour, like in September. She has, like, a taste for it, and she makes of that. I mean, she makes this gigantic.
Marcella Knight 04:22
Does she use the claws and
Nestor Aparicio 04:23
stuff? Yes, yes. I brought the claws home from the claws were from Conrad’s not a sponsor. Tony Andrew, you know, I’m looking for you. So we were at an event. Leonard Raskin has this big crab feast for all his clients. And it was the end of the night. And he had it up in Jacksonville, four corners, at that little Conrad sort of thing there, he had a little house, and we, we’ve done a couple years. The end of the night were the last ones leaving, and there were like, crab claws, like on a table, yeah, like, and like, take them home. So we took like six giant crabs home, and a bunch. Your legs. And my wife is from New Hampshire. She ain’t never, she don’t she loves Maryland crab soup, but had never had it as a kid, so she doesn’t know what it’s like. Supposed to taste like, like it’s vegetable soup with crab kind of, sort of right, kind of right. Yours is like that. My mother was dirty with Southern pride and okra and like, putting things, see, that’s why it’s good, right? So the argument I’ve had, and I had this with Dami and Bill Cole, who told me, You’re not making real crabs. You merely they shamed my Maryland crap, see, I said to me, my mother fire roasted tomatoes, right? And then you know your whole holy trinity of onions and celery, you know the things that you do. But to me, bacon, there’s a there’s a point where it needs a pork component right into the sauce. For me that gives it that complexity. My wife took out a batch of it she made in September, a week and a half ago, and I’m like, it’s been in the freezer. She’s like, it’s fine. We put it. It was so good. I mean, like, it
Marcella Knight 06:03
tastes about summer to me. You know, the flavors just,
Nestor Aparicio 06:07
you know, she had a bad oak or two. She had an okra was kind of tough, so I was kind of fishing that out of it a little bit. But flavor wise, there’s a million ways to make all of these soups. And I think that’s why the tour that I’m thinking about doing in August. No one makes cream a crab soup the way you do. No one makes merrily. It’s gonna be different, good, bad. I like this one. I like that one. Same thing with crab cake, you do half and half, right? Of course, you do half and half and but yours is got cherry in it. I think that’s why I like it the most. Yes, I think the sherry makes it and it’s not too lumpy or too like sometimes it could taste a little Bisquick if I go to the wrong place, you know, saying absolutely it has it doesn’t have that. A
Marcella Knight 06:49
lot of places use a powdered mix for their base. You’re not going
Nestor Aparicio 06:53
to tell me
Marcella Knight 06:54
what I know, a lot of milk, butter, I can’t tell you, low fat.
Nestor Aparicio 07:00
Alright, so what’s going on around? You take a week off in the winter. You’re I was complimenting your employees, and because it’s always the same, people here. Had a lot of people here. I’ve, we’ve talked about, I had a hard time hiring employees. She has gold here each and every time. But you guys give everybody the week off, and you that’s a unique thing, like pizza. John’s takes the week off in July. It’s always the week I don’t get I want their pizza, right? Chick Fil A’s off on Sunday. We all know that, right? You know, why this week was it just a slow week? Well,
Marcella Knight 07:30
yeah, it’s, you know, it’s after the holidays. It’s cold. Everyone’s past due, you know, we’ve all worked extra hard to get through the holiday season. And Santa Nice? Yeah, I’ve seen
Nestor Aparicio 07:43
the elves here. Yeah, I’m looking at the elf right now, making them, making crab cakes for four hours. I mean, Jen, stop,
Marcella Knight 07:48
right? Yeah, we make them for about eight hours every day. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 07:52
they taste better because they’re made by a girl named Liz. That’s my mom’s good. Does that work? You know, that’s why they taste so good. So what’d you do? My husband
Marcella Knight 08:02
and I went to the Cayman Islands.
