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Louisiana Foods Fish Fact for: CRAB SALES
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Crab cracks top menus, claws way to crustacean heights.
If selling too much of an item is a problem you want, you might consider adding crab to your menu. Crab outsells all other dishes at many restaurants, and some chefs have gotten to the point that they took the crustacean off the menu in order to force diners to try other dishes.

Chef Alison Barshak jokes that when she offers crab cakes at Striped Bass in Philadelphia, she might as well send home most of her cooks and simply set up a crab cake station because the cakes become one of the only items she sells.

Jimmy Sneed admits he isn't sure how he feels about crab cakes. On the one hand, he claims his are the best anywhere. But he is occasionally bothered by the 20 percent of his diners who always order only crab cakes and don't try any of the other 15 seafood items offered at The Frog and the Redneck restaurant in Richmond, Va.

"So many people have a very narrow window of foods that they eat", Sneed says. "I have a problem with people who only eat steak, chicken or crab cakes". In the past he removed steak from his menu to force diners to try other foods.

But in New York, Rainbow Room's chef, Arnauld Briand, recognizes the benefit of his diners' love of crab."Anywhere you put crab you know the item will sell."A stuffed trout special recently sold remarkably well. "People bought it more for the crab than the trout", explains Briand, who moves about 150 pounds of crab weekly.

Besides crab cakes, $18.50, which Briand mates with citrus salad, including blood oranges, grapefruit and lemon, he menus crab and avocado salad, $15, and a seafood sampler, $35 for two, with shellfish, shrimp and crab.

A special of Dungeness and Maryland crab cakes, $ 9.95, sold so well at the June Creek Grill in Edwards, Colorado, that chef Robert Mancuso is adding the dish to his menu. He says about 80 percent of his customers order the dish when it is offered.

Smoked sturgeon stuffed with rock shrimp and accompanied by a crab cake, $22.50, also sold like hot cakes at the grill, which is located within Sonnenalp Golf Club, where diners seek upscale items. The club is located just outside of the Vail ski resort.

A more casual and price conscious crowd frequents The Crab House's 16 stores, where five to seven crab items are offered daily. Main course prices range from $10.95 to $18.95, for a "jumbo bowl" of garlic crab clusters: blue crabs cleaned of their back shells and steamed with garlic, spices and herbs.

Current consumption of crabs is about 1 million pounds at The Crab House, based in Hollywood, Florida, according to president Bill Korenbaum. He says one of his restaurants' "hooks" is the wide variety of crab dishes available. Best sellers at The Crab House are crab cakes.

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