Green Crabs on the Menu: Althea & Vialé

Shauna Reyburn and Greg Reeves are the owners of Althea and Vialé: two iconic Central Square restaurants that have featured green crabs on their menus. This past summer, GreenCrab.org had the opportunity to collaborate with Althea on “Protect the Coast” a dinner featuring an entirely green crab-centric menu from Chef Greg and a signature “Green Crab Tini” from Shauna. In this post, they break down how they utilize green crabs and the process behind their signature Spicy Crab Spaghetti.

Green Crab Boil served at Althea’s “Protect the Coast”

How did you first learn about green crabs?

A few years ago, we saw them on the Wulf’s list and was curious what they were. We did some research and here we are.

How do you utilize green crabs on your menu?

We make a Green Crab stock and add it to our “Aribiatta” sauce for our Spicy Crab Spaghetti. However, our “Protect the Coast” dinner with GreenCrab.org featured everything from a green crab boil to egg biscuits with green crab gravy to a corn salad with stone fruit with chilled green crab.

Could you step through the process of creating your signature Spicy Crab Spaghetti made with invasive green crab?

We make a crab stock by roasting green crab with mirepoix and a sachet of herbs. Our Aribiatta is made with garlic, chili flakes, Spanish onions, canned tomatoes, and white wine. Once ordered, we sautee garlic confit, Calabrian chili peppers, green crab stock, Aribiatta sauce, Jonah crab meat, and butter. We then add our house-made extruded Spaghetti (made with Squid ink), breadcrumbs, and more chili oil.

Althea’s Spicy Crab Spaghetti

We had so much fun teaming up on “Protect the Coast” this past summer, which featured an entirely green-crab-centric menu, including a “Crab Tini”. What inspired you to incorporate green crabs in a cocktail? 

Honestly, the event. But it was fun to create something out of the norm for us. We made a green crab tincture and planned on making a simple green crab martini (ISO oyster vodka, VT vermouth & green crab tincture) but it was too sharp. So we incorporated local tomatoes and made tomato water, some of Chef's green crab stock, champagne vinegar, basil syrup and lemon juice to make it more balanced, and an Urfa-basil oil garnished green tomato to continue the green theme. Light, fresh, balanced, delish. We will now start incorporating green crab stock into cocktails eventually, because it was well-received.

Shauna Reyburn’s Green Crab Tini

If a chef is interested in cooking with green crabs for the first time, what pointers would you give them?

Green crabs don’t have a ton of meat, so I’d opt for stock or fish sauce applications. 

Green crabs aren’t the only sustainable seafood on your menu. Why is incorporating underutilized and invasive species important to you?

As much as it is our job to make food for what our guests desire, we can also make it an informative and learning experience on how we can make something enjoyable and fruitful for our communities and environment too.

Scenes from “Protect the Coast” at Althea, sponsored by Wulf’s Fish & Currently Wine