Numlock Sunday: The best crab shacks in Baltimore don't use Old Bay?

With Christine Zhang and Christina Tkacik of the Baltimore Sun

By Walt Hickey

Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition. Each week, I'll sit down with an author or a writer behind one of the stories covered in a previous weekday edition for a casual conversation about what they wrote.

This week, I spoke to Christine Zhang and Christina Tkacik of the Baltimore Sun. They’re the reporters behind the story “Old Bay gets all the credit. Meet J.O., the seasoning that crab houses use,” a story that rocked me to my core and prompted me to question the very nature of my reality.

Here's what I wrote about it:

Despite being fundamentally linked to the region, Old Bay is no longer the preferred crab seasoning in the Baltimore region. 18 out of 30 crab houses use J.O. No. 2 seasoning, six use Harbor Spice and only one used Old Bay, which is owned by spice conglomerate McCormick’s. Price is part of it — two pounds of Harbor Spice Co.’s 1394 goes for $7.50, two pounds of J.O. goes for $9.25 and the same amount of Old Bay would set you back $18 at a local supermarke…