Seafood Salad

Seafood salad is a broad range of dishes as simple as imitation crab in mayo or as multifaceted as an elaborate poke bowl. Shrimp, lobster, and crab are frequent players, separately or together. Crab Louis, known as the “King of Salads,” is a plate of hard-boiled egg, lettuce, tomato, a few olives, maybe avocado, and pearly hunks of crab (hopefully, Dungeness crab) in a dressing of mayonnaise and red chili sauce. No one knows its exact origins, but it took form along the northern Pacific coast, most likely in San Francisco or Seattle. When excellent crab is not available, it sometimes is replaced by shrimp. Around the Great Lakes and along the Gulf coast, as well as in delicatessens everywhere, smoked fish is the inspiration for creamy so-called salads that in fact are more like spread or dip.