At The Crab Queen in Randallstown, Owner Felicia Covel Rami is Queen for More Than a Day

Watching her maternal grandmother, Helen, at work in the kitchen left an indelible impression on Felicia Covel Rami, chef-owner of The Crab Queen in Randallstown.

“My grandmother passed away when I was very young, so I don’t have a lot of memories of her, but the memories of when we cooked together stuck with me,” says Covel Rami, who also worked as an executive chef at Nick’s Fish House. “She was a Southern-style cook, cooking all the vegetables down, making ham hocks that were highly seasoned, and making fried chicken and cornbread in cast-iron skillets. The first thing she taught me to cook was scrambled eggs—and she’d shake her hips when she scrambled them, so I always thought that to make scrambled eggs, you had to shake your hips.”

After high school, Covel Rami had a revelation when she saw a television ad for then local culinary school Baltimore International College (BIC).

“I knew I loved cooking,” she says, “but it never dawned on me to make a career of it.” She enrolled at BIC, and while she stopped shaking her hips while scrambling eggs long ago, she has been shaking up the scene ever since with her seafood boils and crab cake prowess.

Why did you decide to focus on seafood?
Working at Nick’s is where I developed my passion for seafood. It’s where I gained my love and knowledge of seafood. Before that, the only thing I knew about seafood is that I loved eating it. While working there, I learned how to sort and steam crabs, how to filet and debone fish, and all about shrimp and the different sizes and regions they come from.

I understand that Crab Queen is a family business.
Yes, my two little sisters work for me. Kenisha Brown is the chef-manager and Janaya Williams is my sous chef-assistant manager.

You have a successful catering business. Why did you decide to open a brick-and-mortar spot?
The Crab Queen grew out of the pandemic. We had a lot of things lined up for second quarter—open houses and going to universities and schools for graduation. The pandemic hit and everything got canceled. No one knew how long it would last. Weeks turned into months, turned into years. We took time to rest and regroup. After a few months we were like, “What’s the need right now?” And it was smaller events, so I started creating to-go packages for five guests. I started doing crab cake dinners, then stuffed salmon, and chicken Chesapeake. People were ordering the seafood dinners like crazy. We got so much positive feedback from the crab boils—we almost couldn’t keep up with the demand for them. We wanted to continue to offer this food, so we looked for a brick-and-mortar.

What should a first-timer order?
If you’re going to do a crab boil, order the snow crab boil and add shrimp—the Cajun garlic sauce is my absolute favorite. If you want something other than a boil, 100 percent get the crab cakes. I can’t keep them in the store—there’s a line out the door for them before we even open, but I keep it fresh. I’m okay with running out of them by the close of the day.