Nestor Aparicio 08:04
Hey,
Marcella Knight 08:06
yes, first big trip in six years. I’m
Nestor Aparicio 08:09
doing the show at libs grill in Harford County next week. And Nick is the proprietor there, but John liberatore, who is the proprietor of the LIBS grill and Timonium and liberatories. He’s got a place that he goes to Caymans all time. Oh, it’s so I’ve never been you’ve been
Marcella Knight 08:27
before. No First all, right, so it was incredible. My
Nestor Aparicio 08:32
kid did in a virgin cruise for 11 days a week and a half ago. And they did all the lower islands. Okay, so they did the islands. You can’t get to Barbados st, John Martinique st, Kitts, like these incredible places I go in and out of Jamaica. I’ve been to Puerto Rico, I’ve been to Cuba, but I like Caymans. It to me was like, if I was gonna pick one based on the pictures I’ve seen the people I know that have been there. I would go to the Caymans just because of the reputation of, yeah, right. So was it
Marcella Knight 09:05
up to snuff? It was definitely up to snuff. We can’t wait to get back. It was you liked it that much? It was beautiful. The water was incredible. The people were friendly. It’s a relatively safe Island, and it’s just a lot of fish. All the boxes. Eat fish every day, lots of fish, fruit every day. Swim, snorkel. We got, we got the swing with, oh, sorry, swim with a dolphin. No, with stingrays. Stingray they have a tour there’s called Stingray City, which almost threw me off, because I’m like, I don’t want anything that has to do anything that has to do anything with the city I
Nestor Aparicio 09:44
live in, the sting rays. Like today, I’ve seen the rays swim up to me and, you know, in Mexico and Jamaica, different places like that, the whole Crocodile Hunter thing gets me weirded out on,
Marcella Knight 09:54
you know, it didn’t meet you. But then I thought, you know, what if I’m gonna go, what a way to go? Like, it’s. When
Nestor Aparicio 10:00
you touch them, they feel like dolphins, right? They have that. They have. They were like,
Marcella Knight 10:03
solved, yeah. And they were friendly, and they like, we could hold them, and they let us kiss them. And, yeah, they
8Nestor Aparicio 10:10
it was really neat. I kissed dolphin, or dolphins kiss me. I don’t know which one, but something like that. Yeah.
Marcella Knight 10:14
So they took us out on a catamaran, and we went out for about an hour, and there was a sandbar in the middle of the Caribbean, and that’s where they take every
Nestor Aparicio 10:24
city should do this once in their life. If you’ve never, I would say this, if you’ve never seen blue water like and that’s the thing about the Caymans is, every time I see a picture from there, it just has this it’s, yeah, this home. It has a beauty about it that I think some other because of the it has long white sand beaches, because it’s, it’s very sandy, yeah? Well, they have a seven mile right? And that’s, that’s the beauty of it is the beach makes it so beautiful. But, like, my kid went to a lot of volcanic so they have the, you know, there’s incredible mountains, a lush mountain that reaches down and coves and caves and things like that. I’m more like, I just want that sugar white beach, you know, I just want to see the beach out there. And I’ve been to like, Fiji, where they have the black sand. You don’t want to do all that. I like, well, I need a white sand beach, because the black sand heats up too. The little Lidl gets a little warmer. Is a little Ocean City First Street when you got to walk across all that sand. And I’m all about that moss is here. We’re at Cocos. It’s quiet right now because kind of after lunch, before lunch, before dinner, I try to come in when it’s quiet. Because if I if I try to grab you at like noon or one or four, 430 but some time I tell like two and three and four quiets out a little bit so I can have time with you, because you’re busier. Yeah, this place is crazy busy all the time. For you with the burger night, we have to talk about this. Who makes a burger is that Eric makes that
Marcella Knight 11:46
the special actually is usually Liz and Patrick who come up with, what’s the
Nestor Aparicio 11:51
most popular burger special you have? Which one you sell out of, like, by seven o’clock. And I’m Oh, my comment, goodness, you did something with
Marcella Knight 11:58
all out all the time.
