BLT'S First Annual
Crab Festival
A Celebration of Spring Benefits City Harvest
By Babbie De Derian, Travel & Food Editor, photos by Mari Fetzer

On Sunday May 21st the happening place to be in Manhattan was BLT FISH at 21 West 17th Street for their sold out First Annual Crab Festival, with 100 per cent of the proceeds benefiting City Harvest. The fun filled afternoon rocked to the sounds of The Defibulators Blue Grass Music, clowns twisted balloons into animal shapes to the delight of young children, and green cotton candy on a stick added a sweet treat to the creative crab dishes eleven guest chefs prepared for all to taste.

Chef Laurent Tourondel and City Harvest had invited an array of top New York chefs and restaurants to battle it out for the city's best crab cake, and to create their favorite crab dish. Participants included: CafŽ Boulud, Nobu, Blue Water Grill, Rain, City Crab, Peacock Alley, Ditch Plains, Sea Grill, Aquagrill, Payard, and Orsay... and all three floors of the restaurant were rimmed with tables serving a mŽlange of crab-centric dishes. Spicy bloody Mary's, specialty cocktails, beer and wines were included in the $35 "best buy in town ticket". My personal favorites: Aqua Grill's yin and yang crab & oyster Rockefeller with hollandaise sauce, BLT's soft shell crab sandwich and crab/corn fritters served with Tabasco mayo, Orsay's crab cannelloni, and Ditch Plains's crab rolls on sweet potato bread with sweet potato chips

The winner of the Crab Cake Contest... Rain's Gypsy Gifford, the only female chef in the room, received a trophy and a $1,000 check. She attributes her victory to fresh Dungeness crab and a secret Japanese ingredient. Gypsy doesn't feel challenged by the imbalance of male to female chefs "I just like to have fun and keep it simple." Second place prize, an Illy espresso machine went to City Crab; and third place prize, a professional chef knife, went to Ed Brown from Sea Grill.

Based on the success of this year's festival, BLT FISH plans to move the Second Annual Crab Festival into the street, close off 17th, between 5th and 6th, and invite more chefs to compete in the challenge.

City Harvest, www.cityharvest.org, is the world's first and New York City's only food rescue organization, dedicated to feeding New York City's hungry men, women and children. This year, City Harvest will collect over 19 million pounds of excess, nutritious food from all segments of the food industry. This food is thenÊdelivered free of charge toÊmore than 800Êcommunity programs throughout New York City.ÊEach week, City Harvest helps over 260,000 hungry New Yorkers find their next meal.

Chef Laurent Tourondel and friends

Rain's Gypsy Gifford, winner of the Crab Cake Contest