Sunday evening I wanted to go to Boiling Crab in Alhambra with my parents to see what all the hype is about surrounding the local cajun seafood craze that's going on. I heard from a few people (and confirmed through Yelp) that Boiling Crab is apparently where it's at, and that other imitation places fall really flat. So, we got there around 5:50 because I read that it gets insane after 6, only to find that the wait was already over an hour and a half! Crazy. If you know me, and if you know Momma Lo, there's really little food worth waiting an hour and a half for, especially in the blistering heat. I'll wait maybe forty five minutes for chicken and rice in NY, but that is a serious, serious exception to the absolute extreme. Anyway, we made our way down Valley to San Gabriel to eat at Captain Crab, instead. Overall, it was pretty good, but I wasn't blown out of the water.
Personally, I went in with a huge bias because I LOVE me some blue crabs from Baltimore (like, to the point where I once trained out from NY three times in two months just to get some before the season ended). Eating at Captain Crab was the first time I had "real" cajun style seafood before, and I shouldn't have expected it to be of equal/close awesomeness to the crabs in Baltimore, but I couldn't help it! Anyway, I'm not sure if this is really how seafood is prepared down South, but everything was personally a little too watery for my taste. Don't get me wrong -- the seasoning and sauces were delicious, but there's something I find very unappealing about sticking my hands into an industrial size plastic bag of liquid cajun goop and seafood. As for the crabs, they ran out of blue crabs, so we could only get dungeness. While my mom complained that they weren't fresh out of a tank, I thought they were still pretty plump and sweet. Except, I would have appreciated it if they had broken down the crab for us and thrown the pieces into the bag. Blue crabs are easy (and fun) to go at with a mallet, but a COOKED dungeness crab? That takes some work. There's really no need for a bib when you're munching on blue crabs in Baltimore, but I see why you need one for these.
Overall, Captain Crab was affordable and tasty, but not tasty to the point where I am salivating at my computer right now, as I often do when I'm blogging about a recent food adventure. I'll definitely be checking out Boiling Crab when the wait isn't horrendous to see how it matches up to Captain Crab, but I'm not expecting much...
Sweet potatoe fries -- bomb, especially dipped in the sauce
A pound of fresh shrimp, corn, and sausage in spicy cajun seasoning -- shrimps were delicious and probably the highlight of the meal (would go back to snack on a few pounds of these, instead of getting crab), corn was terrible (either frozen or old, then grilled), and sausage was tasty, but too soft for my taste (kind of felt like hot dog)
Dungeness crab in medium spicy Captain's Mix sauce (a combination of cajun, lemon pepper, and garlic)
haha that crab looks so sad. like, "i'm getting eaten, this is the end!"
Posted by: jyoh | August 15, 2009 at 06:06 AM
These 2 joints are both right down the street, but I never understood the appeal of a crab boil in the middle of Alhambra. Good to see you (sorta) enjoyed the experience?
Posted by: SinoSoul | August 31, 2009 at 08:55 AM