You met Barry Zuckerman, the genius behind BZMaestroEats when Nancy and I had lunch with him during our. delicious trip to Philadelphia. After completing the sedulous search for his magisterial list of the Top 20 Cheesesteaks in the Philly...
You met Barry Zuckerman, the genius behind BZMaestroEats when Nancy and I had lunch with him during our. delicious trip to Philadelphia. After completing the sedulous search for his magisterial list of the Top 20 Cheesesteaks in the Philly Region, Barry was taking a break from cheesesteaks and ready for something different. His thoughts wandered over to crab cakes, and that meant a trip to Box Hill Pizzeria and Crab Cakes in Abingdon, Maryland, about halfway between DC and Philly.
Abingdon is up in Harford County, near the top of the Chesapeake Bay, and Box Hill Pizzeria is in a shopping center at 2915 Emmorton Road, less that 3 miles from I-95. It’s a family owned and operated restaurant.?The Kanaras Brothers, Tom and Chris, opened its doors in August 1984.?Box Hill has a far-flung following, and it is big. I mean big.
Over on the left is the Market, their catering, mail order, and market area. The central area has a large space of pickup and carryout orders. And over on the right is the dining room and some outdoor tables.
I arrived early, but Barry was already there. I joined Barry and we looked over the menu.?Box Hill does not sell pizza by the slice, alas.?The smallest serving is a 12-inch, which is enough for two.?The crabcake offerings were a 4-ounce crabcake for $21.99 and an 8-ounce crabcake for $26.99.?We could have split a pizza and ordered small crabcakes, at least in theory.?It was an easy call, and we each ordered 8-ounce crabcakes with fries and, for me, slaw, and for Barry, apple sauce.?
Our server showed up promptly and was very affable. He spoke to the fellow in the next booth, a friend, and discussed a fishing trip for alligator gar.?Now gar grow to be up to 10 feet long and they can weigh more than half again as much as me. I’d fished for them in the Arkansas Delta long, long before you were born, back when I was 12. ?Anyway, I asked where he’d been fishing for gar. In Kansas, as it turned out.?I was surprised they had gar there.?We discussed the difficulty of getting your line untangled, but I saw that Barry was uninterested, so we ordered without noting that I had “fished” with a .22.?
Our server turned his back and whirled around with four pieces of garlic bread, about which we’d heard nothing.
Two of the pieces disappeared pre-photo.?They were quite good.
Our platters arrived presently.?Here’s mine, with the slaw at the top in plastic and some tartar sauce below.
That’s a good looking platter.?You can see Barry’s?platter on his blog, and also get his take on restaurants in Philadelphia and far beyond, as well as thoughtful comments on a range of matters.
The crabcakes included lots of jumbo lumps, and were very well seasoned — enough to bring out the flavor of the crab but not enough to overwhelm it.?The crabmeat is the star, not the Old Bay.?This is a good crab cake.
The cake did have a fair amount of filler to bind the pieces of crab together.?The filler was well seasoned and tasty.
As you move south along the Bay, filler becomes a controversial issue. Nancy’s recipe includes 14 saltines for a pound of jumbo lump crab meat.?That’s less than at Box Hill’s, and there’s plenty to bind the lumps.?Some people use even less, and some, like Jerry’s Place in Prince Frederick, use no filler at all, and Jerry’s crab cakes are sensational.?(Jerry’s in Prince Frederick is not to be confused with Jerry’s in Bowie where, I was shocked to learn, the crabcakes have shrimp mixed in.?They may lose their Maryland card for that.) Regardless of the filler issue, the Box Hill crabcakes tasted very good, and I’d go there often it they were nearby.
The other food:?the slaw was good, fresh and not overdressed, and the fries were quite good, hot with crisp exteriors and a good potato taste. As always, I added salt and pepper and some hot sauce — they brought me a 12-ounce bottle of Tabasco sauce.? Respect.
Box Hill is a very popular place, as you would expect from the sheer size and the relatively out-of-the-way location. The catering/mail order business seems lively, and they offer some intriguing New England style pizzas at 12 and 16 inches, as well as salads, hot and cold subs and sandwiches, and entree platters. One measure of the scale of their popularity is that they go though 20 pounds of bacon a day, even though bacon is only on the menu as a pizza topping.?I suppose you can get it on a burger, but that’s still a lot of bacon.
It was a fine lunch, and a real treat to get together with Barry again. It’s worth a drive and a detour. If you’re traveling down I-95 or anywhere near Box Hill, stop in, and let me know what you think about it.
***
And while you’re at it, click “follow” on our front page to receive blog posts in your email box. Or bookmark us and check in from time to time. If you’re planning a trip, you can “Search” the name of the destination city, state, or country for good restaurants (in Europe, often close to sites, like the Louvre, Van Gogh Museum, Prague Castle, or Vienna’s Old City, that you’ll want to visit in any event). Comments, questions, and suggestions of places to eat or stories to cover are very welcome. And check our Instagram and Twitter pages, johntannerbbq.
