My girlfriends and I came here on a Monday for their happy hour: Buy 2 pounds of seafood and get the 3rd pound free. I was really looking forward to this place based on the Yelp reviews, but left a bit underwhelmed.
The restaurant is located off Garden Grove Blvd, about a block west of Dale in a huge non descript Asian strip mall. We arrived at 6:30 and the place was pretty empty. The Happy Hour could not be combined with any offers (including the Yelp check in offer) and so we ordered 2 pounds of fresh crawfish, 2 pounds of shrimp, both in their mild sauce (we had a kid with us), and added 3 corn cobbletts, an order of garlic noodles and an order of sweet potato fries.
The garlic noodles came out first. As we mixed up the noodles, I noticed that there wasn’t a lot of garlic cloves. While eating, my friend commented they used more garlic powder and oil over fresh garlic. She wasn’t impressed, and I admit that I did not find the noodles overwhelming with garlic either.
Next came the sweet potato fries.. piping hot! As the fries cooled, we noticed that they were not covered in salt, but sugar. That sweetness may have been used to draw out the sugar from the sweet potato, but it just made the fries unappetizing for us.
Finally our seafood came out. The server placed the metal bowl with the bag of crawfish and shrimp on the table, then he inverted the bag, and poured out the contents of the bag. Apparently, unlike the “other” Crab restaurants, they don’t serve their seafood in the bag. My friends claim that it made the seafood cold faster, but I thought the metal bowl kept the temperature constant. Regardless, this place isn’t seafood in a bag.
The fresh crawfish was good, and those mudbugs were pretty decent sized ones. The shrimp, however, was rubbery and the heads were detached from most of the shrimp. Definitely not a fresh batch. Yes, sure, they’re probably frozen, but they were either overcooked, or old.
The sauce was runny. Compared to the Other Crab Places, where the sauce sticks to the side of the bag, this was runny like hot sauce. Watery was more like it. The sauce didn’t stick to the seafood, so fortunately they give you a spoon so you can pour sauce over the shrimp that was just peeled.
Dinner for the 3 of us (can’t really count the kid) with the sides and a beer plus a soda came to $80 with tax and tip. It really wasn’t any cheaper than going to the Other Crab Places (ok, I’ll say it.. Boiling Crab or Kickin’ Crab). Service was just ok. After the guy dumped our food in the bowl, he never came back to check on us for refills.
There’s just too many “Crab” places out there.
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