Sometimes, simple is better. Laden with silky shreds of sweet blue crab meat, West Indies Salad proves this point. There are no breadcrumbs or multi-layered seasonings—we’re looking at you crabcakes and crab stuffing. There’s no cornmeal batter and spicy cocktail sauce for dipping, the standard Southern treatment for crab claws.
West Indies Salad is a crab ceviche served chilled, and its short and basic ingredient list—Gulf crabmeat, salt, pepper, vinegar, onion, vegetable oil and ice water—allows the crustacean to shine in all its unadulterated glory.
West Indies Salad: A Refreshing Alabama Original
Created by Bill Bailey Sr. in the 1940s, West Indies Salad was a recreation of a dish he’d thrown together while serving as a Merchant Marine in the Caribbean years earlier, then using lobster instead of crab. When he opened Bayley’s Seafood Restaurant in Theodore, Alabama, in 1947, he began serving his West Indies Salad to scores of loyal fans until the eatery closed in the mid-1980s.
His son Bill Jr. reopened his family’s spot in 1993, and while he changed the menu a bit, he kept what worked, including West Indies Salad. The dish remained a best seller at Bayley’s until its closure in June 2022 and spread to other area menus, too. Today, the classic is still a regional favorite.
Coastal Alabama native, chef, cookbook author, and owner of Lulu’s restaurants Lucy Buffett (sister of famed singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett) calls West Indies Salad an “essential” Alabama dish. She’s proud of its Alabama heritage.
Credit:
Jennifer Stewart Kornegay
“Having originated here, it’s very Alabama, but also very coastal Alabama,” Buffett says. But a personal connection pushes it to the top of her list, too. “My parents got paid on the first and fifteenth of the month, so that following Friday, they’d take us out to dinner at one of the restaurants on the causeway that connected the eastern shore to Mobile Bay, and mom and daddy would often order West Indies Salad,” she says. “It was expensive, so it was a real treat.”
Her mom would also make West Indies Salad at home. “My mom was an amazing woman, but she was not an amazing cook,” Buffett says, “but one thing she did make was West Indies Salad.”
It became a Buffett family signature dish, one her mom would whip up any time her grown children were all back home, and sometimes, she’d take it the road.
“When mom and daddy would go see Jimmy play, they’d take him a cooler of West Indies Salad,” Buffett says. “And now, when any of us family get together, that’s what they ask me to make. It tastes like home.”
Buffett is open-minded when it comes to the best way to get West Indies Salad into your mouth. “Some like to scoop it up on a saltine, but you can just eat it with a fork, too,” she says.
She’s less flexible on the topic of embellishments. “The recipe is so simple, you think you need more, and there was a time I tried to tweak the recipe by adding this or that, but it doesn’t taste right,” she says. “Stick with the original way, the Bayley’s way. If you must add something to it, fine, but don’t call it West Indies Salad.”
