Bellevue’s Crab Week returns, and this year it’s playing by a whole new set of rules

Crab Week is one of several themed Culinary Weeks that Visit Bellevue runs throughout the year, each spotlighting a different local specialty with its own rotating group of restaurants. The format gives a sprawling dining scene a reason to show up on specific dates instead of just any weekend. Since debuting in 2025, the program has become a fixed part of Bellevue’s calendar, with four separate weeks now dedicated to berries, crab, dumplings and noodles.

What’s different this year

Visit Bellevue launched Crab Week in 2025 as the debut edition of Culinary Weeks, and it worked well enough that the entire program is now back for a second run. The passport that powers the check-ins changed, too. Last year, diners tracked their progress through the Vibemap app. This year, that job belongs to Visit Bellevue’s own VueFinder app, built in-house to guide visitors through Crab Week and the destination’s broader dining and attractions scene. Culinary Weeks has also grown from an experiment into a fixed annual lineup of four events, covering berries, crab, dumplings and noodles throughout the calendar.

How to participate

Crab Week runs through Visit Bellevue’s VueFinder app. Download it, check in at participating restaurants and register each dining stop to earn entries toward Crab Week prizes. There’s an added incentive for the completionists. Eating through multiple themed food weeks across the year earns an exclusive Visit Bellevue tote bag.

Save your appetite

As of publication, Visit Bellevue’s Crab Week page lists the 2026 dish lineup as “coming soon.” No specific participating dishes for this year have been announced. Visitors planning around the event should check the official Crab Week page closer to Aug. 14 for the finalized list of restaurants and dishes.

Last year’s lineup gives a rough sense of what tends to show up during Crab Week. Steakhouses leaned into rich, classic preparations, while a handful of restaurants took a more global approach, working crab into dishes with Peruvian, Chinese and Vietnamese influences.

A few places used the week as an excuse to do something unexpected, tucking crab into dishes that don’t usually involve it at all, like pizza, dumplings and even a burger. None of that guarantees what’s coming this year, but it’s a reasonable preview of the range Crab Week tends to deliver.

Beyond the plate

Every Culinary Week pairs with a self-guided Culinary Trail, letting visitors build their own tasting itinerary around whichever ingredient is in season. For crab hunters who want to keep exploring after the week ends, Visit Bellevue also points travelers toward the Acclaimed Trail, a curated guide to the city’s most celebrated restaurants.

The bottom line

A second year is where a food event either becomes something people plan trips around or quietly fades into a footnote. Bellevue picked the harder path, building out the app, keeping the four-week rotation, betting that crab lovers will show up again without the novelty of “first ever” to lean on. That’s the kind of commitment that turns a one-off into an actual tradition.

Jennifer Allen is a retired professional chef and long-time writer. Her work appears in dozens of publications, including MSN, Yahoo, The Washington Post and The Seattle Times. These days, she’s busy in the kitchen developing recipes and traveling the world, and you can find all her best creations at Cook What You Love.

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