This time of year I pine for blue crab, my favorite food from childhood summers on the Jersey Shore. My grandmother would send us out to the dock with a crab cage, and with one drop we’d have a bucket of scrabbly green-shelled things from the sea.

Within minutes (crab cooks quickly in boiling water), we’d be sitting down for a lunch – never dinner – of sweet crab meat, sucked from the claws or pulled from the cracked shell, dipped in melted butter.

“As soon as it gets warm, (Easterners) come in asking for them. They’re used to buying them by the bushel, just out of the water,” says Dirk Fucik, owner of Dirk’s Fish & Gourmet Shop at 2070 N. Clybourn Ave. But blue crab – in season May through September – doesn’t travel well, so it’s not typically found in Chicago. Instead, he steers customers to peekytoe crab, snow crab or fresh Alaskan king crab.

The first place Chicagoans think of for crab is the always-excellent Shaw’s Crab House ( 21 E. Hubbard St. , 312/527-2722) – but I’d just been there. So I sought out some different seafood spots for lunch, wondering: Would crab other than blue taste as good? And, more practically: Would it be too messy for a business lunch?

Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab
60 E. Grand Ave. (312) 379-5637

It’s hard to argue with perfection, but I wanted to eat at a crab shack, and this Joe’s ain’t. Indeed, there’s nothing shabby here. The food is great and the atmosphere is lively and elegant, like an old-fashioned steakhouse. The tuxedoed waiters – ours, at least – were adorable, helpful and suave.

We spied a good-looking salad and ordered one to share, a combination of chopped tomato, blue cheese, onion and lettuce that was delicious and refreshing. We also liked the crab cake, which was the size of a hockey puck, very thick and moist. Stone crabs were in season, so we had those, too – cold, yummy and very messy. My plate was a mess of shells, my fingers slimed with butter and crab. (Business diners, take note.)

Save room for the Key lime pie, it’s creamy and not too sharp.