Crabs, Cats, and Gators on Tybee Island

Just outside of Savannah, Georgia is Tybee Island.  This coastal island is home to a fun loving and breezy beach community where people come to kick back and relax.  We ate at the highly regarded, super funky island eatery called The Crab Shack whose motto is “where the elite eat in their bare feet.”

We would not call ourselves elite, nor did we eat in our bare feet (flip-flops were the footwear of choice that evening,) but our appetites for fresh seafood were as great as a politician’s ambition and we were in high spirits because we didn’t have to get dressed up!  And it’s a good thing that we didn’t dress up because during our meal at the Crab Shack–shells were flying, butter was dripping and that Brunswick stew leaves a nasty stain.

Are cats and alligators and restaurants a good combination?  No!  But at the Crab Shack they  get away with it on a technicality.  No, the gators are served deep fried—they keep them in a pen for decoration at the front of the restaurant.  The cats however, seem a little fried from a constant seafood overdose.  One-dozen or so felines roam the restaurant, eyes glazed over and fat, looking for scraps.  These are undoubtedly the laziest cats on earth.  I told myself I wouldn’t feed them.

Upon being sat at our bayfront table we were confronted with an invention that was totally ingenious.  This table had a hole in the middle with a trashcan underneath for seafood shells!  They even had a platform on top to maximize table space and it was used for holding copious amounts of condiments or placement one of the massive seafood platters that they serve here.

Boiled tender potatoes, delicious fatty sausage, meaty stone crab claws, sweet rock crabs legs, fiery-hot crayfish, and tender corn was all served steaming on a platter and served with a pool of melted butter to dip it all in, what could be better?  Consuming this platter was a labor of love and sweet rewards.  This bounty of land and sea made us feel elite in the way that the old testament can when it says that god gave man dominion over all the animals of the earth and the sea!

The Brunswick stew was good, too.  It was like a spiced up chili with chicken and tomatoes and lots of different kinds of beans.  If Brunswick stew wasn’t so popular in Georgia I would say that it would be perfect for a cold winter’s Sunday smuggled inside watching football by the fire, but I guess it’s spicy enough for to make you sweat on a hot summer’s day in the south, too!

I finally gave in tossed some extra crab and crayfish to that fat cat who had been patiently eying us and licking his chops throughout the duration of our meal.  It’s impossible to deny the food-addicted craze of a big-eyed animal, even if those eyes are glazed over and sedated from a seafood stupor.  Lucky cat!