Pinch dey tails, suck dey heads

I knew I was in the right place when I walked into the Davis St. Fishmarket in Evanston and saw that the bar had a trough of ice full of oysters in it. SingularGirl, acting against her own wisdom, took me and Lupe there for their Mardi Gras celebration, particularly so that I could sample the Crawtini, which was Abby Peppar with a crawdad sitting in it. It was good and all (despite that it violated my friend and coworker Shaw's rule: "Drink no alcohol that contains seafood") but to me, a vodka martini is not a martini. It's a shot of vodka in a fancy glass. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it, for the day I become a martini snob I'll know it's time to start drinking nothing but Bud Light to bring me back down to earth.

My father's parents are from Foley, Alabama, right off the Gulf and across Mobile bay from Bayou le Batre, home of the fictional Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. So if you've seen Forest Gump, you know what the town used to be like when I was young, though it has suffered a ghastly period of crapification in the last decade or so. Spending my summers there growing up, I ate seafood for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and if you don't believe me, ask Singular or the Gintleman- they've been there and seen it firsthand.

Living in the midwest, I don't really eat seafood that much. Ya gotta go to the expensive places to feel safe about the freshness. That's why leaving the head on a fish that you order is such a delicacy- if the eyeballs are intact, you know it's fresh. Not to mention the delicious fish cheeks! However, I hadn't had a good batch of mudbugs since my last visit to Grandpa's, so I decided to treat myself, it being Mardi Gras and all.

They had a N'awlins-style jazz band, that tromped around the place like a little parade. They threw beads into the crowd. It was like a teeny enclave of Mardi Gras, celebrated by a hundred people sheltered from the bitter cold and far, far from the Big Easy. Singular got a shrimp cocktail, Lupe got some fried green maters, and I got myself two pounds of delicious, spicy, succulent crawdads.

Everytime I'd look at Lupe with a mudbug head hanging out of my mouth, she'd remind me of how "lucky" I was that she "allowed" me to eat them. Singular constantly lamented her judgement in even telling me about the place. See what I have to put up with? Just because I'm 'epicurious' and seek always food beyond the baloney sammich, I get shit from my best friends, whose idea of an adventurous meal is putting the mustard on the lettuce side. Although, Lupe tried a tail, and she receives mad props for doing so. I never ask that anyone enjoy the things that I eat, but I do hope they try it. Then they can genuinely say it sucks, rather than just presuming so.

Even though we were drinking, we got out of there for less than $60 combined. It's hard to find seasonal seafood that's cheap, supply and demand and all that. I was one happy Payphone. Like a crawdad-eating python, I can digest this meal for a year and not crave the lil' creepy-crawlies until my next visit to Foley.

There remains one seafood frontier that I have always yearned to experience. I've had soft-shell crab, but I hear tales of places that serve you hundreds of itty-bitty ones, that you can just pop into your mouth like nature's Ebirah-snack. I tell ya, once I find one of those places, I'll lie on the table and just have them dump the crabs in my mouth as fast as they can steam 'em. Maybe I'll use a funnel contraption of some sort. Mmmm, crab-bong.