Nestor Aparicio 12:00
You did a roasted red pepper one couple months ago, something, something, what’s like pimento cheese. It was cold out, and I was y’all, you almost get me. Every time those posts get me. We’ve got some really nice burgers. I love your burgers. People say to me, go to get a burger someplace I like. I don’t like burgers out much. My wife loves your burgers. So if I take her anywhere for a burger, to the your Coopers, only two places, that’s it. I don’t want to go any other places. I got place like me with Chinese I got one place I get Chinese food, but you get Cocos crap.
Marcella Knight 12:29
Your Chinese food.
Nestor Aparicio 12:32
If I give it away, there’s going to be a line. Okay? I will tell you, okay. And this is the only place you’ll find this place. It is within walking distance of the Emerald tavern where you and I met 35 years ago. Wow. It is one block away from the Emerald tavern, and it is a very happy China place. I just gave you the name, so it’s really good. Get the vegetables delicious. They make fresh egg rolls. Oh, nice. And they’re nice. They’re the nicest people, like, you know, my kitty cat loves shrimp, and they do sushi there. So they have the little, the little sushi set up, where you see the fish there. And she always gives me a shrimp for my kitty cat. Oh, so, my kitty cat gets shrimp from happy China. My kitty cat’s happy it’s a free plug. Happy China plug all these places, by the way. Speaking of free plugs, um, Thomas from Zeke’s, I looking at your mugs around here. You got your Zeke’s thing going on. He hit me. He was supposed to come out to the show today. Couldn’t make it. Couldn’t be here, whatever. I made it to their pow wow. And we’ve talked about your neighborhood, okay, when you went up on the Friday, yeah, the Friday fast. See that even you know about it, right? There is something about community. I mean, I had John Hoey here from the Y talking about community centers and community gathering places, and I even made a joke of one of your your staff here about my butt and thing I said, You guys are like, cheers. You’re like, looking out for me here, but the neighborhood is kind of that way, is it not? I think so. Yes, absolutely. You were telling me that you before vacation, you have leftover food. And I had a beautiful guy on Monday over at Costas. His name’s Chris dipne Ryan. He’s from Trinidad Tobago, different another beautiful island, Trinidad Tobago, and he has a thing called for my city. The number for my city, and it’s getting a lot of publicity, is that on the west side, it’s not what the food bank does I’m we’re collecting here for the Maryland Food Bank on a cup of Super Bowl. We got a box here, Cocos, right now, this is non perishable, right? Like so canned goods, things that last a long time. His specialty is, you’ve got extra tomatoes. He called it rescuing food. I love it. He said, I rescue, he’s got a, you know, it’s got the Indian sort of island. So I rescue food. I’m like, well, that’s a noble thought that, you know, you do that. You don’t have a lot of waste here, though, right? Like, restaurants don’t run that way, right? We
Marcella Knight 14:52
don’t, we’re, we’re, we’re very efficient, you know? We just, we hardly ever throw anything away. Or anything goes to waste. But when we do close occasionally, we will, you know, when we close for our vacations, we will call the local restaurants and ask them if they want our, you know, extra tomatoes or extra lettuce. Neighborly. You
Nestor Aparicio 15:15
told me that when I came in today, and I’m like, I know you’ve had the bartenders down from up the other side of the street. You got all these different businesses that are here. That’s what makes community, right? That’s what makes people come by. It’s not just they’re gonna come down here and have a crab cake or grab a bag and go there’s other things in shopping, and certainly during the holidays, that was an alive thing for what you did down here, candy canes. Yeah, your Christmas thing. There was amazing pictures.
Marcella Knight 15:38
There was a lady earlier that came by and dropped off a bag of the donation food, and she didn’t even want to soup. She said, I just heard you guys were doing this. I just brought this by. And she gave us a bag of food. And we were like, Come on, don’t you want to least take a suit with you? She said, No, no, no, I appreciate you guys doing this. People are not I was like, Oh my God, that’s so nice.
Nestor Aparicio 15:57
Well, I think, you know, certainly with the new government we have it on a daily basis, and the bad, I just there’s so many good people doing good things in this city on a daily, every day, all the time, and that doesn’t lead the news. I think I always
Marcella Knight 16:13
said they needs to be a good news channel, and I was going to be the anchor person.
