sausage corn and shrimp
cover with butter, old bay
life don’t get better

Growing up in Grand Rapids, on the west side of the State of Michigan, seafood was a treat.

At the end of our street where I grew was a little seafood shop with the odd name of Sanitary Seafoods.

While the words in the name combined to be less than inspiring about eating seafood, the old guy who ran the shop served up quality goods.

The holiday season in our house always had huge iced bowls of cocktail shrimp from Sanitary Seafoods and occasionally my Dad would stop and bring home huge slabs of Lake Superior White Fish that my Mom would broil.

Despite the lack of supply, my Dad loved seafood and I cannot tell you why.

In his personal history, there was the never-told-in-depth story of a post graduation from Dental School trip that Dad made with three classmates where they spent a week in New Orleans.

A week in New Orleans with 4 guys who just graduated from Dental School in 1942 and all 4 had their letter from Franklin Roosevelt welcoming them into the armed forces of the United States.

Like I said, the story was never-told-in-depth but I filled in lots of blanks on my own.

But maybe that’s where Dad came about his love, his personal enjoyment of seafood.

So it was a great day for Dad when Charley’s Crab opened up in Grand Rapids.

Charley’s Crab was a Chuck Muer restaurant.

If you grew up, like I did, in West Michigan, then you grew up knowing that you went to Detroit to see the Detroit Tigers for baseball, the London Chop house for steaks … and Chuck Muer’s for seafood.

There was also a Chuck Muer restaurant in Ann Arbor called The Gandy Dancer.

IYKYN, but the restaurant was in the old Ann Arbor train depot and a Gandy Dancer was someone who worked on the Railroad, repairing ties and spikes and track by hand with a pick and sledge hammer.

If you were in my family and ended up going to school in Ann Arbor, which most of did (9 of 11 kids), at some point, Dad and Mom would show up for a visit and most likely take you to The Gandy Dancer for lunch.

Dad was always happy to see us and tour the campus to see what had changed but he really came to eat at The Gandy Dancer.

We all learned to order Scrod and catch the small fish bones with our teeth and move them to side of our mouth and descretely remove them and place them on the side of the plate.

Dad had grown up taking the train to Ann Arbor and I wish I had asked him more about those days when I had the chance but one story I remember is that I asked him how he got his laundry done back in 1940.

“Simple,” Dad said.

He had a big pasteboard box with his name on it and every two weeks he filled it with his dirty clothes and took it down to the train station and sent it off to his mother in Grand Rapids and a day or two later, the box would come back filled with freshly laundered clothes.

“You’re kidding me,” I remember saying, “What did the other kids in Ann Arbor say about that?”

“There was nothing to say”, said Dad, “that’s what we all did.“

Ever see those stories about the Tiffin Lunch delivery men in India?

BUT I DIGRESS.

Charley’s Crab in Grand Rapids became the Hoffman family place to go for special occasions, celebrations and just plain eating out.

Dad didn’t need much of excuse to eat there and would pretty much go at the drop of a hat and would drop it himself if need be.

Once when Mom was out of town for the birth of a grand child or something, I got a call at work from Dad and he said if I could get home, he would take all of us, which would have Me and my brothers, Steve and Al, to Charley’s for dinner … provided we could make early menu.

Early menu was about half off the regular price and half the options but it had all our favorites and it ended at 5 p.m.

I was on my way in a split second, got home and we packed off and sat down at a table at 5:01 p.m.

Our waitress came up and dropped four huge, leather bound, full menu’s on the table and Dad looked at her and said we were here for early menu.

The waitress shook her head and said sorry, it was after 5.

Dad replied that we weren’t staying and got up and led us out of the dining room.

Dad had, for lack of better term, this presence about him.

He somehow managed to fit in where ever he was in a way said he belonged where he was, Restaurant, Church Meeting, on the dock at Felix’s Marina, talking with Felix about outboard motors or in the stands at Wrigley Field.

No one ever questioned what Dad was doing or why he was at someplace, any place in time as he … just fit.

And rarely did anyone want to cross with him and this self assured but benign, air of authority.

The hostess watched this man lead his three sons OUT of the restaurant and knew she had to respond.

She had a quick word with the waitress and came RUNNING after us, calling SIR, SIR if you want early menu, you can have early menu.

Dad turned around and nodded and she led us back to our table and the same waitress, who just saw her tip cut in half, brought out the paper printed early menu, and apologized saying she didn’t have the authority to make the early menu decision.

Dad said that was okay and ordered extra bread (Charley’s Bread was one of the reason you went to Charley’s) and we enjoyed our meal.

I will say that I am pretty sure in the end that Dad made good on the tip.

But AGAIN I digress.

The point of the story is that I also loved Charley’s Crab.

It’s where I took my dates both to impress them and to get to eat at Charley’s.

