11 Wine Subscriptions to Toast to Each Month

Whether you’re a novice or an expert, wine clubs offer adventure and convenience every month or so. Some rely on quizzes while others choose for you, but every wine club is committed to helping you take the guesswork out of choosing a bottle of wine.

We reviewed the wine subscription landscape and uncorked the best ones. These services are easy to use, provide great value, and of course, ship delicious vino.

Best Wine Subscription for Most People

Winc

Winc

$13/bottle and up

Winc, formerly known as Club W, is a great wine subscription service. After taking a short quiz, you’re presented with dozens of wine options and four highlighted recommendations that should match your palate. If you already know what you like, you can choose which wines to add to your box, filtering options to find sweet, international, and/or vegan wines.

You don’t have to pick four wines, but it’s usually the easiest way to get to their free shipping minimum. If you don’t curate your box or forget to skip the month, your top recommendations will be shipped to you.

Winc sells both their own wines and wines from independent wineries for prices akin to those at your local grocery store. The Winc wines generally have more hits than misses, but a few misses nonetheless, while the indie wines rarely disappoint.

Even with the occasional poor pour, Winc provides an overall great value for the wines and user-friendly site. You receive a credit towards your next purchase for any wine you don’t enjoy. Plus, you can rate the wines out of five stars, which privately improves your future recommendations and publicly helps others make decisions.

You can skip a delivery, but you cannot pause your subscription, and you need to cancel via phone or online chat (the fastest way).

Depending on your wine knowledge and whether you find a few new favorites, you may stay with Winc for years or grow out of its selection in a few months. Either way, we think there’s something for everyone in this wine subscription.

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Best Budget-Friendly Wine Subscription

Martha Stewart

Martha Stewart Wine Club

$50/6 weeks  $90/8 weeks

Leave it to Martha Stewart to make your wine habit more affordable. Stewart chooses all of the wines and everyone’s first box is identical (a mix of reds and whites), providing an introduction to the collection. Afterwards, deliveries can be customized to include all reds, all whites, or a mix.

With half cases costing $50 and a whole case amounting to $90, each bottle works out to less than $9. You can choose a half or full dozen case of wine to receive every six or eight weeks, respectively.

You’ll also get serving, pairing, and of course, entertaining tips with each case. In order to cancel or skip, you’ll need to reach out to customer service.

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Best Subscription for Rare and Boutique Premium Wines

Pour This

Pour This

$125/month

Former A-list, Los Angeles sommelier Ashley Ragovin hand-picks the three bottles in every Pour This subscription. She started Pour This to share premium wines from very boutique, hard-to-find wineries with the public.

You’ll also get tasting and pairing information, plus, a CD full of tunes to drink to. There’s no customization here; you just have to trust that Ragovin is always right (she is).

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Best Customizable Wine Subscription

Cellars Wine Club

Cellars Wine Club

$29 and up/month

Cellars Wine Club is actually 12 different wine clubs that you can switch around to your liking. A team of experts taste and choose the wines for the clubs every month.

Most clubs contain two bottles, but there are also single bottle, red trio, and case (a dozen bottles) options. Clubs are curated by themes like taste (Sweet Wines Club), region (West Coast Cub), and even wine scale ranking (90+ Point Club).

You can set the number of shipments, frequency, and the start month for each club, and applicable clubs let you choose your ideal reds to whites ratio. Switching clubs can be done online, but you have to cancel by reaching out to their customer service team.

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Best Wine Subscription If You Like to Try Before You Buy

Vinebox

Vinebox

$72 and up/quarter

No online tasting quiz here, just your actual taste buds! Vinebox lets you try before you buy with its quarterly wine subscription. Instead of getting stuck with entire bottles of random wines, you get nine small vials delivered every three months.

Until July 1st, 2018, Vinebox was a monthly subscription. The customer experience has changed only slightly, but the wine curation is focused even more discovery than before. You still have control over your preferred red to white ratio for your boxes.

The twist top vials hit the middle ground between a tasting pour and a standard glass pour. This way, you can try these wines and maybe even have enough to pair with a meal or just unwind at the end of the day. You can also double your box — saving 10 percent — if you want to get a friend or significant other in on the tasting experience. Vinebox uses a special rebottling process to preserve the wine’s taste, and each tube can keep the wine for three years.

If you really like one or more of your testers, you can buy a whole bottle on the Vinebox website (a perk for subscribers only). If you get a quarterly subscription, you get a $15 credit towards a full bottle each quarter, but if you pay for the full year, you’ll get a $30 credit each quarter. It’s also really easy to skip a month or cancel your subscription right from your online account.