Nestor Aparicio 16:17
We’re going to turn ball to the positive into that. You know, you’re inspiring, you’re doing it right. But who? Who would listen to it? Who watches? That’s
Marcella Knight 16:25
what everyone tells me, no one wants to hear good news. They won’t want to hear bad news. But I don’t believe that, because I would watch a good news channel. I had it. There’s actually a website that goes around that’s called, like, good news so you can subscribe to have you seen it? Yeah, like an email thing? Well, there was a
Nestor Aparicio 16:41
kids channel called a good news channel that many years ago too. It was, like kids broadcasters. It was all good news. And, you know, kids telling good stories about animals and Zoo. Yes,
Marcella Knight 16:49
all that stuff is, you know, it’s like, contagious it, you know, if you I think so, yeah, you hear bad things, and then more people. It just gives them. They they turn around and they do bad things.
Nestor Aparicio 17:00
Well, look you and I’ll do this piece, and it’ll be out on a positive it’ll be on the podcast. It’ll be on the radio. At some point, I stack these pieces up where I’m going to do 30 or 40 pieces this week about good people doing good stuff. Like TJ was just sitting here as a lottery winner here. I bought him a crab cake here at Coco’s. You know, he’s mentoring young people up in Aberdeen, and, you know, John hoey’s Got kids out on the street, 30 different community schools here in the Baltimore area, doing good stuff. So, but you don’t see this on the news, right? You know, lead with that. You know, they
Marcella Knight 17:30
have a little bit a little bit, but they should have more. For sure. I
Nestor Aparicio 17:34
had a joke this week about, like, clicks online because somebody last week, I’m a public people say all sorts of lies, whatever, but like you just doing that to get clicks. And I’m thinking to myself, I don’t think I’ve ever put anything up to get a click. And I joke with Luke. I said, the Pro Bowl. We always joke about the Pro Bowl. I said, if the headline said Luke and Nestor break down the Pro Bowl, would anybody click on it? You know? And I’m thinking here, Marcel and Nestor talk about what a great planet we have, what a great world. Would anybody click on that? I don’t know if I put that as the headline, I don’t know. You could try. I don’t know. Man, I know that one thing, the crab soup here is delicious. Crab cakes are delicious. You still you do mail it year round. We talk about it so much during the holidays and say special occasion, special occasion. But Valentine’s Day and I had Wendy bronfen on this week talking about her products over at the curio. It’s Valentine’s week special week. Is it still a big night out, or is it more of I’m gonna grab a couple crab cakes and go home now, because maybe you didn’t offer that 15 years ago. Maybe it was like, You got to come in. You got to be here, right? This the shipping side and the COVID side and the carry outside of your business has probably made Valentine’s little bit of a Christmas like a, oh yeah, you could do a lot more business than you ever could have done by couple 100 people coming here get crab cakes next week and saying, I’m gonna
Marcella Knight 18:51
take we were, we were planning our strategy earlier today, like how we’re gonna handle the waves of people, because a couple years ago, even it put us at a complete shutdown, like we had such a bottleneck of order, you didn’t know that. We didn’t know we didn’t know which end was up. We didn’t know if we had enough crab cakes, how many we could get. Like we were just so backed out. We had to shut everything off for about an hour to figure out where we were and what we could do. You know, from there and then, I think we were closed like two hours. We we shut off all ordering, and then we resumed it once. Is
Nestor Aparicio 19:25
there ever a point in modern times, in the last couple years, where somebody would come to this door and you literally wouldn’t have a crab cake for them? Is that? Is that crap beat got expensive a couple years? Yeah, there’s a lot of that going on. You had to raise prices. Everybody was doing that. But like you, always have a crab kick here, right? Yeah, I never asked you that. I’m just asking, Well,
Marcella Knight 19:43
occasionally we have run out, but it is not pretty when we do. I’m asking, yeah, people get really up. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 19:51
the last time you run out, you want to make sure it’s the final time, right, like, right, you don’t want to do
Marcella Knight 19:56
that Valentine’s Day that we had that big. Crunch like that. We learn from that, and every year we learn, and we get better and better. And is it the biggest? It’s It’s supposedly the biggest day of the year for people to eat out that and Mother’s Day. But for you,
Nestor Aparicio 20:13
for your little business here in Lara villa, Cocos, like next there will be the 12th and 13th and 14th. It’s like, gonna be one, and it’s crazier than it ever could be for just people eating in here, it’s like, the numbers astronaut, five times what you could serve in here. Probably, yes. I mean, I see your gotta be 50% of your business.
