PORT ANGELES — Between 15,000 and 20,000 people are expected to eat about 10,000 pounds of fresh crab today, Saturday and Sunday during the 15th annual Dungeness Crab &Seafood Festival in downtown Port Angeles, said event co-founder Scott Nagel.
The event is free to attend — although the crab costs money — and will include activities from The Gateway pavilion at the northwest corner of Lincoln and Front streets to City Pier, with about 85 vendor booths set up along the way.
“People are coming in from all over the country” and Canada, Nagel said Thursday.
“We already have 2,500 confirmed coming on the Coho [ferry], which is pretty much a full ship,” he added.
“We are pretty excited about that.”
The fresh crab to be served was “caught right there in the Strait [of Juan de Fuca] and Dungeness Bay,” Nagel said.
Crab dinners and other food will be available for purchase in the Kitsap Bank Crab Central Tent, located in the parking lot of the Red Lion Hotel at 221 N. Lincoln St., out on the pier or in and around The Gateway.
The central tent hosts Dungenesss Crab Feeds from noon to 10 tonight, from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.
The feeds feature whole Dungeness crab served with organic coleslaw from Nash’s Organic Produce and corn on the cob from Sunny Farms.
Whole crabs average 2 pounds, according to the festival website at www.crabfestival.org.
Whole crabs are available for the market price of $29, with half crab dinners available for $15.
Other menu items range from $5 to $16, with some dessert and children’s options available.
During today’s feed, sponsored by the Peninsula Daily News, crab dinners are discounted by $3.
Nagel encourages local residents to attend the crab feed either today or Sunday.
“Friday is a great time for locals to come down and take in the festival before most of the visitors arrive,” he said.
“Saturday is our big crowded day, so Friday and Sunday are much better days to come just in terms of overall crowd,” he said.
“On Sunday, there is no Seahawks game, so it is a great way to spend the afternoon.”
The festival will feature 14 restaurants, cooking demonstrations with celebrity chefs, a Chowder Cook-Off, the Grab-a-Crab Derby, local wine and beer, craft and merchant vendors, and live music.
It celebrates not only the aquaculture, agriculture and maritime traditions of the North Olympic Peninsula but provides food, art, music, Native American activities and children’s events during the three-day event for everyone, according to www.crabfestival.org.
The cooking demonstrations will feature several local and regional chefs renowned for their culinary cuisine, Nagel said, including “Wild” Bill Ranniger, executive chef for the Duke’s Chowder House chain; chef Joshua Barr of Port Angeles; and chef Laurette McRae of Port Townsend.
Master Chef Graham Kerr will preside over the Chowder Cook-Off scheduled from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday in the Transit Center Lanes next to The Gateway pavilion. The cook-off will benefit the Captain Joseph House Foundation.
Kerr, known as “The Galloping Gourmet,” brought the art of creative cooking to television audiences throughout the world from 1969-71. He has written more than 25 books, with 14 million copies sold.
The biggest star of the show is, of course, the venerable Dungeness crab. The popular seafood is prized for its sweet and tender flesh that is named for the town of Dungeness, located north of Sequim, Nagel said.
The West Coast’s first commercial fishery, mainly producing Dungeness crabs, was built in 1848 in Dungeness, according to historians.
“It really started in the ships of the late 1800s when they were taking lumber to California to build San Francisco and they took crab with them,” Nagel said.
Even today, Dungeness crabs are caught fresh and shipped “all over the world,” Nagel said. “Shipments go out every day.”
Dungeness crab “is like our lobster, and it just tastes wonderful,” Nagel said.
“It is a very special commodity. People here, we are used to having fresh crab, but around the country and around even Washington state, most people haven’t had a truly fresh crab dinner, and that is a special experience.”
That is because “crab does not freeze [well] and it does not last long,” Nagel said.
“You have to get it fresh, and unless you are a crabber or know somebody, there are only a few places ever that get fresh crab. It is very expensive to get it in a restaurant. Very few restaurants carry whole Dungeness crab.”
The festival offers an opportunity for the uninitiated to sample fresh Dungeness crab, Nagel said, and provides a much-needed economic boost to Port Angeles.
“I started this with Neil Conklin and Russ Veenema 15 years ago because this is the home of Dungeness crab and we are real strong believers in our community and tourism and all the things that go on here in the great place we live,” Nagel said.
Fifteen years ago “when we started, pretty much things died right after Labor Day,” Nagel said.
“Over the years, we all have seen that tourism has been expanding into the fall. And so, Crab Festival was sort of the first thing that really started that effort. It has taken a lot of years, but now you see tourism all the way through October and really almost year-round.”
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Features Editor Chris McDaniel can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56650, or at cmcdaniel@peninsuladailynews.com.