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Related Video: 10 Affordable Wines You Can Always Trust

Best Sparkling Wine and Rosé Subscription

Vinley Market

Vinley Market

$59/month

Bubbly and rosé lovers can finally get their fix without leaving their homes! Vinley Market ships out two bottles each month: one is always a sparkling wine (and can be Champagne, Cava, or Prosecco!) and the other is always a rosé. You’re always ready for a celebration with this subscription. We doubt you’ll get tired of these refreshing wines, but if you do, you can cancel through your online account or via email.

Is your rosé habit a little more serious? Winc’s Summer Societé delivers a sweet rosé throughout the summer months in magnum bottles (holding two bottles of wine) or smaller, glass-portioned bottles. The membership is currently sold out, but it recurs every summer and you can buy regular sized bottles through a normal Winc membership.

For a drier, more portable rosé, Una Lou also offers a summertime subscription in different quantities of 4-pack cans (equivalent to two wine bottles). Ninety Plus Cellars also does a seasonal subscription for their dry rosé.

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Best Wine Subscription with In-Person Perks

The Panel

The Panel

$99/month and up

For some people, wine is a way of life, and The Panel understands that. Each month a panel of winemakers, sommeliers, and other wine experts blindly taste a selection of wines. You’ll then receive three or six of the best wines.

There are three tiers of membership which also give you access to The Panel’s lounge in Sonoma, California as well as invites to special events. The most premium membership includes luxe perks like cellar consultations. Any membership level is selective, so we can’t promise that you’ll be chosen right away (or at all).

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Best Vegan Wine Subscription

Vegan Wines

Vegan Wines

$50 and up/month

Knowing whether or not a wine is vegan at your local store is nearly impossible and you often need to do some sleuthing. Vegan Wines wants to take the research off your plate and fill your glass with vegan wines every month.

While some wine clubs, like Winc, will let you filter out non-vegan wines, you can trust everything Vegan Wines sends your way is vegan-friendly. You can choose from a starter box which includes two to three bottles of more affordable wines, or you could get three premium bottles in their other boxes: a mix, all reds, or a mix with three cheese pairings from Miyoko’s Creamery.

You can also change what kind of box you receive every month. In order to change your subscription type or cancel it you need to email their team before your next shipment.

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Best Wine Subscription Gift Box for Her

Vine Oh!

Vine Oh!

$60/box

You can receive Vine Oh! boxes quarterly or you can gift them. We recommend these boxes as a gift for a lovely lady in your life. Friends, wives, and mothers alike will love getting two delicious bottles of wine and five to six treats and products. The box is cute, fun, and costs half of what it’s worth, so what are you waiting for?

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Best Wine Subscription Box for Cheese and Charcuterie Lovers

Wine Down Box

Wine Down Box

$70/month

Want a party in a box? Wine Down Box has you covered. Wine Down Box sends you a great wine with perfect cheese and cured meat pairings. You might have a vague idea of what cheeses goes with different wines, but the rules don’t always apply to complex, nuanced bottles.

Each box includes a bottle of wine and the perfect cheese, meat, and artisanal crackers to pair with it. The perishables ship separately from the wine, but the packages are staggered so that they reach your home at about the same time. You’ll also get pairing notes to help turn you into a charcuterie expert.

If that weren’t enough, shipping is included in the cost and you can cancel your subscription at any time.

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Best Subscription for People Who Don’t Drink a Lot of Wine

Ninety Plus

Ninety Plus Cellars

$50/quarter and up

Maybe wine isn’t your drink of choice, but it’s nice to have a few bottles around. Ninety Plus Cellars ships rebranded wines from reputable wineries every three months. They purchase a small percentage of batches from vineyards with histories of highly rated wines and repackage them.

This way, you get three or six great (taste tested and quality assured) wines each quarter for a fraction of their cost. You can get their three best wines of the season, six reds, or a mix of six reds, whites, and occasional rosés and/or bubbly.  Some of the older wine subscriptions still do quarterly shipments, but we think Ninety Plus offers a better value and has a more user-friendly website.

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Close, But No Cigar

There are many wine clubs and subscriptions out there, but not all of them are up to snuff. Many of the pioneers and newcomers of wine of the month clubs alike never really innovated on the model. Some of these services might ship good to excellent wine, but ultimately didn’t feel as special as our picks and/or lacked stand-out features.

