John Shields & Wildfire’s Chef Moreno Attack a Pile of Blue Crabs!

Wildfire in Tysons has pulled off another great crab dinner with Chesapeake cuisine authority, John Shields. John’s restaurant in Gertrude’s in the Baltimore Art Museum, and his PBS show is Coastal Cooking. He is even about to re-release Chesapeake Bay Cooking in October (September for advance copies). John showed us how to properly break a blue crab down.

There was even some discussion of whether Chesapeake crabs are actually Maryland or Virginia crabs since this Washington Post article had just been published.

Here is the 1st Course Recipe: Grilled Avocado & Bluefin Crab Salad.

This was my first experience drinking Three Notch’d (Charlottesville, VA) beer. We sampled their Pilsner (Of, By, For), 40 Mile IPA (which is really well balanced), Gray Ghost American Pale Ale, and award-winning Hydraulion Irish Red. The Three Notch’d brews were all excellent (and named after Charlottesville history).

This article contains video we took of John breaking down a crab at a previous Wildfire crab (and cocktails instead of beer) dinner:

Wildfire is quite skilled at creating and executing beer dinners in partnership with wonderful breweries. This crab dinner was excellent, but so was June’s Lagunitas dinner.

-JAY