Old Cape Crab House started with a tradition I grew up looking forward to every summer.
I'm originally from Long Island, New York, and beginning in 2001, my family spent our summers at our vacation home in Wildwood Crest, just up the coast from Cape May, New Jersey. Some of my favorite memories from those summers weren't anything fancy—they were sitting around a table covered in brown paper, cracking open freshly steamed blue crabs at one of the local crab houses.
I loved everything about it. The smell of the seasoning, the pile of crabs in the middle of the table, the mallets, the mess, and most importantly, the time spent with family. Going out for blue crabs became one of those things I looked forward to every summer.
My family eventually sold our Wildwood Crest home in 2016, but my love for blue crabs came home with me. After moving to Naples, I quickly realized there really wasn't a crab house like the ones I grew up with back north. So over the years, I started steaming blue crabs at home, recreating those familiar crab feasts for my own family and friends.
Nearly a decade passed before I finally made it back to Cape May. This summer, I returned—and of course, one of the first things I wanted was a table full of freshly steamed blue crabs.
Sitting there again after all those years brought everything back. But this time, I found myself thinking about all the years I'd spent trying to recreate that experience back home in Naples.
And somewhere between the seasoning, the shells, and the familiar mess all over the table, I had a thought:
Why doesn't Naples have a real crab house like this?
That question became Old Cape Crab House.
My family and I decided to bring a little piece of that Northeast crab-house tradition home to Southwest Florida. We're starting simply, with Old Cape Crab Drops—limited batches of fresh blue crabs, steamed and seasoned for our customers to take home and enjoy around their own tables.
But we're dreaming bigger.
As Old Cape grows, our hope is to build the kind of true, old-school crab house here in Naples that inspired this idea in the first place—a place for piles of steamed crabs, brown-paper-covered tables, plenty of seasoning, and families and friends who aren't afraid to make a little mess.
The name Old Cape is a nod to those summers around Cape May and the crab houses that made them so memorable. We're proud to be a family-owned and operated Naples business, and we're excited to see where this little piece of our family's tradition takes us.
Because to us, a dozen crabs has never been just dinner.
It's an excuse to sit around the table a little longer.