by Natasha Khairullah
Staff Writer
Arthur Glaser knows flavor. As the resident “Crab King” at Hemming Plaza’s Farmer’s Market where he sells his “world famous” crab cakes, he says he’s constantly asked by market patrons for his secret recipe for the tasty cakes or for advice on how to spice up their own cuisine.
“I get questions like that all the time,” he said, ”but I’m not telling anyone. You can bet money on that.”
Glaser is the chef and owner of Ambiance Catering in St. Augustine. When he’s not supplying his cakes to hundreds of people at a time at events like weddings and graduation parties, he’s slinging them at farmer’s markets around St. Augustine, Fernandina and Jacksonville’s own in Hemming Plaza on Fridays.
The market is a place where vendors come from as far as Brunswick, Ga. to sell baked goods, produce, arts & crafts and the like and is held ever Friday from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
Glaser has become a fixture at Hemming Plaza and has been selling his cakes there for a little over a year.
Glaser is tall with a head of shaggy hair and a Dutch accent as thick as his moustache. He’s from Miami and has an extensive culinary background, the son of a restaurateur who owned numerous four-star establishments in both Holland and Belgium. Glaser followed in his fathers footsteps and became a chef, “cooking his way around the world.” He’s operated Italian restaurants in Belgium, a Mandarin noodle shop in Germany, a Mexican restaurant in New York City and barbecue kitchens in various Caribbean locations.
After spending time working in restaurants in South Beach and Ft. Lauderdale and eventually retiring in Miami Beach, he decided to take in a change of scenery and move to St. Augustine. He’s always had a great crab cake recipe, but realized that there was no crab processing plant in the North Florida area, so he decided to open up his own. Shortly after he established the first crab meat processing plant in St. Augustine in 2002, he decided to take his crab venture a step further and opened his own crab cake business under the moniker, “The Crab Cake King,” and the First Coast has been after them ever since.
Glaser says the reason why he thinks his crab cakes are so sought after is that each one is unique.
“No two cakes are exactly alike,” he said. “These aren’t like the ones you’ll find at some chain restaurant.”
Each cake is made by hand with his signature blend of spices and lump crab meat, shaped then flash-frozen to capture all the flavor. Glaser also sells oven-ready crab cakes so that those who can’t make it out to one of his farmer’s market booths can still enjoy them.
Glaser said soon he will sell hand-breaded coconut shrimp and he hopes people will like them just as much as the crab cakes.
Just don’t expect him to change his name to “The Shrimp King” any time soon, he said.