Glassful (acquired by Invino) seems to be all but out of business, despite initial rave reviews. Their team likely improved Invino’s InClub which is a pretty good club that just got edged out by our picks in several categories. Older clubs like Vinesse and California Wine Club have text-heavy sites that were exhausting to navigate and hard to cancel subscriptions, but we found no gripes with their grapes.

Wine Awesomeness gets a lot of press, but subscribers and reviewers weren’t too impressed with the wines and also reported some serious shipping issues. Bright Cellars ships lackluster wines, their palate quiz is notoriously broken, and their customer service isn’t great. Tasting Room was considered for our trial-sized wine pick, but most reviewers found the wine curation after their taste test to be mediocre.

Our picks were chosen through a mix of personal experience, reviews from industry-leading wine and food sites, and customer reviews from third party sites like TrustPilot.

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Breaking Out the Grill? Try One of These 15 Seafood Recipes

Grilling season is synonymous with summer, but really, in most climates you can grill outside all year, even if there’s a little snow on the ground. Many of us tend to focus on burgers, brats, and kebabs when cooking alfresco, but the brave and daring may go for fish and seafood. Marine proteins have a reputation as being especially tough to get right on the grill, easily falling apart and turning bone dry, so it’s understandable why so many people categorically shy away from cooking them that way. But with a little know how and practice, fish and seafood can also be among the most rewarding grill items to make.

Just make sure you start off with a clean, well-oiled grate, a thin, nimble spatula for easy flipping, and high heat so that it will cook quickly before losing its natural juices. It also helps not to prod and poke it too much: stay calm and just let it do its thing.

We’ve got a number of seafood recipes for the grill that will show you how it’s done. Whether you’re fancying salmon or a whole wriggling octopus, these recipes are sure to break you out of any burgers ‘n brats rut.

Campfire Trout with Herbs and Bacon

Chowhound

If you’re a little apprehensive about throwing fish directly onto the grates. a grill basket will ease you into the process. The tool makes them a cinch to flip, keeping everything intact in this stuffed trout recipe. Get our Campfire Trout with Herbs and Bacon recipe.

Corn-Husk-Wrapped Grilled Halibut with Charred Corn Salsa

Chowhound

You can also wrap your fish into neat little packages, which allow them to steam in their own juices. Here, corn husks form boats around these halibut pieces, which also make it possible to load them up with toppings like chunky salsa. Get our Corn-Husk-Wrapped Grilled Halibut with Charred Corn Salsa recipe.

Foil Pouch Sea Bass

Evan Sung

If you don’t have corn husks, try the same basic technique with aluminum foil packs. Sea bass and other fish comes out perfectly moist every time, and clean up is a breeze. It’s a great option for camping, but perfect for easy weeknight dinners too. Get the Foil Pouch Sea Bass recipe.

Salmon Asparagus Kebabs

Chowhound

Kebabs don’t have to be full of steak or chicken—try a meaty fish like salmon, with a simple sweet-salty glaze. And speaking of kebabs, don’t risk hurting yourself when you’re skewering your ingredients; just give this easy onion trick a shot. CNET’s Executive Editor, Sharon Profis, shares J. Kenji López-Alt‘s ingenious solution for skewering kebabs, which helps prevent stabbing your hand while threading ingredients onto the skewer. Get our Salmon Asparagus Kebabs recipe.

Grilled Salmon with Lemon-Pepper Compound Butter

Chowhound

Hardy salmon really is one of your best bets for the grill, holding itself together on skewers, or in pieces, while its skin gets crackly crisp if you leave it on. All it needs is a simple sauce to go with it, like the lemon compound butter in this recipe. Get our Grilled Salmon with Lemon-Pepper Compound Butter recipe.

Grilled Blackened Catfish with Creole Mustard Butter

Chowhound

Packing in tons of spice and smoke, blackening can turn even the mildest of fish into something with chutzpah. Here, paprika and cayenne give this grilled catfish lots of soulful zest. Get our Grilled Blackened Catfish with Creole Mustard Butter recipe.

Grilled Swordfish with Cucumber-Melon Salsa

Chowhound

This one’s about as summery as it gets: see those perfectly criss-crossed grill marks and the cubes of diced cucumber and melon? You can practically feel the sunny warmth emanating out of this one. Get our Grilled Swordfish with Cucumber-Melon Salsa recipe.

