Boil these bad boys – Splurge on Sacramento’s crawdads for a shellfish summer feast

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Crawdads are common in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and surrounding waterways such as Putah Creek. This summer, eat ‘em.

Also known as crawfish, crayfish or (my personal favorite) mudbugs, crawdads are related to lobsters and similarly store most of their meat in the tail. Some people enjoy sucking the yellow hepatopancreas (essentially the liver) out of crawdads’ heads.

Crawdads are mostly associated with bayous in the South, not Sacramento County’s waterways. But there’s precedent: The weekend-long Isleton Crawdad Festival brought about 20,000 visitors to the small Delta town each year before shutting down in 2009.

It’s not clear that Sacramento eaters have an overwhelming demand for crawdads, but the marketing hasn’t been great either, creating a “crawdad-and-the-egg” conundrum. Even when a restaurant like Rockin’ Crawfish in south Sacramento buys crawdads from NorCal purveyors, as they do from June to October when sweeter Louisiana shellfish are out of season, the menu doesn’t highlight the local sourcing.

While I’m looking forward to Fourth of July barbecues as much as the next person, it would be great to see Sacramento embrace locally-sourced crawdad boils this summer. Easy enough to prepare, the results are something to behold, in both taste and presentation.

I know firsthand, having organized a boil on Saturday. After fishing in a Delta slough and drinking a flight at Mei Wah Beer Room, a former Chinese brothel/opium den/gambling lounge, my friends and I walked down the street to Bob’s Bait Shop in Isleton to pick up our crawdads.

Bob’s owner and “The Master Baiter” (it’s trademarked) Can Nguyen stocks live crawdads — blue-tinted ones from the Sacramento and Mokelumne rivers year-round, and red ones between August and October that have invaded rice fields from North Sacramento to Colusa.

They make for quality bass bait, but Bob’s $8-per-pound crawdads are perfectly tasty as-is, and Nguyen sells bags of Old Bay-esque seasoning mix as well. We loaded them into a cooler full of ice and headed back to my friends’ house in East Sacramento, stopping off at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-Op for some corn, red potatoes, andouille sausage and garlic along the way.

Half of our group boiled water and seasoning mix in a stock pot, then dumped the Co-Op extras in for 10 minutes. The others rinsed our mudbug friends in a cooler filled with salt water (some people just use freshwater), forcing them to purge, before grabbing them by the tails and dropping them in the bubbling pot.

After another 10 minutes, we strained the pot’s goodies and dumped them out on a newspaper-covered table. The next hour-and-a-half was messy, sun-kissed heaven — crawdad shells and corncobs piling up next to our lagers, Kolsch-styled beers and ciders as the central mound of food slowly dwindled.

It was one heck of a summertime feast, pulled right from our backyard waterways and grocers. Sacramento County’s crawdad scene doesn’t yet have the history or distribution network of the South’s, but the ingredients are here.

What I’m Eating

If Buckhorn Steakhouse is the restaurant that built Winters, Preserve Public House is among those leading the next generation of Yolo County’s transformation into a destination. Jay Peacock, the former chef of The Golden Bear in midtown Sacramento, deftly implements seasonal ingredients from nearby growers and cures meats in-house for owners Cole and Sara Ogando at 200 Railroad Ave.

Meals at Preserve begin not with bread but with complimentary housemade, Tajin-dusted chicharrones. A variety of small plates and sides make for a natural segue from there, like pea tendrils ($9) with squares of corned beef and fried onions in a super-acidic red wine vinaigrette.

A stellar beet salad ($17) paired soft golden beets from Winters’ own Terra Firma Farm with their own ricotta, hazelnuts, shaved Granny Smith apples and strawberries from Eatwell Farm in Dixon. I appreciate balance and contrast in a salad, and this had both in droves, the crunch of hazelnuts and tartness of apples offset by sweet strawberries and creamy ricotta.

Pastas and meaty entrees tend to fall in the $30-$40 range, such as the Moroccan braised short rib ($35). Served with a piquant red chermoula over olive oil-doused Israeli couscous, the hunk of beef was every bit as tender as one would hope.

Did you know?

I’m now posting Sacramento food and drink content to Instagram under the handle @egeleats. Follow along for more bites and drinks that don’t make it into the newsletter!

Openings & Closings

• The Butterscotch Den in North Oak Park is the newest restaurant/bar from Irish Hospitality Group (de Vere’s Irish Pub, The Snug, Ro Sham Beaux). Opened two weeks ago at 3406 Broadway, the swanky martini lounge offers grill-your-own steak dinners like its predecessor, Arthur Henry’s Supper Club & Ruby Room.
• Broderick Roadhouse and Anonimo Pizza’s new sister restaurant, Bones Craft Kitchen, is up and running at 113 D St. in Davis. Look for burgers and sandwiches, including a good number of vegetarian options, at the former D Street Steakhouse.
• New Kathmandu Kitchen has replaced Junoon Flavors of India at 3672 J St. in East Sacramento. Suman Khadka and Sushil Kuikel bought the business from Junoon owner Mohit Bahl, who had suffered a serious shoulder injury, in May and introduced dishes such as Himalayan momos and bhindi masala (okra curry).

This story was originally published June 24, 2022 at 5:00 AM.