Newsletter Home     Industry Bite     Wild Watch     Featured Articles     Recipe of the Month     Send Us Your Ideas Crab Festival 2006 Trendy New York eatery BLT Fish (Bistro Laurent Tourondel) will throw the charity bash of the season, Crab Festival 2006, with the help of sponsors including the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI). The event begins at 2 pm Sunday, May 21st when renowned chefs from fourteen chic New York eateries, including Laurent Tourondel of BLT, will gather at BLT Fish for the event. The chefs come together from a wide range of cooking genres and styles. They will set up restaurant stations throughout the three-story bistro and provide tasting portions of their crab creations. These chefs will also square off for bragging rights to the most delicious crab cake in the city. Katie Lee Joel, host of Bravo's "Top Chef," and food writers Arlyn Blake and Andrea Strong will join revered Alaska Crab fisherman Konrad S. Uri to judge the contest. Konrad Uri began his commercial fishing career in Alaska at age 10, working for his family. Uri took up King Crab fishing in 1969 after twenty-five years of bottom fishing for Cod, Sole, Halibut and Black Cod. Uri built his 96-foot crab vessel, the F/V Seaview and departed for the Bearing Sea in November of 1969. Three years later Uri completed work on the 110-foot F/V Rainier, a larger crab vessel. Uri and a partner founded Trans-Pacific Industries six years after that, in 1978. Trans-Pacific Industries' F/T Arctic Trawler became the first successful factory trawler in the United States and was, at the time, the largest commercial fishing vessel in the country. In 1981 Uri won the Highliner Award from National Fisherman magazine. Uri carries his Alaska Crab expertise to New York from his home, Seattle, Washington, where he continues to be actively involved within the Alaska seafood industry. One hundred percent of the proceeds of Crab Festival 2006 go to New York charity, City Harvest, a non-profit organization that provides food for the hungry in New York City. Along with volunteers like Konrad Uri, chefs from Nobu, Aquagrill, Blue Water Grill, Brasserie Ruhlmann, Café Boulud, City Crab, Ditch Plains, Orsay, Payard Patisserie and Bistro, Peacock Alley, Rain, Riingo and Sea Grill have donated their time. The event is $35 and tickets are available at http://www.bltfish.com or call 212-691-8888.