Bait House Cafe
5517 Seaview Ave NW (Ballard, between the Locks and Shilshole Bay Marina), 297-9109. Tues-Sun, lunch noon-3 pm, dinner 6 pm-closing.

To step out onto the deck of the Bait House is to allow a certain longing to become concrete. You didn’t know you needed to sit on a deck over some real, moving water, with the air smelling of salt and boats moving past. You needed to do this without the overwhelming responsibility of swankiness–you just needed to eat some crab over water.

And here you are, doing these things. The half-shaded deck looks over a neighborhood that my friend, Ms. Mayonnaise, says is called Land’s End–all boxy houses on prime waterfront property, with all that amazing sea air. This is where the action is, in Land’s End.

Although you will wait until Time’s End to get your food. Ms. Mayonnaise and I waited more than an hour between ordering and eating, and felt our blood sugar drop and mild starvation set in while people who came in after us were served. We looked on longingly, with palpable despair.

Ms. Mayonnaise understands that mayonnaise is not a crime. When Ms. Mayonnaise returned from a few months in Southeast Asia, she was greeted at the airport with a jar of mayonnaise and a straw. Needless to say, she can go nuts over the Bait House crab melt ($15.99): fresh crabmeat mixed with mayonnaise and served on bread similar to brioche, toasted under lots of mild cheese.

Normally I wouldn’t be saying this about food that took a clear hour to arrive, but there it was. The crab in the crab melt was creamy and sweet and perfect, as was the crab in the crab cocktail ($12.99); I have eaten my share of stringy, watery crab, and this was not it. In the crab melt, the crab and the mayonnaise elevate each other, and are coddled by that decadent bread and gooey cheese. A slightly astringent Caesar salad with it is just the thing, and salmon chowder, bright with extra corn and dill, just pushed me over the edge. Full and slightly sunburnt, Ms. Mayonnaise and I settled in to wait the rest of the afternoon for our check to arrive.