Marcella Knight 20:32
It is, it’s, it’s at least 50% that’s how. And that all came after COVID. And
Nestor Aparicio 20:38
people think you have such a product for that, though, because your crab cakes, they go, I take one home every taking one home today. And for me, your crab cakes a three meal. Or, you know that I can’t suggest
Marcella Knight 20:47
it, because I feel like, you know, on Valentine’s Day, it’s a good thing to take home and do, and then you don’t have to worry about the crowds and the craziness and all that, unless you’re into that,
Nestor Aparicio 20:58
and there’s no cleanup. Liz has done all that for you already. Back you’re weighing them. So, you know, well, everybody, if you’re out there and you’re thinking about Valentine’s night, you’re thinking about, I haven’t had a cocoa, so you could drive down here, come by, grab them at any point and they order ahead, yeah, well, we’re
Marcella Knight 21:13
doing an uncooked special. I think we call it a sweetheart special, where it’s two crab cakes with soup and salad. Are they heart shaped? They’re not heart shaped. That would be really cute. And then so we’ll have an uncooked special for carry out, okay? And then we’re gonna have a dine in special as well. So we do still have reservations left. We’re not completely booked up yet, but because everyone kind of waits till the last minute, no one really plans that far ahead for holidays. We find that everybody
Nestor Aparicio 21:50
knows if they want a dinner reservation with their if they’re in the romance mode with their wife, their loved one, whatever it is. And I’m everyone. You should love your spouse. You should love every you know. But if you want to make a night of romance and see, I want Valentine’s night, seven o’clock, eight o’clock, everybody knows you need to make a reservation to do that. Like, we’re not just rolling into Coco I’m not gonna wait. Yeah, next week. I’m like, let’s go to Cocos at 630 on Valentine’s night, we’ll get in. But I would also think like, Let’s drive down there at 630 we can grab a couple crab cakes, go out the side door quickly and get home at 715 and make them right, right? That is certainly on. If somebody’s listening on Valentine’s Day, they could do that. Yeah, absolutely. Now, what do you call what? I don’t even know what the Valentine’s Day is this year. Now, there’s no way I’m getting in here on a Friday on Valentine’s that’s a double duty, right? And
Marcella Knight 22:38
you don’t realize how many people will still walk in. They’ll walk in. A lot of people don’t. It’s Valentine’s Day. We get customers to come in Friday the 14th. Yeah, it’s like, it’s, it’s Valentine’s Day.
Nestor Aparicio 22:52
Well, they will not run out of them. And if you, if you want to ship someone to someone you love, out of town or down the beach or whatnot, shipping you can ship to so will
Marcella Knight 23:00
ship that week, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for next day delivery. So you can get a an order delivered on Valentine’s Day.
