Mother’s Day Crab Cake – Floyd’s Crossroads Pub

Location

If you head out to western Howard County, you may happen upon this unassuming gem of a restaurant known for it’s crabs. It’s also known for having weird operating hours, so I’ve never actually been there. But now I have eaten their crab cake.

For Mother’s Day I knew I wanted to eat a crab cake, and we planned to head down to Point Lookout Maryland and stop at one of the recommended locations in Charles or Calvert County on our way. I’ve never been to Point Lookout, but I feel like I should get to know more of my state and I thought the kids would have fun running around and exploring the beaches there. Unfortunately, it was cold and wet and overcast and windy on Mother’s Day, so I decided that really wouldn’t be fun for anyone.

Instead I bought myself a new video game and asked my husband to obtain crab cakes from somewhere local and bring them home. Of course I excluded the EC Diner since we just tried those. He selected Floyd’s. We would have gone there as a family but restaurants can be a zoo on Mother’s Day and we were happier at home.

My husband described the place as “a house that they turned into a restaurant that also has a fenced in outdoor area.” That’s what it looks like to me. We’ll likely return and try dining there at a later date. It seems like the kind of hole-in-the-wall place that we value.

Also, the food is really good!

For sides we got the obligatory coleslaw (it seems to be a tradition), curly fries, hush puppies, and mac and cheese. My daughter is a mac and cheese aficionado, or maybe she’s just really friggin’ picky, but either way, we got it for her.

The Crab Cake

Before I get into the sides though, let’s talk about the main attraction here.

A lot of Marylanders (pronounced mer-lin-dur) hate seeing green flecks in their crab cake. So let’s get that complaint out of our system. We hate even the suggestion of vegetables entering into our scenario here.

As you can see, this crab cake has a nice mix of lump and backfin crab meat. While I felt it was a little heavy on the backfin and a little heavy on the breadcrumbs, this was easily the most flavorful crab cake I’ve had yet. There was a definite flavor of crab seasoning which highlighted the delicious crab meat well. As I went on eating, I thought it might have been a little salty, but otherwise delightful. This was not the largest crab cake I’ve ever had, or the lumpiest, but it is my favorite so far during my little crab cake journey. It was a balance of creaminess, spiciness, and crabbiness.

How great it is to know that there’s good crab cakes close to home? I bet there are more. I can’t wait to find them.

There was a definite flavor of crab seasoning which highlighted the delicious crab meat well.

The Sides

Just scroll back up and look at that coleslaw. No wait, let me show you again…

I wish I had a really great photo of the slaw because it was delicious. You can see the celery seed, the carrot, the crisp cabbage, the freshness of it. It was delightfully tangy and a little creamy, and sooooo good. My husband makes slaw kind of like this. I recognize coleslaw is a preference thing, but this is mine. I wish I were eating it now. It may have been the star of the whole meal. I dunno, that crab cake was pretty wonderful.

My daughter tried the macaroni and cheese and declared it to be delicious and then proceeded to eat it all and say the portion wasn’t big enough. She and my son liked it better than Panera’s, and that’s their go-to for restaurant mac and cheese.

Unfortunately, the fries and hush puppies weren’t as good. I don’t think their fry oil was hot enough because they weren’t crisp and you could see oil inside the hush puppy I ate. They weren’t terrible, but they weren’t anything special. Both sides were overshadowed by the slaw and mac and cheese.

The Sauces

As expected we got tartar sauce and cocktail sauce. Neither of these complemented the crab cake, which honestly needed no accompaniment. However, this tartar sauce was fantastic. It was bright, balanced, and included a nice amount of dill. The cocktail sauce was okay with a good amount of horseradish, but not as memorable as the tartar sauce. The cocktail sauce was nice with the fries though, so I was glad it was there. I saved the tartar to eat with fish later this week. I’m really looking forward to it.

Summary

Overall, Floyd’s is a place worth visiting and visiting again. I can’t wait to go in and enjoy more menu options. It feels like the kind of place I want to develop a long-term relationship with and I feel very lucky they are close to my home.