Easy Fish Tacos

Chowhound

Tacos are perhaps the most forgiving vehicle for fish prepared on the grill. If you’re still getting the hang of flipping your fillets just so, not to worry. These puppies are designed to hold all the flaky bits and pieces. And don’t forget the slaw for a perfect crunchy contrast. Get our Easy Fish Tacos recipe.

Whole Grilled Bass with Olives, Onion, and Artichoke

Chowhound

Although it may look intimidating, whole fish is actually easier to grill than individual fillets. Just let it hold itself together while it cooks and leave the carving for the tableside. Get our Whole Grilled Bass with Olives, Onion, and Artichoke recipe.

Grilled Mackerel with Tomato, Fennel, and Capers

Chowhound

Firm-fleshed mackerel is a pro at handling flaming heat. It also loves meeting up with other flavor-forward ingredients, getting along swimmingly with fennel, tomato, and caper in this recipe. Get our Grilled Mackerel with Tomato, Fennel, and Capers recipe.

Grilled Tuna with Cucumber Salad

Chowhound

Tuna is the prime beef of the fish world: meaty and tender, a quick sear on the grill will give you all of the qualities of a good, rare steak. The accompanying Vietnamese style salad in this recipe, dressed in fiery bird’s eye chili, lime, and fish sauce, isn’t too shy, either. Get our Grilled Tuna with Cucumber Salad recipe.

Smoky Grilled Shrimp with Marie Rose Sauce

Chowhound

Shrimp cocktail gets a smoky makeover here, going through a pimenton rub before it hits the coals. The brandy-spiked dipping sauce provides a sweet and creamy counterpoint to all that fire. Get our Smoky Grilled Shrimp with Marie Rose Sauce recipe.

Grilled Shrimp Tacos with Avocado-Corn Salsa

Chowhound

The char on grilled shrimp also is a match for deep spices like cumin and chipotle powder. Served in tacos, the accompanying lime-drenched salsa adds a tangy, acidic lift to it all. Get our Grilled Shrimp Tacos with Avocado-Corn Salsa recipe.

Grilled Paella

Chowhound

Paella on the grill? That’s right, you can put the whole shebang over the flames and let it simmer away while it picks up the scent of smoke. Loaded with shrimp, mussels, and clams (plus some chicken and chorizo to fill it out), this one packs in all the flavors of the Mediterranean. Get our Grilled Paella recipe.

Grilled Octopus

Chowhound

When done right, tender and chewy grilled octopus is a delight to sink one’s teeth into. We let it go for a slow braise to soften it up, then give it a final sear to add a crust to all those cups and crevices. Get our Grilled Octopus recipe.

Related Video: How to Make Grilled Snapper with Corn-Okra Relish

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Grilled Pizza with Red Peppers, Broccoli, and Onions

Making pizza on the grill takes a little bit of courage the first time. Tossing uncooked dough directly onto the grate over live fire? Topping the pizza while it’s on the grill? Seems a bit daunting.

But once you try it and see how delicious it is, you’ll go back for more.

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Everything You Didn’t Know About Chicken of the Sea, as Not Told by Jessica Simpson

When you hear the brand name “Chicken of the Sea,” what comes to mind? For some, it’s nostalgia; for others, it’s simply the name of their preferred brand of canned tuna. To a third group, it represents a momentous misunderstanding for a certain blonde celebrity in the early 2000s (we’ll get to that later). Regardless of its role in your life, Chicken of Sea has certainly been a mainstay in American grocery baskets for a long time!

The Brand

Over 100 years old, the business started out as Van Camp Seafood Company back in 1914, when Frank Van Camp bought a California canning company with his son, Gilbert. The “Chicken of the Sea” brand name came about in 1930, when the company’s fishermen thought to compare tuna’s mild flavor and color to that of America’s favorite versatile poultry (of the land!).

The Mermaid

Chicken of the Sea

Along with the Jolly Green Giant and the Morton Salt Umbrella Girl, Marketing Dive includes the Chicken of the Sea mermaid mascot in its list of “10 brand mascots that stood the test of time.” She was first created in 1952, with a look inspired by the actress Grace Lee Whitney, known for her role as Yeoman Janice Rand from the original “Star Trek” series. A few years later, Chicken of Sea hired pin-up icon Bettie Page to pose as the mermaid in Southern California supermarkets as part of their 40-year anniversary celebrations.

For the brand’s 100-year anniversary, it held a contest to finally give a name to its beloved mermaid mascot. The winning entry determined she would be called “Catalina,” selected, in part, for its reference to a historic island off the coast of California, not far from the company’s San Diego headquarters.

