OCEANFRONT — As a gastronomic measuring stick, last year’s winners of the East Coast She-Crab Soup Classic promise that the 2024 spring competition will be a destination event for crabmeat lovers and foodies from Hampton Roads and beyond.
The annual cooking competition is a hot ticket that pays homage to the popular, year-round seafood delicacy that is among our blessings. This year’s event, which includes plenty to eat, is scheduled, rain or shine, for Saturday, April 20, at 24th Street Park in Virginia Beach.
The Atlantic blue crab, or callinectes sapidus, which translates from Latin and Greek to “savory beautiful swimmer,” is a crustacean that thrives in the Chesapeake Bay, an important fishery, and is found throughout the western Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, according to the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
Renowned for its color, the blue crab is also delicious, and it has been an important food source in and around Chesapeake Bay for centuries.
She-crab soup is said to date back to the early 20th Century, when a South Carolina chef elevated crab soup by adding roe to the dish, according to What’s Cooking America.
It’s a signature dish in Charleston, South Carolina, but variations on the hearty soup can be found wherever people love seafood.
Including right here in Virginia Beach.
Out of the water, there is no better place for the beautiful, palate-pleasing swimmer than in a bowl of creamy soup – when it is done right. Virginia Beach chefs pride themselves on their takes on the dish, serving it up by the bowlful to locals and tourists alike.
I spoke with Virginia Beach chefs whose restaurants have had winning dishes during the classic. Our city is the perfect setting for the region’s best seafood chefs to compete for the coveted title of best she-crab soup. Attendees of the classic can sample the soups and vote for the People’s Choice Award, while culinary experts specializing in regional cuisine will judge the Critics’ Choice Awards.
Last year, CP Shuckers Oceanfront won the Critics’ Choice Award, while Rockafeller’s Restaurant placed second and BeachHouse 757 third. Entre Nous Virginia Beach won the Sean Brickell Peoples’ Choice Award. Rockafeller’s came in second, and Blue Pete’s Restaurant placed third.
From dishwasher to Cordon Bleu, Chef Brent Edenfield practically spent most of his life in the family-friendly dining room overlooking the Rudee Inlet basin. Edenfield and proprietor BJ Baumann elevated a classic, time-honored recipe to a local favorite and a destination dining experience.
She-crab soup and crab cakes are Rockafeller’s signature dishes.
“What’s important to us was that both awards were People’s Choice awards,” said Baumann, a food lover who owns and operates Rockafeller’s, which got its start in 1989.
“We use the best crab meat and take extra care to ensure plenty of it in the crab dishes,” she said. “We took the classic she-crab soup recipe that we had used for years and elevated it when Chef Brent returned from spending time in the northeast with his wife’s family.”
A graduate of Ocean Lakes High School, Edenfield started working at Rockafeller’s when he was 15. Later, when his wife wanted a change of scenery, they moved near her family in Connecticut. His love of cooking led him to Cordon Bleu, where he learned French techniques of preparing haute cuisine in addition to what he learned working at the restaurant.
“We’re like family here,” he told me, “so we try to make sure our food tastes like that.”
Edenfield said that what elevates their she-crab soup is the crab roe he uses in his soup stock and the freshness of his herbs, especially the chives used as a garnish.
“Some cooks will use chicken stock, shrimp stock as a base for their soup instead of the actual crab roe,” Edenfield said. “Some will cook the crabmeat in the soup but that thins the flavor out and makes the crab meat stringy. We add it when the base is done, leaving the flesh intact.”
The other winners have their own little process and different ingredients.
Chef Jeremiah Cardinal at Entre Nous and I traded texts about his soup.
“What makes my she-crab different from the others,” he wrote, “is I have taken ingredients and methods that I have learned from working abroad in my career and incorporated them into a simple dish such as this. For one, I have taken out celery in the mirepoix and subbed celery root, which is used widely in Eastern European cuisine.”
Working overseas, a mentor told him details matter.
“I took that and ran with it when I moved back here to the states,” Cardinal wrote. “Everything that is going into my dishes I really think about, ‘How can I transform [or] manipulate this ingredient and make it unique in my dish?’”
Cardinal said he took sherry, often an ingredient in she-crab soup, and used molecular gastronomy to transform it into something reminiscent of caviar. Traditionally she-crab is made with roe, though this may not be used in some modern commercial kitchens. Cardinal uses his own “sherry caviar.”
“I have only worked with a handful of great chefs,” Cardinal said during our exchange. “Winning the Classic means a great deal to me. It is almost like an homage to them that have taught me and worked with me. Almost like a nonverbal, ‘I told you I was listening, chef.’”
Whatever the technique, Virginia Beach chefs are putting their spin on a seafood classic, and, once a year, they gather at the Oceanfront to share their work with the rest of us.
The author is a writer and documentary filmmaker who grew up in Norfolk and lived in Virginia Beach for much of his life. He ran a production company, worked in college athletics and was curator at an art gallery in Virginia Beach for years.
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