Cooling, crave-worthy Dungeness crab is the little black dress of salads.
by Marilyn Hawkes | Photo by Angelina Aragon
Dungeness crab became a popular salad topper on the West Coast in the early 1900s, when businessman Louie Davenport purportedly invented the Crab Louie salad – a tasty little number with fresh crab over iceberg lettuce, a hard-boiled egg, tomato and asparagus, all of it slathered with creamy Thousand Island dressing.
In the subsequent decades, the Crab Louie has evolved in all sorts of exciting directions. Consider Scottsdale Provençal hot spot Francine (4710 N. Goldwater Blvd., Scottsdale, 480-690-6180, francinerestaurant.com), where executive chef Remy Lefebvre departs from creamy-dressing doctrine and serves a lovely Dungeness crab and tiger shrimp salad ($34, pictured) with a light Champagne-dill vinaigrette. His artful presentation of red and white radicchio bent to resemble a bouquet of flowers conceals the sweet seafood underneath, along with thinly sliced fennel, grapefruit segments, chunks of avocado and cucumber, and bits of red onion. The dill vinaigrette, which Lefebvre touts as being “very French,” offsets the bitterness of the radicchio and allows the other ingredients to shine. “It’s a very nice representation of a refreshing salad from the border of the sea,” he says.
Up the road at Zinc Bistro (15034 N. Scottsdale Rd., Scottsdale, 480-603-0922, zincbistro.com), chef-owner Matt Carter dresses his Dungeness crab salad ($28) with a mayonnaise-based citrus dressing that’s tossed with shredded iceberg lettuce, shaved beefsteak tomatoes, diced hard-boiled eggs and pickles, and fresh herbs before crowning the salad with a princely amount of unadulterated fresh crab. While other versions may introduce strong flavors like blue cheese or fresh basil, Carter aims to highlight the main attraction. “The key to this salad is simplicity. You can actually taste the crab,” he says. Accordingly, he uses iceberg lettuce rather than arugula, endive or romaine. “It has a cool crispness and doesn’t fight the crab.” The Dungeness salad is available at lunch and remains one of Zinc’s most requested menu items. “It’s untouchable.”
Seafood stalwart Buck & Rider (three Valley locations, buckandrider.com) puts out a Dungeness crab wedge salad ($32) that starts with a sturdy cradle of iceberg lettuce smothered with a mix of heirloom baby tomatoes, crisp cucumber, briny Niçoise and buttery Castelvetrano olives tossed in vinaigrette, and topped with sweet Dungeness crab that’s flown in fresh daily. Executive chef Daniel Torres serves the salad with a “Killer Louie” dressing, made in-house with mayonnaise, herbs and capers spiked with Buck & Rider’s proprietary steak sauce. He finishes the salad with parsley, daikon radish sprouts and a split hard-boiled egg. Stacked high on the plate, this knife-and-fork salad can easily feed two people, but you just might want to get your own.
