It was a recent Saturday morning and my hangover was prohibiting much movement from where I found myself, which at the time was the Santa Barbara Wharf—not the worst place to be immobile and hungover on a cool, clear, late winter day. The night before I'd been beaten badly at pool in a State Street bar backroom where you can still smoke cigarettes, and been offered meth by a transient sleeping in a tree. Regarding the meth, I had demurred, but that didn't mean I wasn't up for a little adventure, Santa Barbara style—which was about to present itself to me in the person of Paul Teall and Paul Teall's rare, fire engine-red kelp crabs.I'd describe Teall as an old-fashioned seaman, a fisherman's fisherman—but that's probably because I don't know much about fishing or fishermen. He has rough hands and an easy smile and captains a hundred-year-old boat that he takes out to the Channel Islands the long way, a 6-hour trip each leg during which, according to some cursory Instagram snooping, he prefers to listen to old-time country and western music.Teall spends four full days a week at sea, returning to the mainland each Friday with a haul of fish and crab that this year—for the first time in a dozen years, Teall says—includes a great deal of hard-to-find wild caught red kelp crabs. The crabs, which Teall calls "dragon crabs," are distinguished by their four-pointed carapace, which makes them look more than a little like baby crustacean Batmans, and their shells are fire-engine red. These, Teall puts on ice in a chest under a pop-up tent on the pier at the wharf and offers for sale each Saturday morning—$3/pound for whole crabs, $5/pound for claws.Continue reading on MUNCHIES.
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