It’s here! The California Dungeness Crab season is finally here! We know many of you have been waiting and wondering if the season would open, and if there would be another Quality Seafood “Annual Dungeness Crab Season Family Gathering”. We were beginning to wonder the same thing ourselves! Alas, the season is open, and the crab traps are being pulled as you read this.
What’s the “Annual Dungeness Crab Season Family Gathering”? Read on…
Mid-November brings with it many memories, emotions and anticipations. Without doubt, many people are preparing for Thanksgiving, getting ready to travel, or take in visiting friends and family. It’s also time to dust off some old recipes and maybe some of the old stories of Thanksgivings past. For our family, before we jump fully into Turkey Day, there’s another mid-November tradition that we love to celebrate – the opening of California’s Dungeness Crab season!
Of course, this year, the tradition had to be placed on hold for a month, but we’re going to Celebrate it just the same!
The opening of the Dungeness season here at Quality Seafood, and particularly in Northern California (where some of our family has lived for years), is always an anxiously awaited and exciting time. How will the season be? Great? Good? Not so good? Will it start on time? Will the weather cooperate? Or will it get too stormy?
Here at Quality Seafood, we’ve worked with some of our Crab Fishermen for decades now. Their livelihoods, year to year, depend on the strength of the Dungeness season. Up North in places like Half Moon Bay, El Granada and Montara, you are connected to the season by your proximity to the ocean and the crab itself, but also by virtue of the fact that your neighbors, friends and family are Fishermen. You’ve seen them prep their gear in their driveways for well over a month. You know that a great season will lift their spirits and ease their minds. You know an “off” year is tough, and maybe even tougher than they let on. Nonetheless, celebrating the seasons’ beginning is a cherished tradition.
Every year in mid-November, at the start of Dungeness season, our family in Northern California would travel to Princeton Harbor to get crab for our annual “beginning of the season” feast. Down here in Redondo Beach, where Dungeness is not native to our waters, we await delivery from one of our longtime Crabbers. Typically, our traditional feasts are either on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, or the night before Thanksgiving. Our homage to the season, and our homage to the family business, started generations ago by tireless Fishermen who spent months at a time out on the water.
This year, we share that tradition with you again, albeit a little later than usual, and perhaps if this hasn’t become a tradition for you yet, this will be the year it starts. So, with that, our 3rd Annual Dungeness Crab Season Family Gathering will commence on Wednesday, December 18th.
Starting Wednesday, December 18th – Monday December 23rd, Live California Dungeness Crab will be $9.99 lb.*
We’ll cook it for you at no charge.
Cheers, and have a great time!
The Quality Seafood Family
*While supplies last, if we sell out there will not be any rainchecks given.
