Mama Belle's

Mama Belle's is a private brand distributed to BJ's by Shaw's Southern Belle Frozen Foods out of Jacksonville, FL. The problem is that the manufacturer's website never mentions the private brand, and the only place anyone who has commented online about these crab cakes has purchased them from is BJ's. Hence, the assumption. In any case, Mama Belle's has been around since 1934, bringing what they consider to be quality seafood to you for over 80 years.

What you see in the frozen food section is a box of 10-2 oz crab cakes, made with handpicked crab meat, and served in the traditional Maryland style (which uses breading as the primary binder ingredient). The ingredients list shows the crab cakes being made of crab meat, diced onions and celery, breadcrumbs, mayonnaise, dried whole eggs, and spices (such as vinegar, mustard seed, white wine, lemon juice, celery salt, paprika, dry mustard, sea salt, garlic powder, parsley flakes, and other unidentified spices).

Cooking instructions are fairly straightforward. You can bake them in the oven at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes (for frozen), or sauté them in a pan for 3 minutes on each side. If cooking from frozen, then baking is your only option. Otherwise, you can thaw them and either sauté or bake. We chose the cooking method most people will most likely follow, which is baking from frozen.

The cakes themselves are made up of mostly finely shredded crab meat, breading, and parsley flakes. While some reports on other sites have mentioned a fishy smell, we didn't actually encounter that this time around. They actually smell like a crab cake should.  The taste, however, left a lot to be desired.

When you bite into the crab cake, the texture of the cake is what hits you first. And not in a good way. The only way to describe it is dry and gritty. The crab meat is so shredded up that the meat is mostly just strings of crab meat (and they say it's handpicked?). There are a few small lumps in the mix, and those end up being relatively flavorless and overly dried out. We did feel that the spicing was actually pretty good. It covers the flavor of the crab, which was slightly off, but not as offensive as other frozen crab cakes we've tried. The crunchy bits of celery and onion were also unnecessary, and only added to the already odd experience of eating a dry, gritty crab cake.

Unlike most of the other frozen crab cakes we've reviewed, the only real positive note we can say is: we could actually eat them. That's not to say that we enjoyed them, but they were at least edible. Will they make you the party host of the year? No. If you're looking to throw another party and want those people to come back, then you're better off just putting these back on the shelf and grabbing that really big box of pizza rolls. Because, we don't care how old you are - pizza rolls rule when they're served at a party.