PORT ANGELES – The 18th annual Dungeness Crab and Seafood Festival arrives on the Port Angeles waterfront Friday.
Crews are putting up the 17-thousand-square-foot tent that houses the main part of the festival. The event opens at noon on Friday. It runs Friday through Sunday.
The festival draws thousand of people to the waterfront each year to sample a crab dinner and other delicacies, plus tour vendors, see cooking demonstrations and hear live music.
Besides the events under the tent and across Lincoln Street at the Gateway Center, the festival has expanded its offerings on City Pier.
Organizer Scott Nagel says it’s turned into two festivals in one with expanded food offerings, the “grab-a-crab” derby and more music.
We now have really fantastic food on the pier. We have nine food booths, really good stuff and we have more kids stuff. So we’ve got hamburgers and grilled cheese sandwiches and ice cream and we’ve got mini donuts. Plus Kokopelli is bringing his trailer out there with gumbo and crab cakes and other good stuff when fantastic seafood taco truck coming from Seattle with all kinds of seafood, meat and and vegetarian tacos and we have our paella coming, which is like the most popular and Jamestown with their oysters. And what I discovered last year, is that there are people who just come for pier.
Nagel says for locals, the best time to avoid is mid-day on Friday and Saturday. That’s when the Coho ferry arrives with hundreds of festival goers from Victoria.
Friday evening is a bonus for locals too. The crab dinner is four dollars off the regular price.
Last year, the festival set a new record with about nine tons of crab sold and the biggest crowds in the festival’s history.