Get cracking: You need not live by the ocean to enjoy crab

If you're feeling crabby, don't despair. Even landlocked Utah offers a lot of choices to quell your craving for this classy crustacean.

Crab legs can be found on the tables of the poshest eateries, chain restaurants or all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets. You'll also find crispy crab cakes, creamy hot dips, crab Louie salads, crab-laden chowders and soft-shell crab sushi on many menus.

Crab is the second-most popular shellfish in the United States, ranked behind shrimp. It's also the seventh-most popular type of seafood, with shrimp taking first place and tuna the second spot.

While Utahns have long been familiar with king and snow crab, they are seeing more Dungeness crab on menus and in seafood counters. There's a reason for that, said Nick Furman, executive director of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission.

"Dungeness was mostly caught and consumed on the West Coast, but in the past two or three years, we're beginning to penetrate a national market," he said during a visit with Utah food writers a few weeks ago as a guest of the Gastronomy Inc. restaurant group. Gastronomy's restaurants — such as Market Street Grill, Broiler and Cottonwood — are hosting a Crab Festival through the end of the month. They're serving more than a dozen dishes that use different varieties of crab.

According to Furman, last season's landings of 33.7 million pounds of Dungeness crab set a record for not only the Oregon fishery but from Central California to the Gulf of Alaska. That was three times as much as in past years, he said, noting that back in 1889, there were only 6,000 pounds of Dungeness sold that year, at a whopping 2 1/2 cents per pound.

"We're hoping for another bountiful harvest again this year," said Furman. The crab season along the Oregon coast runs from December through August. Oregon is currently the top producer of Dungeness crab, which was named after a fishing village on the Strait of Jan de Fuca in Washington state. It's one of five types of crab commonly harvested in and around the United States and is found along the Pacific Coast from California to Alaska.

Dungeness has smaller, more compact legs than king or snow crab, which are caught in the icy Alaskan waters. Blue crab is found along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Stone crab comes from Florida waters and only the claws are harvested.

With all the talk about "sustainable" and "endangered" seafood, "Nobody has to worry about being the one to eat the last crab out of the ocean," Furman said. "Our fishery has a very simple management system of size, sex and season."