Rotary Club's crab fest an annual hit

Nadine Kam photos
Dungeness crab was the centerpiece of Rotary Club of Ala Moana’s annual crab fest.

The Rotary Club of Ala Moana celebrated its annual fundraising Crab Fest April 11 in Kapiolani Community College’s Ohia Cafeteria.

Guests always look forward to this event, still one of a kind on Oahu, with a centerpiece of all-you-can-eat Dungeness crabs. The crabs are huge and just one leaves me full. Some people manage three, and I heard the maximum devoured was six, but they would not share the name of this person.

Devotées always plan ahead for this event and come prepared with their own condiments, whether vinegar, ponzu or Tabasco sauce. I like my crab plain with the drawn butter provided. The only other thing needed is Old Bay seasoning, but I’m always running around here and there, too flustered and frenzied to plan.


Non-flash video

And, in the everyone’s a critic department, people who know how to rip into a crab look askance at newbs or landlubbers who pound the tops of the crabs with their mallets, or let the insides go to waste. Pity.

It’s definitely an event you want to attend with people you know well, because there really is no way to eat crab without getting messy, although I always come across some lucky people have spouses or parents happy to put in all the labor of shelling and shredding.

Funds raised from $80 ticket sales and a silent auction of wines and other merchandise will go toward a number of Rotary’s local and ambitious international causes, from providing scholarships, books and supplies to Hawaii youths, to providing safe drinking water to villagers in Kenya and Indonesia, to helping to provide pre-natal care and cardiac care to people in Thailand.

Keep tabs on the organization at Alamoanarotaryclub.com

 Soy beans, and below, spring rolls, were some of the starters.

KCC students served up trays of chowder.

Those seated at premium tables had the beautiful presentation at the top of the page. The rest of us plucked our crabs out of aluminum trays. They taste the same either way.
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Nadine Kam is Style Editor and staff restaurant critic at the Honolulu Star-Advertiser; her coverage is in print on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Contact her via email at nkam@staradvertiser.com and follow her on Twitter, Instagram and Rebel Mouse.