I took my wife there for coffee and dessert after our first date and while the wait staff told us not to worry about the time, we figured that when they pulled out all the other tables and started vacuuming, it was time to go.

I loved the restaurant and could have and often did make a meal of just the bread and Charley’s Chowder, a tomato base fish soup rather than the cream based new England clam chowder.

I would dare myself to try the swordfish or the tilapia or stay with the ever faithful scrod or a lake trout.

But there was one item on the menu I never had any desire to try.

It was there in big letters and a couple of paragraphs explaining what it was.

It was called Charley’s Bucket.

The menu explained that Chuck Muer wanted to recreate the beachside clam bake’s he had grown up with New England and he and his chef came up with The Bucket.

The bucket came in a bucket that contained all the different food items that went into a clam bake.

Clams, of course, crabs, lobsters, mussels, red skin potatoes and corn on the cob all covered together with melted butter.

Understand this was back in the day and Charley’s Crab was the type of place where maybe a jacket and tie wasn’t required, it was the uniform of the day.

Sure you got a bib if you got a lobster (something that has always kept lobster off my list) but it was a fancy place.

And you were going to order a bucket of seafood (sorry, I always thought of a bucket of the Colonel’s 11 herbs and spices), including corn and the cob and covered with butter and eat it then and there in the middle of the restaurant?

I didn’t get the concept and I never got it.

Fast forward some 20 years and now living in Altanta, Georgia, the folks we hung out with all talked about some place called Tybee Island.

We weren’t aware of Georgia’s Atlantic Coast at all and that includes Savannah.

But that’s were folks in The ATL went, so one spring, I took a couple of days off from work and the wife and I went off exploring.

And we discovered what is called The Low Country / Coastal Empire and I came across restaurant menu’s that listed something The Low Country Boil.

You take shrimp, red skin potatoes, smoked sausage AND corn on the cob and boil it all up, cover it will melted butter and a spice called Old Bay and put it on the table.

For years, on our trips to Tybee, that was what I ordered in resautants.

Restaurants that were as far away in time and distance and ambiance from Charley’s Crab as was possible.

Once place in particular on Tybee, Bubba Gumbos (not kidding), stands out as we thought we should eat fast before the place collapsed into the river.

I took back everything I ever thought about Charley’s Bucket and today wish that I had ordered it at least once.

For all the trouble to creating this dish, I wish I had tried it.

Then came a job change and we didn’t visit The Low Country any more, we lived there.

And the wife looked at what was available in the local grocery stores and adjusted her menu’s.

What was an odd menu item in Grand Rapids and a vacation treat when we lived in Atlanta has become one of my wife’s go-to dishes for our table.

She cleans the shrimp so we don’t have to do that and covers a sheet pan with foil and on goes the corn on the cob, the sausage (andouille if its in the store or any smoked sausage – when a place down here wants to sound exotic they will say they use kielbasa like that would be something new to someone from west michigan) the shrimp and the redskins.

She covers it with melted butter and old bay and into the oven for 15 minutes at 400 degrees and folks, let me tell you, life don’t get much better.

Add an ice cold beer and forget about it.

And when I say it, as in forget about IT, I mean forget anything else on your mind that is bothering you and just enjoy.

Someday I will get a bucket we can serve this in and when I do I will think of Dad and Charlie’s and Charlie’s Bucket and once again remember I am one lucky guy.

I wasn’t kidding about the recipe above, that is just what my wife does.

It’s that simple.

I don’t have many regrets in my life but not having Dad over for dinner to share this dish with us is one of the them.

For contrast, here is the Charlie’s Bucket Recipe from the Chuck Muer cook book.

CHARLEY'S BUCKET

Charley's Crab's signature entree was designed by Chef Larry to be a complete meal — appetizer and main course — and to be an entertaining experience that breaks down inhibitions.

Yield: 2 servings

1 1/2 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
2 ears of fresh corn; leave in husk, trim silk and outer leaves
Two 1 1/4-pound live Maine lobsters
1/2 Dungeness crab, or 1/2-pound king crab legs (thaw if kept frozen)
4 redskin potatoes, precooked
10 mussels, cleaned (see page 17)
10 steamer clams, cleaned (see page 16)
1/2 cup Clarified Butter (see page 12)

1. In a large kettle with a tight-fitting lid, place water and salt. Bring to a boil.

2. Place corn into water, followed by lobsters and crab. Set potatoes alongside the seafood. Cover tightly.

3. Return water to a boil. Cook for 7 minutes. The lobster is fully cooked when the shell is completely red. If dark areas are present, continue to cook.

4. Remove lid and add the mussels and steamers. Cover and steam for 5 additional minutes.

5. Remove lid from kettle and if the mussel and clam shells have opened, the Bucket is done. If shells have not opened, cover and continue steaming until they do.

6. Serve with Clarified Butter for dipping shellfish and crustaceans.