What is the most popular seafood buffet item?

I searched and searched to find the official most popular seafood buffet item. The sources I saw listed shrimp as the number one seafood item by consumption. I am guessing they are basing this on the raw tonnage of shrimp consumed. But I think this is deceiving. Yes shrimp are delicious. Yes, they were featured as an interesting sub theme in a famous movie (remember Forest Gump listening to the multitude of recipes from Bubba). Yes, they are small and can be added to anything. Yes, they are easier to eat with shell that is very pliable once steamed. I will concede that on raw numbers alone they are the most consumed seafood, thus winning the official popularity contest as the most popular seafood item. But as far as the king of the seafood buffet…not so fast.

Crab Legs Are Kings Of The Buffet

Shrimp is a key part of the buffet and we have a multiple delectable varieties every night at our OBX seafood buffet. But for crab legs we offer as many as 9 varieties including:

Alaskan #1 Snow Crab Legs
Argentina King Crab Legs
Russian Crab Legs
Jonah Crab Legs
Seattle Dungeness Legs
Canadian Jumbo Crab Legs
Norwegian Crab Legs
Florida Stone Crab Legs

Now why would our incredible popular seafood buffet do that? I will tell you why, people love the crab. Seafood buffet lovers crave the cracking of crab legs followed by the soft meat dipped in savory melted butter. And keep in mind that it is 9 varieties of crab. We actually have four additional crab dishes including

Crab cakes
Deviled crabs
Crab dip w/toast points
Stuffed mushrooms with crab meat

That means a huge portion of all the dishes at our buffet our crab related. Even the names denote some superiority among buffet items..

Is There A King Shrimp…Jumbo Maybe

I mean there is King Crab Legs. The best title of note in the shrimp kingdom is jumbo. And by jumbo that is in shrimp dimensions. The biggest jumbo shrimp is probably no bigger than a stone crab claw. And since we are on the subject of obscure pointless facts, eating crab is just more sophisticated and involved.

There is bending, cracking, pulling, pushing, just to get to one morsel of meat. No one is going to spend that kind of energy on shrimp. And then you have the tools. You have crab crackers, picks, buckets, and more. With shrimp you just have a dumping plate.

And back to Forest Gump. What if Bubba had to begin plugging in the number of popular types of crab prepared in actual recipes. Lets do the math and compare shrimp burger to crab cake.

For shrimp burger Bubba would just say shrimp burger. He wouldn’t say pink shrimp burger, or green shrimp burger…just shrimp burger.

But crab meat has a little notoriety. He could say something like:

“Alaskan #1 Snow Crab Cake”, “Argentina King Crab Cake”,“Russian Crab Cake”,“Jonah Crab Cake”,“Seattle Dungeness Crab Cake”,“Canadian Jumbo Cake Cake”,“Norwegian Crab Cake”,“Florida Stone Crab Cake”,

And that is just crab cakes! Crab is the king of the seafood buffet.