The Murky History Behind The West Coast's Crab Louie

Crab Louie salad is so quintessential to the Pacific Northwest that it's part of our list of iconic foods from Washington state you need to try. A traditional Crab Louie salad, also known as a Crab Louis, was served with unique Dungeness crab meat, which thrived in the cold waters of the Pacific Northwest, along with lettuce, hard-boiled eggs, and pink Louis dressing. Modern adaptations are commonly found with the addition of cucumbers, tomatoes, and lemon wedges. Both Seattle and San Francisco are attributed to the origins of the famous salad, but despite its fame, the true origins are still up for debate. 

Major coastal cities on the West Coast, like Seattle, San Francisco, and Vancouver, all featured crab on dining menus as far back as the 1800s, as commercial crab fishing began taking off. We may never know the true origin of the Crab Louis, but there are a few who claim to be the first to serve the luxurious seafood salad. The earliest claim comes from the Olympic Club in Seattle in 1904, where supposedly a famous Italian opera singer repeatedly ordered the salad until the kitchen ran out. The problem, however, with this claim is that the singer neither performed nor visited Seattle at this time. Farther south in San Francisco, a restaurant named Poodle Dog claimed its chef, Louis Coutard, invented the dressing for crab legs in 1908. But this tarragon-spiked dressing was not the pink-hued dressing the salad is famous for. 

Furthering the confusion, in 1912, the Portland Council of Jewish Women published a "Neighborhood Cookbook" which included a recipe for Crab Louis, specifically with the famous pink dressing, as well as crab meat, hard-boiled eggs, and lettuce, however the recipe doesn't have a source for the salad, adding another city and layer of mystery to the salad's true origin. Yet another San Franciscan claim to the salad comes from Solari's restaurant, where a cookbook and dining guide published in 1914 called "Bohemian San Francisco" published Solari's Crab Louis salad recipe with fresh crab meat and the famed Louis dressing. Yet it too was lacking the signature tomato and hard-boiled egg.

In the late 1800s, when railroads began using refrigerated cars, fresh Dungeness and other West Coast crabs became more available throughout the rest of the country, along with lettuce and other fresh vegetables being transported out of the verdant West Coast. In 1914, the newly opened Davenport Hotel in Spokane, Washington, located about 270 miles east of Seattle's coastal waters, featured a Crab Louis salad, claiming that it was named after the owner of the hotel, whose nickname was Louis. This version of the salad did include all the elements we associate with the modern salad, which is easy to recreate today, and we highly recommend you do. If you've never had a Louis salad but fresh crab meat isn't accessible, try our classic shrimp Louie salad recipe for a more affordable twist on the luxurious salad.