How to Solve Berlin’s Invasive Crayfish Problem? Eat Them
Crustaceans from the American South are now hyperlocal cuisine in Germany
When the chef delivered a plate of crayfish from the makeshift kitchen in the back of a Berlin gourmet store, diners were delighted: “Ah, they look beautiful,” a woman said: She was one of ten who had signed up for a dinner at Vom Einfachen das Gute, a small specialty grocery store in the central Berlin neighborhood of Mitte.
The event was a first for HolyCrab!, a startup founded last year by Lukas Bosch, Juliane Bublitz, and Andreas Michelus. The team had coordinated with the store, a reliable source of gourmet products such as high-grade cured meats, cheese, raw milk, and natural wine, to give diners a taste of a new local Berlin cuisine. As Michelus, HolyCrab!’s head chef, deposited the crayfish on the table, guests bent to inspect the creatures while Michelus explained how, exactly, Berliners were supposed to consume their city’s most-publicized pest.
News of Berlin’s invasive crayfish was a welcome distraction to the usual doom and gloom of front-page news last year: waving their alien-like antennae, the blood-red crustaceans were quite literally roaming the streets of Berlin. How they arrived in the city is a mystery, though it’s thought that perhaps aquarium…
