Crab Imperial

Ray S. Walters opened Café Burgundy in Washington, D.C., on August 24, 1954. Its location at 5031 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., just below Nebraska Avenue, perfectly positioned it to become a bustling neighborhood restaurant, which it very quickly did.

The name of the restaurant had more to do with its décor — the walls of the main dining room were dressed in burgundy — than its cuisine. For the most part, in fact, the food was straightforward American fare.

“I’m from Paris,” Ray Walters liked to say by way of introduction, adding, after just the briefest pause, his punch line: “— that is, Paris, Tennessee.”

Walters clearly aimed for the role of bon vivant, putting his name on the neon sign above the restaurant’s entrance and nearly always being on hand to greet guests for lunch and dinner. Walters was also an active member of the Epicurean Club of Washington, at one point serving as its president. And in 1966 the 1,000 or so members of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington voted him “Restaurateur of the Year.”

But Walters’s wife, Anna, was every bit as essential to the restaurant’s success. She’d gotten her start in the business during the Great Depression, flipping pancakes at the griddle in the window of Childs’ restaurant in downtown Chicago. Ray worked there, too, first as a porter, then as a cook’s assistant, and finally as a manager. In time they married and moved to Washington, where, during World War II, Ray worked for the Office of Price Administration and Anna worked at a Navy yard as a riveter.

After the war the Walterses opened Napoleon’s Restaurant, at 2019 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., and then and then Café de la Paix in the Hotel Windsor Park, at 2300 Connecticut Avenue, N.W. “While Dad worked in the kitchen, Mom was the hostess and greeted some of Washington’s most famous people, including the Kennedys,” their son would later recall. “She had a wonderful personality and everyone loved her. They knew she would always make sure everything was perfect.”

After running Café Burgundy for two decades or so, the Walterses decided to sell it. But the 225-seat restaurant foundered without Ray and Anna at the helm and, in the late 1970s, briefly closed its doors. Then, suddenly, and much to the relief of its longtime patrons, Café Burgundy reopened with its founder back in charge. In 1978 you could get a complete dinner at the restaurant for $4.25, up slightly from the $2.95 you would have paid in 1971.

John Rosson, the restaurant critic for the Washington Star, named the restaurant’s crabcakes his favorite.

Once Café Burgundy was running as smoothly as it had in the old days, Walters left once again. It didn’t take long, however, for the aging restaurant to begin slowly slipping from its once-premier position in the neighborhood. Within just a couple of years, by one account, the kitchen was serving Mrs. Smith’s pies.

Café Burgundy closed its doors for the second and final time in July 1989. A few weeks later there was a farewell party for Nick and Fame Nicholas, the restaurant’s owners, but the Burgundy, as many had come to call it, was gone. (The following year Ray Walters died in Sarasota, Florida, at age 80; Anna Walters died there in 2000 at age 88.)

The space at 5031 Connecticut Avenue was soon taken over by Peacock, a restaurant that featured Nepalese, Kashmiri, and Punjabi cuisine, and then a succession of other restaurants, including, most recently, Buck’s Fishing & Camping.

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Crab Imperial

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Café Burgundy in Washington, D.C., was famous for its seafood and beef dishes, with John Rosson, the restaurant critic for the Washington Star, once christening the crabcakes at Café Burgundy his favorite. But crab played even more of a central role in the restaurant's version of Crab Imperial, the classic American dish that could seemingly make or break a restaurant in the nation's capital — or anywhere else, really, in the Mid-Atlantic Region. Here's the recipe that owner Ray Walters developed for his restaurant. Utterly devoid of any ingredients that might compete with the star of the dish (such as eggs, flour, bread crumbs, red bell peppers, pimentos, sherry in the Imperial Sauce, or Parmesan cheese), Walters's recipe didn't even call for any Old Bay seasoning, the herb-and-spice blend that's seemingly de rigueur for crab dishes.

Ingredients

• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon dry mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tablespoon small capers, drained
• 1 pound lump backfin crabmeat (picked and any cartilage removed)
• Fresh parsley sprigs, for garnish
• Lemon wedges, for serving

Instructions

1

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2

In a medium mixing bowl, combine the mayonnaise, heavy cream, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and capers and blend until smooth. Remove 1/4 of this mixture from the bowl and reserve.

3

Add the crabmeat to the bowl and blend lightly, taking care to avoid breaking the delicate lump crabmeat.

4

Divide the crab mixture into 4 empty natural crab shells (or individual ramekins) and top with reserved Imperial Sauce.

5

Bake for about 20 minutes or until tops are lightly browned.

6

Garnish with sprigs of parsley and serve with lemon wedges.