Nestor Aparicio 23:09
All right. Well, I’m, I’m going to take mine home tonight. This is my case to you. I We, I forget some
Marcella Knight 23:16
of those, yeah, some of those. Shape things, the cookie shapers will heart heart, smash the
Nestor Aparicio 23:21
crap. I gave a great idea to Brett at Pizza John’s last week. And I’m about to give you my my crap, my uh, burger of the week thing. I’m gonna make a formal request of you here before we get going. But I want to show you this pizza, because I sent this to Brett. I found it like, I found it like on Christmas Day, I think. And it’s just great picture. And I didn’t send it to him on Christmas Day because was going around, look at that pizza. Oh, wow. Everybody see this here? Let me see if I can get this. Get this up on the video. Really cool. It’s, it’s, it’s a, like, a 10 layer pizza. And I said to him, could you do I said, If I could go to Pizza John’s and get that between December 2, you can charge more make more people want pictures with it. It’s the wildest thing, and I don’t know how to do that with a crab cake, but here’s what I want to do. I’ve told you a million times that the Burke’s crab melt was my favorite thing. So it’s, it’s English muffin, right? Crab meat, or like an imperial. But really it was your crab cake. It was literally the way they made it was your slurry. Maybe it’s a little wetter than that, but it was, it tasted like your credit. Didn’t taste like, listen, I talk about crab cakes all the time, so I love the fade leaves. I love it. They don’t, didn’t taste like Burke’s. Yours is, this is the crab cake that I want to put on that that crab melt, and they put sharp, extra sharp cheddar cheese on top. And they toast it so it gets dirty, it gets dark and crunchy, cheesy, delicious, and you got that. And then what I would cut it and eat it with a fork, proper, like not, not like it, you know, cut it like British style. So I would quarter it and I would eat it. It would be served. Your delicious tomato those big beef steaks you do with that delicious Chesapeake seasoning on top, and then your french fries and your coleslaw. Do you know, every time I leave here the last year, that’s what you do with your I leave here, I swear you. I do this. I leave here with your big old softball and your little plastic thing. And you all think I’m eating a crab cake when I get home, I’ve never crab cake. If I want a crab cake, I’ll get one here. So I take it home, the raw, uncooked, because what you call it, and I quarter it, and I stop and get bays, English muffins. Those are the ones in the refrigerator. Oh, I love them. See, they are so good. See, you know why this tastes good, right? So I get the base English, and I take them home, and I just get the wise brand, extra shy, I don’t get Gucci cheese. Let’s get this shredded extra sharp cheddar. And I take your crab cake and I mold it the way Liz is back there molding those softballs, and I mold it down, and I cook your crab cake a little bit and get it cooked. And then I toast my little thing a little bit, and then I put it together, and I put the cheese on it, and then I give it the the BAM, in my in my toasterizer, my oasterizer, I put it on a turbo, and it sizzles up. And then I fries, and York, you have the best cola city, the little cups. Yeah, that’s mom’s recipe. That’s my mom. It tastes like my mom’s your coleslaw is phenomenal. It’s so good. If it was in Pittsburgh, they put it on a sandwich with french fries, they would. So I take your coleslaw and some french fries. Sometimes I get some, like, Nathan’s out of the freezer and do those up. Because I like, like, I like a potato. We french fry like yours, so, and I do that as a platter. So, would you consider a crab melt on a burger night, figuring it all out? Because it would be like a fifth of one of your
Marcella Knight 26:50
we call it the crab burger.
Nestor Aparicio 26:53
It’s it would it would change people’s lives if they’ve never had it, because they come in there to love your crab cakes. Only thing make your crab cake better is to put it on that base English muffin with some cheese on top. For me once in a while, no disparaging. We could do a crab milk. Could we do crab melt on a burger night? He wants a crab? Listen, we’ll do it at the beginning of baseball season. We’ll do it on a night like the orange roster or something out of town, and we’ll come and hang and make a night of it. It’d be a Tuesday night. Oh,
Marcella Knight 27:24
nasty. Now, get your home early. She
Nestor Aparicio 27:26
doesn’t like me. You know, we’re Cocos. I love them. They tolerate me. By the way, I saw this Valentine’s day years ago, and this speaks to anybody that doesn’t like their spouse, okay? And I don’t know. I don’t maybe I don’t not looking for the whites of your eyes. I’m just saying, if you don’t like your spouse, you remember the little minty mints that said, Be mine. Be true. I love you. The thing the little minty mints, right? That came when you were a kid. I saw one one time that said, I tolerate you
Marcella Knight 28:03
on a Valentine’s minute. Well, you know what? We all tolerate each other in a marriage. So that’s why I said, that’s what makes it work. And in business, she tolerates. And in business, yes, everybody
Nestor Aparicio 28:13
tolerates me. Well, everybody tolerance
Marcella Knight 28:16
I say to all our employees all the time, where people have been here for a long time. It’s like one big marriage. It’s like we’re we’re all married to each other, and we, we all have to
Nestor Aparicio 28:27
who’s your favorite employee?
