WASHINGTON, DC
The Maine Avenue Fish Market doesn’t belong in DC. It’s dirty, chaotic and delicious, stuck under an interstate in a weird pocket of the least interesting part of the city. Most locals have never heard of it and we didn’t see a single tourist, even though it’s only a ten minute walk from the Mall and one of the busiest Metro stops in the city. It’s probably a good thing too, because if everybody got wind of how awesome this place is they’d try to “revitalize” it like the rest of the vacant, sterile Southwest. Either that, or they’d start offering vegetarian options and the straights and hipsters would flood in like it’s Columbia Heights circa 2005.

There are proper “restaurants” down there, but it’s way more fun to buy food right from the vendors and eat it standing next to the river. Hawkers stand on their barges behind seafood laid out on huge beds of ice while people shout their orders from dry land. The fish probably comes from the same place as everything in Safeway, but the crabs are definitely fresh – unless they’ve been cooked, they’re still pissed off and fighting each other. We got a big bag of steamed ones covered in Old Bay along with shrimp, crayfish and a plate of oysters.

Then we went up in the old post office tower. I’m glad I did that before I left.