‘‘Tony’s Crab Shack’ is well known among New Englanders and, like any semi-iconic business on the east coast, there is no consensus as to the quality of the food or the worthiness of the atmosphere. For some, ‘Tony’s’ is the exact sort of slap in the face that modern dining needs- an egoless counter-cultural experience that other restaurants approach and fall short of. Dissenters mostly find the place gross.’
Carl is the mascot of ‘Tony’s Crab Shack.’ A crab, obviously. Red and cartoonish. An statue of Carl looms at the front of the restaurant and a quarter-scale but otherwise identical statue stands just inside, made of the sort of laminated rubber one finds in mall playgrounds, all grease and candy curves. Steam and butter thicken the air, even inside the ‘dressing room:’ the core aspect of ‘Tony’s’ novelty.
“We’ve got your bibs right here,” the hostess says. She’s brought eight of us in together: a family, a couple, and myself. “How many of you have been here before?”
The couple raises their hands and the rest of us look around uncomfortably. The ‘bibs’ she’s pointed to are full-length rubber gowns. They’re sleeved and tight-fitting, made of the sort of material that pulls up sleeves and tugs at arm hair. The hostess continues:
“Well, as I’m sure you’ve heard, ‘Tony’s’ is a messy place. A real pig-sty. It’s a place for people to eat messy things like they’re pigs in the mud.” The hostess runs her hand over her arm. “We have these bibs for you, if you want them. Some people don’t care. Those are the people we like best.”
Everyone but the couple puts on the bibs. We stand there, squeaking and sweating under the heavy rubber, while the hostess secures ties in the back.
“We’ve got to makes these tight,” she says, emphasizing the word by jerking the knot behind my neck. “Sometimes the butter drips down your chin, down over your throat, and you don’t even realize. Sometimes the butter makes its way up your sleeves, or it splashes on your chest. It gets everywhere, you know. The butter.” Something is seeping under the door behind her, thick and yellow. It congeals in the cool air let in from outside as we entered. The hostess sees us looking and nods: “It’s going to be slippery inside. Watch your step.”
‘Tony’s,’ as far as I can tell, has repurposed an old smoking/non-smoking divide to separate those of us who choose to eat in the industrial bibs and those who eat in grease-stained clothes, slopping crab meat and butter into their mouths with bare hands- pulling biscuit crumbs from the hair on their chest or scooping lost bread rolls straight from the shimmering wood beneath them. The couple is taken to a table, there. The man takes off his shirt.
I’m taken to the bib section and I turn to see that the family has declined to enter altogether. I see them struggling to untie the bibs just before the door closes, the hostess watching them with unfiltered disapproval.
The table I’m given sits in a far corner, holding only a small tea candle that I worry will set the place ablaze. Words have been carved into the heavy wood in front of me: NO MENUS. Butter thickens to white in the scrawl.
A waiter approaches, face obscured by a rubberized hazmat suit. They flip open a notepad, where, on the first page, they’ve written the word ‘Ready?’
“Have you ever eaten here?” I ask.
The waiter slowly nods their head, rubber gliding on rubber.
“Is it good?”
The waiter leans in close, braces their body against the table. Grease seeps from the slick seam around their neck. It drips onto the candle and the flame sputters out. Someone moans behind the divider. An insect struggles to fly in the thick air.
The waiter nods.
“Dinner for one, then,” I tell him, and within a minute or two I’m enjoying a pretty decent bucket of crab legs while someone approaches a climax, physical or spiritual, just out of sight.
I pop in my earbuds and eat until one of them starts to slide deeper into my head than seems advisable. I leave and shower at the nearest truck stop, which has stalls dedicated to showering off a ‘Tony’s’ dinner butter-sweat. I throw away my clothes and spend the night with Hector in the thin forest out back.
The GPS tracker on the bike ran out of battery nearly a week ago. This morning, it came back online. The Stranger has found it- has charged it- and he’s still on the move, which means he’s keeping a close eye on the device. He’ll hear it if it pings.
I pull up a morse code cheat sheet on my phone and start to type out a message. If ‘Tony’s’ has taught me anything, it’s that a little preparation and an open mind can redeem something that would otherwise leave a bad taste in my mouth.
-traveler
