The Boiling Crab..........Another Spicy Crustation Adventure

I remember first hearing about The Boiling Crab when i was looking up information about Hot and Juicy Crawfish in Las Vegas.  Many people wrote a review on Yelp.com saying it was very good but not as good as The Boiling Crab.  So naturally I looked it up and discovered it was located in LA at 4 different locations.  As luck would have it, I was not far from one Last night.  The problem was I had to resist going for Korean Food instead.   But I stayed strong, that is after I walked in and out of a specialty Korean restaurant.

Ok, so I'll first say the reasons why you shouldn't go to The Boiling Crab.

Don't go to the Boiling Crab IF:

1) You don't like Shellfish
2) You don't like Garlic
3) You don't like to get messy
4) You don't like using your hands
5) You are on a first date (unless he or she really loves garlic so much that they don't care how it will make them reek.  if that is the case, never let them go.  that person is a keeper)

Now the reasons that you should go.

The menu is made up mostly of market priced shellfish.  Clams, 4 different types of Crab, Shrimp, Oysters and Crawfish.  Your first task is to choose which shellfish you want.  Then you choose the sauce.  There are 4 sauces to choose from.  Rajun Cajun, Lemon Pepper, Garlic Butter or The Whole She-Bang which is a combination of all three.  then you choose non-spicy, mild, medium or XXX spice level.    They also have baskets of fried versions of the shellfish as well as corn on the cob and french fries.  They also serve Gumbo which many of you know, I'm a sucker for.

So I decided the table next to me had a great idea with 1/2 a dozen oysters raw on the 1/2 shell.
They tasted as good as they looked.

As it was at the place in Las Vegas, the food comes in bags but delivered in tin buckets.  I ordered 2 lbs. of Crawfish and 1 lbs of clams.  The clams came in the butter garlic sauce medium temp and the crawfish came in the Whole She-bang sauce Medium also.  

The clams were great.  so great, I ordered another pound after.  Now before you all start calling me a pig after you have done the math and said I ate 4 lbs of shellfish, remember that the shells make up over 3/4 the weight in the shellfish.  The clams all sat in the silky buttery sauce and they all just popped right out of their shells.  I could have drank the liquid it was sitting in.

The crawfish came at the same time as the clams so after quickly eating the clams, I moved onto the Crawfish.   They were very tasty but I have to admit, they were a bit dry and the meat was difficult to pull out.  Normally when you eat crawfish, you rip the tail from the head and suck out the juice in the head. Yes, you're sucking out the guts.   But when they are filled with juice, it's really tasty.  These were all really dry.  either they sat to long in the cooker (which is what I think it did) or they didn't use enough sauce.  The tails required work to get them out of the shell.  When cooked properly, you squeeze the tip of the tail, and the meat pops out.  These required ripping the shells apart to get a small nibble of meat.  After doing that for 30 min, it does get a little old.  it was spicy which is what I like, but not juicy.  one of the best parts was that there was a 1/2 piece of corn that sat in the liquid in the bottom soaking up all that juice.  If I didn't have to see customers, or other people in general the next day, I would have taken a spoon to the garlic that was floating around in the sauce. They probably had 5 heads of chopped garlic in this bag.   Not 5 cloves, but 5 heads of garlic.  I probably ate a head of garlic myself, so I'm sure I had some stink floating around me when I left.  But it was good stink.  

After getting the additional pound of clams, I had to try the gumbo. I love Gumbo and have a hard time not ordering it when I see it being served.  I have to admit, I still like mine best.  Many of you have tried mine and have mentioned how good it is.  This place had a good batch.  It was crab, sausage and Okra Gumbo.  We don't get a lot of Okra by us, so it was a real treat to have this much. Plus I really love the stuff.  

All in all, the boiling crab is a fun place to eat.  Every table was filled with people and I left at 9:00 and there was still a line out the door.  I think the bigger the crowd you go with, the better.  

The Boiling Crab has 4 locations in LA and you can see where they are as well as the menu online at  www.theboilingcrab.com/index.php