The Disneyland Restaurant

Chicken of the Sea Pirate Ship at Disney

In 1955, Disneyland opened a Peter Pan-themed restaurant called “The Chicken of the Sea Pirate Ship and Restaurant,” which served a wide variety of tuna dishes, including tuna burgers, tuna pies, and even tuna salad served in mini boats! While the name changed to “Captain Hook’s Galley” in 1969, and ultimately the restaurant was removed in 1982, its nostalgia lives on. This recipe for Disneyland Tuna Burgers is one of many endeavoring to recapture that flavor memory so many people recall from the pairing of Chicken of the Sea and Peter Pan.

The Dolphins!

In April of 1990, the public was made aware of the fact that 100,000 dolphins were killed each year from tuna fishing using purse-seine methods, where a large net is cast around tuna and then drawn closed, similar to how your close a drawstring purse. As a result, tuna-canning companies agreed to source tuna using only dolphin-safe methods. Chicken of the Sea specifically promises that it “will not purchase tuna from vessels that net fish associated with dolphins, and [it] require[s] certification of dolphin-safe fishing practices from all tuna suppliers.”

The Newlyweds

All this history, and what many of us most associate to Chicken of the Sea is that iconic moment that took place on August 19, 2003. On the premiere of the MTV reality show “Newlyweds,” pop stars and new spouses Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson were eating together in their living room when Jessica Simpson uttered those infamous words: “Is this chicken, what I have, or is it fish? I know it’s tuna, but it says ‘Chicken by the Sea.’”

Thankfully, Nick Lachey was able to clear up the confusion and ultimately summarize the origin of the brand name by explaining, “Chicken of the Sea is the brand. You know, because a lot of people eat tuna. It’s like and a lot of people eat chicken, so it’s like chicken of the sea.”

Well said, Nick.

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Why Do We Eat Crabs While Spiders Gross Us Out?

Yes, some people enjoy eating insects and find them delicious. And true, intentionally consuming bugs is probably in all of our futures. But right now, if an eight-legged creature appeared on your dinner table, you’d more than likely react with revulsion, or at least unpleasant surprise. Unless, of course, that multi-legged creepy-crawly was a crab (maybe you’d also be cool with an octopus). But there’s a bit of cognitive dissonance going on here. Why is it that so many of us can happily eat crabs and lobsters while being grossed out by spiders and other bugs?

After all, you can tell they’re related just by looking at them. Technically, they’re not that closely linked, although crabs and spiders are both members of the arthropod family, as are other insects, and lobsters. Basically, they’re classed together because they all have exoskeletons and jointed legs. Evolution has made them all much different on the inside, and behaviorally as well, but this is a case where it’s all too easy to judge a book—or a bug—by its cover. Crawfish are nicknamed mud bugs, and lobsters are often called sea bugs too; we all know they have far too much in common for comfort, yet we generally try not to dwell on it. Even Alton Brown has likened lobsters to cockroaches of the ocean—in part to reassure those squeamish about killing live crustaceans that there’s no reason to get in a moral quandary about it if they think nothing of smashing bugs beneath shoes, newspapers, heavy books…

Adorable(?) baby red crab, Christmas Island Tourism Association

I love eating crabs, and have since I was little; ditto shrimp steamed in the shell with tons of Old Bay, even though, just as house centipedes are orders of magnitude worse than spiders, shrimp, with so many more bristly little legs, should be far creepier than crabs—yet I wouldn’t hesitate to rip apart a dozen of either briny creature, whiskery antennae and all. I guess I was just good at compartmentalizing from an early age, because I don’t recall ever being put off by any seafood (except when it came to whole soft shell crabs caught between buns, with their long legs jutting out the sides, because that is just grotesque—yet also weirdly tempting, when they’re perfectly golden-brown and crisp).

Of course, there’s an element of learned behavior too; I grew up watching my whole family joyfully tear into messes of often-insectile seafood on countless occasions, but I also probably saw many of them recoil at spiders and whack them with their flip flops. I definitely saw “Arachnophobia” at way too young an age—repeatedly, because as much as it freaked me out, it fascinated me too.

