Where Are the World's Best Crab Cakes?

For many years, crab cakes have been my favorite entree. My mother made the most delicious crab cakes using back fin crab meat and no filler except egg to bind the meat together. Once when I was about 12, Mother was called away for an emergency, and I was left with crab meat to create cakes on my own. Since I didn't know what to do, they were a disaster and my father took me to a restaurant for dinner.

In recent years, I've tried crab cakes in a lot of restaurants. Often, they are made with too much filler and are more like bread or stuffing cakes. Since I've gotten used to the blue crabs found in the rivers off the Chesapeake Bay, it's hard to travel far and find good crab cakes. Early in the summer, when we were at Lake Tahoe, I ordered the crab and found it had a completely different flavor there. Once, I ordered the crab cakes in an Irish pub in Hilton Head, SC only to discover they weren't at all what I expected.

Back Fin of Williamsburg, VA usually has good crab cakes especially in the summer when back fin crab is abundant. Last week, I dined in Amuse Restaurant at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and discovered the best crab cake entree I've had in a long time.

I've never learned to cook crab cakes myself, but wherever we travel, I'll continue to try to find the world's best crab cakes.

What about your area? Do you have the world's best crab cakes?