Watching Footballers Crushing Crab

Today turned out to be a nice day around the Bay Area, so I strolled over to San Francisco's Union Square for the Sixth Annual Crab Fest. This is going to be an odd food blog post because there's going to be food, but I didn't eat any of it! (I'm watching my cholesterol and I ate my quota of crab in the last two weeks. Bad timing on my part.)

Anywho, I've never been to the Union Square Crab Fest, which is sponsored by Macy's and is actually a fund-raiser for the San Francisco 49ers football team's foundation, which helps underserved children. And it's a nice way to feature one of the big food icon of the city, the Dungeness crab.

Of course, the highlight of the mini-festival is the crab cracking contest featuring celebrities paired with local chefs. Above you see, from left, Tiffany Tam (the first princess for the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, what happened to Miss Chinatown?) with her partner Chef Darren (I didn't get his last name or the name of the restaurant, I think he works at Luke's Restaurant), 49ers quarterback Alex Smith and San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White.

The contest actually took awhile. I guess it's not that easy getting all that succulent meat from those darn crabs.

Alex Smith seems to be having fun. He was a good sport given all the jabs about his left shoulder that the MCs were ribbing him about.

Along with the crab cracking contest, there were the food booths from area restaurants (most of them from the Union Square area). Above is Chef Robert Helstrom of Kuleto's serving up his red curry crab risotto.

I give the best presentation to E&O Trading Co., which was serving up these curry crab salad. Huh, lots of curry crab dishes.

Aren't these hilarious?! LOL. They're sourdough bread from the Boudin Bakery baked into the shape of crabs. So funny looking.

These are crab gelees from the Grand Cafe. I have to be honest and say that this didn't seem very popular with the crowd, who tended to head to the booth serving mini crab cakes.

Not everything was crab. Above are Chocolate Cherry Sourdough Bread Pudding from Boudin Bakery. It was pretty popular and people were devouring it.

With the sunny weather, lots of food and celebrity spotting, it looked like most people were having fun. Definitely one of those signature San Francisco events.