Cake Walk

The owners of Fresh Fresh Seafood (507 York Road, Towson, 410-821-3474) are so proud of its namesake ingredient, it had to say it twice. They also display much of it at the counter on ice: gleaming gray clams, pearly scallops, and big, fat shrimp the size of your fist all greet you as you approach the cash register. Darlene and Ricky Parker—who moved their restaurant from its original Greenmount Avenue location seven years ago—are adamant about making everything from scratch. This means that food takes a while to arrive—longer than you'd usually expect at a simple carry-out like this. Our advice is to call in your order 30 minutes ahead of time, though, if you do wind up waiting, Darlene is a charming conversationalist. But on to the crab cake, which was our reason for the visit: Good gracious, it's big . . . way bigger than that fist to which we were comparing the prawns. One is plenty, even a la carte (market price, $13 on our visit, and it comes with bread or saltines, plus cole slaw). It was a little heavy on the salt for our tastes, and did have noticeable filler in it. Still, its sheer size was enough to win us over, and the crabmeat was, like the name says, fresh enough to bear repeating.