Leggy soft shell crab sandwich, Vodka & Biscuits

A scientific study from 2017 suggests that humans may be born with an innate fear of spiders, and there’s evidence to suggest it’s existed for centuries, at least. During the Middle Ages, spiders were thought to be diseased, and any food or water that came into contact with them was considered infected or poisoned (both of these examples, of course, apply only to Western societies; many other cultures around the world revere spiders, either as lucky symbols or as tasty food). Meanwhile, even as they despised arachnids, Westerners have been eating crustaceans for eons—although in certain areas, crabs were once relegated to the realm of lowly, cheap food for the poor, and lobsters were famously served to both prisoners and livestock.

Judaism deems crabs and lobsters, among other shellfish, unclean, and also prohibits conscious consumption of actual insects, including spiders (with exceptions for certain kosher locusts, grasshoppers, and worms)—and while you could assume that the dietary law was decreed due to inherent revulsion, it may also be true that this was because of common-sense hygiene concerns connected to these literal bottom feeders (and filter feeders).

Drawing parallels, xkcd

If crabs weren’t relegated to oceans (and fish tanks in restaurants and grocery stores), even those of us without kabourophobia might be a bit more wary of them; part of what makes spiders so scary to many is their tendency to pop up out of nowhere—since we moved to a house, I regularly have them drop down from the ceiling right in front of my face, which only gets slightly less traumatizing every time. They can also run really fast, and often move in unpredictable directions, while crabs mainly go sideways on land, and (generally) cannot crawl up walls and dangle from ceilings. Mercifully, crabs can’t fly either, while spiders kind of can—they can launch themselves up and glide through the air, at least (this is, rather adorably, called “ballooning”), so you’re basically never safe, except maybe under water. Where you might encounter giant spider crabs, of course, with their spindly, daddy long legs-esque appendages and bug-eyed carapaces—but probably not unless you went looking for them.

Then again, there are terrestrial crabs in certain coastal areas (gigantic coconut crabs are prime nightmare fuel), but most of us don’t have to worry about those. Even a mass migration of spidery, non-edible red crabs on Christmas Island, though certainly squirm-inducing, is somehow not quite as bad as an equivalent number of actual spiders would be:

They’re just less skittery. Maybe it has something to do, too, with the fact that unless they’re in soft shell stage during molting, there’s a greater sturdiness to crabs. They have harder exoskeletons and thicker legs, while spiders are relatively delicate and easy to squish—which, rather than making them less frightening, ups the ick factor for me. Drive over a mass of crabs and yes, you’ll crush them, but they can puncture your tires at the same time. (Perhaps in some way they seem like worthier opponents?) Plus, several species of spiders are venomous, whereas no crab is going to stealth-bite you and make your tissues (and maybe your entire body) die. Crabs and other sea bugs could potentially make you sick via food poisoning, but at least that’s a risk you willingly take, and have fun while doing so.

Crabs don’t spin webs, either, which on their own are creepy, at least when you accidentally walk through one. And the environment in which each creature lives could also be a factor—insects are often associated with dirt (especially cockroaches, but spiders commonly hang out in dank basements and crawlspaces), while crustaceans come out of the water, which seems cleansing, despite the fact that, even discounting pollution, the ocean is full of nasty stuff, and the crustaceans themselves will eat almost anything in it, including dead and rotting matter.

Preparing Dungeness crab, Chowhound

Another knee jerk response to the question of why people who are disgusted by spiders can still love eating crabs might be to say that the crabs are dead and cooked, hence turned into food, but chances are, you wouldn’t be any more thrilled about a dead-and-cooked tarantula burger than you would about a live one sidling up next to your dinner (and that’s even if you do enjoy soft shell crab sandwiches, which really aren’t nearly so far removed; Andrew Zimmern attests that fresh tarantula tastes “great, reminding me of sweet and delicate crabs”). So why should one be so appealing, and the other so deeply horrifying?

I think the biggest factor is exposure—most of us almost never see crabs unless we’re about to eat them, whereas spiders insist on scurrying into our lives regularly at the most inopportune moments. If you start watching a lot of GIFs and videos of writhing crabs, it gets uncomfortable pretty fast. And it’s definitely largely cultural as well, but maybe one day, when we have no choice but to embrace insect-heavy diets, spiders will inspire more yums than “kill it with fire” hashtags—or it’ll just become “cook it with fire” instead.

Until then, we’ll simply keep rationalizing—or flat-out ignoring—plenty of uncomfortable truths when it comes to what we eat. Besides, when it’s just about looks, if “ugly delicious” continues to be embraced, crabs are surely near the top of that heap. Or maybe we can make a new label for them and their buggy oceanic brethren. “Scary delicious” seems fitting, in more ways than one.

Related Video: How to Make Crab Cakes

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