The Man Behind Eddie’s She-Crab Soup

What keeps me going back to Eddie’s Place on Sharon Amity Road for one more cup of that she-crab soup? 

It’s not just the generous flecks of blue crab dredged up with every spoonful. It’s not the ritual of shaking a few drops of sherry on the top from the little cruet that comes with every order, so the nuttiness of the sherry balances the sweetness of the crab. 

What makes it is the velvety, creamy consistency. It gets me every time. And now, after 25 years within walking distance of Eddie’s, I’ve learned something: That consistency is so consistent because it’s been made by the same man every day for the last 27 years. 

Alberto Toussaint, 66, is a native of Haiti, and he’s been making Eddie’s she-crab soup since the restaurant opened in 1997. He prepares it in 5-gallon batches, which he freezes until the kitchen staff warms it up in a slow cooker. On busy winter days, he often makes two batches.  

Toussaint is a prep cook, so he also makes gumbo, tomato bisque, corn chowder, and sauces like Creole and hollandaise. But it’s the she-crab that gets people talking. During the holidays, customers buy it by the quart to serve at parties. 

The soup comes in two sizes, a cup and a bowl. I’ve never ordered a bowl. It would be too rich. A cup is just enough to round out a salad or a Reuben at dinner.

When Toussaint and I sit down in a booth, he thanks me—not for the interview but for the chance to sit down. Most days, he comes to work at 5 a.m. to unload the supply truck. Then he works until 3:30 p.m. Keeping up with the soup supply keeps him on his feet.

“Sometimes, I can’t have a break,” he says. “I’m making soup.”

As a young man, Toussaint immigrated to Miami with his family. He had worked as a tailor in Haiti. But clothes were made in factories in Miami, and he had no interest. “Sitting in a chair in front of a machine all day?” He shakes his head. Instead, he started working in a restaurant kitchen. In 1982, when the restaurant closed, he thought about leaving Miami for a quieter city. He didn’t know anything about Charlotte, but he saw a picture of a snowstorm here. He loves cold weather.

An employment office in Miami helped him find a job in a restaurant on East Boulevard. But the owner took advantage of him, paying him for 40 hours a week but making him work every day from
9 a.m. to 2 a.m. 

A friend knew that Hotel Charlotte, owned by the late Danny Royer, needed someone to fill in for a couple of days. Toussaint stepped in and never left. Another man made the soup, but whenever he went on vacation, Toussaint filled in. Eventually, the other guy got fired, and Toussaint took over permanently. 

In 1997, when Royer and Executive Chef Eddie Gallant bought the space a few doors down, Toussaint came along as prep cook. They pared down the restaurant’s name from Eddie’s Place/Danny’s Too to simply Eddie’s Place.

While Eddie’s soup is called “she-crab,” it technically isn’t. Real she-crab soup was invented in Charleston between 1909 and 1920 by a chef named William Deas (supposedly for a dinner for President William Howard Taft). It got its pink color from red-orange crab roe added to the pot. Crab roe is protected now and hard to obtain. Even versions in the classic cookbook Charleston Receipts, originally printed in 1950, replace the roe with crumbled egg yolk. 

There’s no roe or egg yolk in Eddie’s version. Toussaint starts with a roux of flour, butter, and cooked onions to thicken it, then adds half-and-half, whole milk, heavy cream, and commercial crab base, available at restaurant supply stores. He mixes in nutmeg, salt, and white pepper, plus some sweet paprika for that slight pink color. Then he adds seven pints of blue crab meat for every five gallons of soup.

“(I want) to make sure you have plenty of crab,” he says. “Everything I make, I make from the bottom of my heart.”

He never eats cups or bowls of the soup—just little tastes while he cooks. So he doesn’t know until I tell him that it’s served with that little cruet of Cribari Cellars’ American sherry. 

There’s one more thing to know about Alberto Toussaint’s she-crab soup: It may not be around forever. At 66, Toussaint admits he’s been trying to retire for three years now. He just hasn’t found anything he wants to do. 

“I hate to be bored,” he says. “That’s stress.”