Marcella Knight 28:33
They’re all my favorite.
Nestor Aparicio 28:34
They ask a musician, what’s your favorite song, the one you love, the one you love the most, who’s your favorite part? The one you love, Marcy’s. Here, we’re in Cocos. I’m trying you got a slow start. We warmed up. It was the crab soup here. We’re gonna do crab soup tour in the summer. And I happen to think the cream of crab soup here is delicious. It’s It’s getting cold, so I’m gonna eat it. I’m gonna make her I’m gonna warm it up and eat it. I got some crackers here. Yeah, she’s getting to be like her mom. Here we go. Magic eight balls. We’re scratching these off. Come on out to Cocos for Valentine’s Day. And if they don’t have room for you, they’ll send you home with some love. And you can take the crab cakes home curbside them, grab them. We’re down here in larval you can, you can order them if you’re out of town hells. I know you want them in Arkansas. I know you do. It’s very easy to click away. And we try to come in every couple months and raise hell and take up a table and give some stuff away. We had some winners for the Maryland lottery as well. We got great guests. It’s a couple Super Bowl stop by support us. We’re for the Maryland Food Bank. On Thursday, we’re in Catonsville at State Fair. On Friday. We’ll be back up at Cooper’s north, and I’m gonna have a bowl. Have you ever had the gumbo at the Cooper’s north? I have
Marcella Knight 29:45
not at that location, but
Nestor Aparicio 29:47
downtown. Will you live that downtown that way? So legendary, and I’m gonna celebrate the Super Bowl in New Orleans doing that on Friday. We’re getting back to fade leads two weeks from now, because we had to cancel on Tuesday, because I’m an idiot. That’s the real reason. Me, you would kill me if I did that to you today. What you would but didn’t, I
Marcella Knight 30:04
probably would have killed you.
Nestor Aparicio 30:10
It’s the middle of the week.
Marcella Knight 30:12
I did it the other day. I left my computer at my parents house. It got halfway home and
Nestor Aparicio 30:17
went the reason the show wasn’t a fade leaves on Tuesday, and I’m rescheduling it in the American Cancer Society and Hope Lodge and all my great guests is I locked my equipment in the trunk of my car that my wife took to silver spring. I’m never telling that story again. You’re
Marcella Knight 30:31
not the only person that’s ever done that. It’s okay.
Nestor Aparicio 30:35
That’s pretty dumb. No, yeah, it’s human. Well, it’ll be sunny and love when we go back to faith. It’s lovely here at Cocos. Today, we’re in lauraville. Come by for all these nincompoops out in the in the county. I don’t go to the city. This is the best part of the city, and it’s the first stop you should be making in the city if you’re coming into the city here at Coco so stop down. Say a little sigma six. Gonna be here a little while Clancy. Clancy snuck in. He’s sitting at the bar in a crab cake Wait. My next guest is detained by your smiling over there. He’s fattening up for baseball season. Is what he’s doing. He’s got to run up and down selling all that beer, getting ready for the summer. Clancy is here, the legendary Clancy beer vendor to the stars. I’m gonna have a beer with him on his can. I do that. You can do that. I want to. I want to have a beer with Clancy. I’m gonna do that. I suggest. I’m the boss. I make no rules. Tonight. It’s cup of Super Bowl week. We’re doing it all for the Maryland a food bank, our friends at the Maryland lottery wise markets, and the people who love me and I love like Mars supporting us here at a Cocos. And Eric, I’m coming for you for that burger night. Stay with us. We’re Baltimore positive. We’re checking in and checking out and talking about more than just Justin Tucker, I’m tuckered out. You.
