Sitting on a skiff on the bay in Sea Isle City, chef Liz Grothe slowly pulled up a submerged string from the lapping waters while holding onto a half-eaten Wawa hoagie.
On the string, a blue crab emerged, clinging to the severed fish head at the end of the bait holder, called a handline. The crustacean was too small for New Jersey’s recreational size minimum (3 inches long), Grothe and her companions determined. With a sigh, she dropped the crab back into the water.
It was an hour into Grothe’s Sunday crabbing expedition, and her crew had already caught a handful of crabs.
With bright skies and calm waters that day, she rented two skiffs from Bay Breeze Marina with her partner, Jacob Lance, and Lance’s family to embark on her favorite Shore hobby: crabbing on the bay — and later, cooking up her catch in Cape May.
“We get all our ‘beach’ time down the Shore at the bay,” Grothe, who owns the Italian-ish Queen Village restaurant Scampi, said. “[The bay] is more like Oklahoma-style waters, where it’s just a shallow lake rather than like the rough seas of the ocean. So this is more my speed.”
Grothe grew up catching catfish in the creeks in Oklahoma. But it wasn’t until six or seven years ago that an ex-boyfriend introduced her to Sea Isle City’s bay and its crustaceous inhabitants. “He took me on his boys’ excursion, which was crabbing,” she said. “We broke up later — being the kind of girl I am, I stole it. I go to the same place they rented their boats; we do it in the same way I learned.”
Grothe named her restaurant after a seafood dish, so it’s no surprise she has strong feelings about crabs, the scavengers of the sea. Don’t expect these to show up on her menu, though — they are for personal eating only. The once-a-summer hobby lets her “touch grass, so to speak, and have something to do that’s not the harrowing day-to-day that we deal with in the kitchen,” she said.
Being close to water was always a priority for her family — Grothe’s mom is originally from the Philippines. Her interest in seafood, however, comes from the love of catching it and cooking it. “Eating is just the secondary part of the fun,” she said.
“I’m in it for the love of the game, not the catch,” she said, while tossing the handline back into the water.
Bay Breeze Marina rents a boat for $109 for four hours, including gas, cushions, anchor, paddle, cutting board, and a net. The rental also offers a map of the best areas to catch the crabs. It was a no-brainer for Grothe and crew.
Around 10:30 a.m., she and Lance took one boat, and Lance’s brother and sister-in-law hopped into their own. (Grothe and Lance’s boat didn’t have a bucket, so they improvised, throwing their crabs into a cooler.)
For four hours, the crew tossed their baited handlines in various areas of bay — deep waters, shallow areas, just off the coast — to catch as many crabs as they could. They found chunky pieces of bait — like the trout head — were the best lures.
“What kind of music do crabs like?” Jake asked the group. “They don’t seem to be digging country.”
“Crabs are chaos; try house music,” Grothe said. “I could see them vibing to it.”
But Daft Punk and Prince were the “certified crab bangers,” as Grothe put it.
By the end of the excursion, the crew caught more than a dozen crabs of varying sizes. After docking their skiffs, Grothe assessed which crabs were too small to keep and dropped whatever was too small back in the water.
Left with 14 crabs in total, the crew decided to supplement their haul with other catch for a big boil. They stopped by the fish market at the Lobster House in Cape May to pick up mussels, shrimp, and clams before heading to Lance’s mom’s house in West Cape May, where the live crabs were washed and tossed into the boiling water.
The key to cooking a crab boil, according to Grothe: a lot of Tony Chachere’s Creole seasoning. “Maryland and up, people use Old Bay. But if you go south, those who know reach for Tony Chachere’s,” said Grothe, shaking a big container of it into a pot inside the Lances’ kitchen. “Tony is a saltier, spicier, better Old Bay,” Lance added.
By 5:30 p.m., the table was set with plates of steamed mussels, poached and steamed shrimp with a sungold tomato broth, calamarata pasta, boiled crabs and clams, gluten-free and regular cornbread, and tomato salad. The menu was prepared with leftover ingredients, including sungold tomatoes, basil, and butter from Scampi — “things that were going to go bad and that we had excess of, just a little something to share with the crew.”
After an almost seven-hour expedition, Grothe and the Lances settled down on the backyard patio, cracking crabs and enjoying the fruits of their labor.
“If you’re gonna go crabbing, that’s gonna be your activity for the day — you catch them, and then you gotta deal with them.”
“If you’re gonna go crabbing, that’s gonna be your activity for the day — you catch them, and then you gotta deal with them,” Grothe said.
“Doing something that is very labor-intensive, sharing a part of me with other people that’s fun and interesting — even if it’s not the most industrious or profitable thing — is what I love about cooking,” Grothe added. “Just bringing the family together and showing them that I care via doing this stuff makes me feel good.”