Crab Gab with Carly Eutsler of Nick’s Fish House

Like most Baltimoreans, Carly Eutsler, pictured above, grew up eating crabs. “My grandmother, Rita, was from Baltimore, and it was part of what we did as a family,” she says. “Every Memorial Day, Mother’s Day, every holiday, we were doing crabs, steamed shrimp, corn on the cob—the whole Chesapeake thing.”

So it makes perfect sense that when the Catonsville native started working at Nick’s Fish House in 2012 as a server—she’s now one of the Baltimore Peninsula restaurant’s managing partners—she wanted to pass on her passion to the restaurant’s 300,000 visitors a year.

“When people come to Nick’s, we want them to eat, drink, and be merry,” says Eutsler. “We want people to feel good when they are here—that’s the goal.”

There are a lot of crab houses out there. How does Nick’s stand out in the crab house crowd?
It’s the vibe that gets people in the door. The live music outside makes you feel like you’re transported. You’re in Baltimore, but you’re at a destination. You have boats pulling up. You see city life as you look to the Hanover Street Bridge. You see all the cars so you feel like you’re in the city, but you’re also on the water.

How does your food and drink set itself apart?
For the drinks, they’re squeezing fresh oranges and grapefruits for the crushes. We don’t pre-batch anything. We don’t pre-steam our crabs, so they’re not sitting around for a couple days and getting recooked. When we say, “Hey, it’s going to take 20 or 25 minutes for your crabs to hit the table,” that’s the reason.

Where do you source your crabs?
Unfortunately, you can’t have crabs from the Chesapeake Bay year-round because the water freezes. I tell people we have both—as soon as I can pull from Maryland, I pull Maryland. Otherwise, in the off-season, we get them from the Gulf.

How many crabs and crushes do you sell on a busy night?
There are times when we are selling about 2,500 orange crushes in a week of summer and that’s just one flavor. As for crabs, on say Mother’s Day weekend, we might sell 2,200 crabs in a single night.

Why do you think the ritual of eating crabs has such a hold on us?
I think it’s about the taste first, but then it becomes about the social experience. Out-of-towners are like, you have to pick this thing in order to eat it, and then it may not fill you all the way up? But then they realize this is an exciting and fun way to eat. I have guests who drive from Philly every other weekend to get here.

What are some other dishes people should order?
We are Nick’s Fish House—our fish entrees are delicious. Some of the stuff we do when we have rockfish on special is incredible. The steamed shrimp and ahi tuna are great. People love the crab pretzel, and the shrimp and crab eggroll has been a top seller since we put it on the menu—we hand roll those every day.

What are some of the funnier things you’ve seen tourists do with a steamed crab?
I’ve seen people try to eat them with a fork and knife. I’ve seen people just staring at them sometimes. They will literally look at it and they’re like, “What do we do?” We’ve created a how-to video for people to learn while they wait in line.