Garlic crabs

Garlic crabs are blue crabs cooked in a well-seasoned broth and then coated in a melted butter sauce with plenty of garlic. They arrive at the table on a tray, with sausage, corn, potato and a boiled egg. Out of blue crab season, restaurants prepare the same dish with other crustaceans and seafood.

The dish derives from the seafood boil — the boiled seafood with potato, corn and sausage from the U.S. Southeast coast — which has roots in Gullah Geechee culture. The Gullah Geechee are descendants of West and Central Africans enslaved on the coastal plantations in a stretch from North Carolina to Saint Augustine, Florida. On the islands and along the rivers they developed their own language, culture and cuisine, based on rice, vegetables and the fish and shellfish harvested in the estuaries.

Jacksonville has one of the largest concentrations of Gullah Geechee descendants in the country and is part of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, established by the U.S. Congress in 2006. For Jacksonville’s official tourism, the city is the capital of garlic crabs. The connection is both identity and concentration: the dish exists in other parts of the Southeast coast, but it is in Jacksonville that dozens of crab shacks and restaurants serve it, most in the historic Northside neighborhoods near the Trout and Ribault rivers, where many crab traps are found. Restaurants in other cities even advertise garlic crabs “Jacksonville style.”

There is no known date or single creator. sauce recipes are passed down through families, and the crab boil is traditionally a communal meal, food eaten straight from the pot.