Warm scones with double Devonshire cream and preserves are accompanied by a beautiful selection of sweets, seasonal fruit and savory dishes such as roasted lamb loin on grilled pita and peekytoe crab salad with avocado and fresh coriander on toasted brioche.

CNN: Five great American tearooms

Well-dressed families converse and enjoy staples such as tomato soup, crab cakes, Caesar salad, chicken salad, "one great burger" and calves' liver with bacon.

FORBES: NATIONAL DEBT WILL GROW

Soft-shell crab with a hazelnut salad, fried oysters with a green-chile-buttermilk dressing, a gin-and-tonic salmon with a subtle juniper aroma: these were creative combinations not often seen on New York menus.

NEWYORKER: Bell Book & Candle

Recommendations: crab cakes, sea bass, lobster salad, the sashimi and sushi combination, and the shad and shad roe.l Agora-1586 First Ave.

FORBES: Fact and Comment

Especially noteworthy: the Maryland crab cakes with roasted corn salsa and the lobster Cobb salad.

FORBES: Fact & Comments

Fried Ipswich belly clams are succulent, crab cakes are the wet Maryland style, the wedge salad is drenched in dressing.

NEWYORKER: Brooklyn Crab

We'd flank the dish with sides of corn on the cob, a garlic-studded green such as escarole, a balsamic-slicked watercress salad and even some barbecued meat for the non-crab lovers of the family.

WSJ: Endless-Summer Baked Blue Crab