By The Docks

Lots of crab cake options on the menu. You can get a sandwich served with fries, coleslaw, or applesauce; or an entree (single or double) served with two sides. Menu bills the crab cake entrees as the finest lump crab cake, and is cooked either broiled or fried. Select combo platters also feature a crab cake.

The first thing you notice when your food is served is the shear size of the crab cake, which are around 8oz. But then something hit us -- an off-putting fishy aroma. Not a good start, but we're professionals here, so we dive in to see what the fuss is all about.

Lots of large lumps of crab meat, bound together with a bread and mayonnaise/egg binder. The ratio of broken pieces to lumps was about half and half. There was an average amount of binder holding all that crab together, giving the cake a nice amount of moisture.

One thing we noticed was the lack of spice in the mixture. We were able to taste more of the binder than we should, which gave off a plain, eggy breading taste. You'll hit some large pockets of just binder (which is unavoidable), but it should at least taste good.  There are shakers of crab spice on the tables, but the mixture is super salty, so we recommend use just the tinest amount, otherwise you'll ruin your meal.

Despite all of the rave reviews found on the internet, from our friends, and Baltimore Magazine, we were less than impressed with what was served. The crab flavor ranged from meaty (which was the predominant flavor) to semi-sweet, to a fishy essence. That fishy flavor stems from Asian blue swimmer crab being used in the mix, which is used more often than you think, but should remain, at the most, flavorless. Very disappointing from what is supposed to be one of Baltimore's top crab cakes.

We also tried the Filet Oscar (which was on the specials board), which comes with crab meat on top of a filet, and that crab was super sweet and amazing tasting. We'd rather see a smaller crab cake made out of that quality of crab, than to receive a large monster crab that gets ruined by lack of spice and off flavors from garbage quality crab that ruins the flavors of what decent quality crab was used.

We'd like to give this review higher marks than what we did for what quality ingredients went into the cake, but the eggy, monotone flavor from the binder and subpar crab overtaking the aroma and flavor of the dish really couldn't make us think that highly of what we were served. Even the side dishes were relatively flavorless, from lifeless broccoli (not pictured) to frozen steak fries that required more ketchup than normal. Hopefully the food quality will improve and you'll have a better dining experience than we did.