On a Chesapeake crab cake tour, Ruke’s takes the prize

Smith Island and Ruke’s restaurant were one of our stops on an August boat tour of the lower Chesapeake Bay.

The folks at Ruke’s don’t try to be funky. It’s just the general vibe of the place. Outside, a yellow-painted picnic table. A red bicycle leaning against a railing. And the restaurant building itself: wooden shakes, studs and beams, settling comfortably into the marshy high ground of Smith Island, its edges softened by decades of summertime Chesapeake squalls, accepting one and all without pretension, always looking like a casually stacked house of cards about ready to fold.

Inside the front door of Ruke’s stands a wooden-top counter worn smooth by generations of elbows and hands vibrating like a real slow sander, powered by years and years of slow conversation. I was about to write chatter, but chatter’s too fast. Smith Island is all about slow. No real need to hurry. No place to go. The Beatles captured that special sensation: “Oh that magic feeling, nowhere to go.”

People on the island stop in and talk, buy a little of this and a little of that. Rough wooden shelves lining the walls hold dusty knickknacks and old glass bottles, blue, green and clear. An eclectic herd of chairs makes its way around two or three old tables. One customer drags a chair over to this table to join the talk. Another couple pull their chairs another way. Like the tides that constantly push and pull and mold Smith, the chairs stay in motion. One or two even look like they might have floated in on a high tide.

We’ve been to Smith several times over the years. One year after Becky and I married - that was 44 years back - we spent the night at Frances Kitching’s house. She took in boarders and fed them meals of fried oysters, crab cakes and soft-shell crabs, lima beans, and macaroni and cheese - all family style. A slab of Smith Island Cake too, if you were lucky. All the recipes were in a cookbook Mrs. Kitching wrote. That might have been the visit when we were with my brother Raymond who was collecting eel grass for some kind of scientific study. It was one of our earliest introductions to the culture of the island. Becky remembers the first color television she ever saw was in Frances Kitching’s living room.

On our most recent trip, we wound our way through the enclosed portion of the building and passed through a crooked door to the screened dining porch. Els Hooper, who had Rehoboth’s Corner Cupboard with its own wonderful dining porch, would have approved. Another roving herd of mismatched chairs and tables balanced comfortably on a sloping floor. Outside on a bright August day - big with yellow sunshine, blue sky and puffy white clouds - healthy green marsh grass made a tall natural lawn swaying in the island’s breezes, and all reflected in the clean water flowing in, on and around the island.

It was all around us as we sat inside the screens, away from the green-head flies, and listened to Janice Burbage as she took our orders. Thin pieces of fresh, fried rockfish, crispy and sweet soft-shell crabs, the best crab cakes we had on our eight-day voyage, iced tea, stewed tomatoes, french fries. Everything relaxed. Food nice and hot when it arrived with only the finest plastic flatware, baskets and plates.

A peaceful place

Janice came to Smith, the wife of a minister who served the three Methodist churches in the island’s communities of Ewell, Rhodes Point and Tylerton.

“He died and I moved back to the mainland for a while,” Janice told us. “But I eventually moved back.

“I feel safe out here. Can walk anywhere I want, any time of the day, and not be afraid. It’s peaceful.”

We planned to cross the Chesapeake to Reedville and the Western Shore the next day. Albert and Jennifer live along the Rappahannock River, in Oyster Cove, just inside Windmill Point. He surveys boats. She designs houses. We like to get together to eat and drink, beat on each other, solve the problems of the world and be around the water. For our visit, we wanted to take along some Smith Island Cake.

We were in luck. Jennifer Dize, who looked to be the chief cook and bottle washer at Ruke’s, had made a cake that morning for the restaurant. Nine pancake layers of sweet yellow cake each separated by a thin layer of perfectly grainy chocolate icing. The classic combination works. Goes real good with a cup of hot coffee. (Forget wine with your meal at Ruke’s. The island is dry.)

“Well,” she said, “I made this for the restaurant but I guess I could sell you half of it. Not sure what to charge. I usually get $4 a slice and half a cake gives me eight slices.”

“How about $30?” I offered.

“Sounds good to me,” she said. We had ourselves a deal, and nice cake to take to our friends, and the happy anticipation of enjoying it all together.

All in all it was a nice visit to Smith. There’s an interesting museum about island life across the street from Ruke’s, and at another nearby restaurant along the wharf, you can rent cruiser bicycles to ride the streets of Ewell and the mile-long road across the marsh to Rhodes Point. Makes for a pleasant day, including the boat trip from Crisfield, out and back.

I recommend Smith and Tangier. Laid-back pleasure. Call the folks at the Crisfield Chamber of Commerce - that’s Crisfield, Maryland, about an hour and a half drive from our Cape Region. They’ll help you out with logistics for both islands.