Crabbish Manchester — Restaurant in Salford

I brought my mum and brother here for an early Mother’s Day meal, rang up at 6:30pm to make sure they had everything in stock to which the man said they did not have blue mussels but everything else they had. I then asked would it be best to book or can we just come in, he asked what time I said 7:30 and then he said it’s busy atm so 8pm would be better and booked me in.

We drove an hour from Liverpool, arrived at 8pm and was told there’d be a wait. After standing at the door for 5 mins with another group, the waiter comes over and tells us all to go round the corner and wait in a pub. Weird. We were forced to this dodgy pub and were waiting there for a good 30 mins, spent money on drinks because we were so thirsty and hungry from waiting.

The waiter then comes in and tells us our table is ready and to bring the drinks we had from the pub with us. We asked the manager if the live lobster was actually fresh and alive, he said yes it’s 100% fresh and the large lobster weighs about 1KG but because of the inconvenience we had with waiting he’d give us a large one for the price of a medium. Great. They then ran out of king crabs and when we ordered the fried seafood platter they were out of crab rolls so we substituted for fish fingers. All ordered and was told the wait would be no longer than 20 mins.

By 9:30 our food was still not here, we were sat right by the bar and kitchen expressing how hungry we were considering we’d been waiting since 8pm, so we asked for the fried platter first but the manager ensured us our food was coming. 15 mins later our seafood boils comes.

The large lobster he promised us was medium sized if that and definitely was not live that day as the meat was salty and weird texture. The brown crab was cooked properly but not much meat. The snow crab legs were skinny and again, lacked actual leg meat. The Cajun sauce was nice. We were literally half way through our seafood boil and our fried platter had still not arrived, we asked the manager multiple times to which he just kept going to the kitchen window and asking the chefs. A whole 20 mins it comes and was so underwhelming, the batter was thick not crispy and soggy on the inside, they had no flavour at all. Not worth the wait. The paella was appalling, dry and no flavour.

Then comes the bill at 10:45pm, at the end we were charged £7 for byob. Confused I asked what this was and turns out it was being your own beer. Sorry? We were getting charged without our knowledge for bringing our half finished glasses that we spent money on because we were forced to wait in a dodgy pub because there was no waiting space in the restaurant and the waiter literally said to bring the drinks with us to the restaurant it’s fine. Crazy.

I deffo think the prices are extortionate for the quality they offer and due to our long experience I don’t think we’ll be...

Crabish? More like rubbish!

We booked this restaurant weeks in advance for my sister’s hen night. We’re not from the area, so we ran late — but we informed the restaurant several times and were assured they’d hold the table.

When we arrived, our booking was for 14 people, but because we were late, they tried to squeeze us onto a table for 6–8. We didn’t argue because we were grateful they’d kept the booking — but we ended up crammed together like sardines.

When our waiter came over, we asked if we could order the seafood boil bags but swap the chicken sausage for something else. He said no — the bags come as they are. So, we ordered from the individual menu instead. After we ordered, the same waiter asked if there were any allergies, and then asked why we didn’t order the boil bags. We explained — again — that we don’t eat sausage. He then said, “Oh, we could have just left the sausage out and swapped it for something else.” Exactly what we asked for 40 minutes ago!

When the food finally started to come out, some of it was missing. We told the waiters straight away. We spent almost an hour waiting for one portion of rice and three fries. By the time the rice came out, the person who ordered it had finished eating, so we asked to cancel it. The waiter brought it anyway and told us to just keep it because the kitchen was “small and busy.” Meanwhile, we were still waiting on the fries and drinks.

Eventually, the owner (Omar) came over — the same person we’d booked with originally. We explained the whole situation again, thinking he’d fix it. Instead, he brought us more rice— when we were waiting for fries! When we pointed this out, he completely lost his temper and started shouting at us in front of everyone, saying we were confusing and that we were the problem because we turned up late.

Yes, we were late — we apologised for that — but if it was an issue, they could have refused us at the door. They didn’t because they didn’t want to lose the money from a table of 14. the small kitchen and poor service is not our fault. It was so embarrassing that my sister — the bride-to-be — was in tears by the end of it.

The family next to us was shocked to the gentleman had to intervene and tell him to stop as my sister was crying.

To top it off, they brought more unwanted food and tried to charge us for it, even though we told them to take it back. The garlic butter base was so watered down there was no flavour at all.

Absolute joke. Save your money — have a Pot Noodle instead. Less stressful, tastier, and you won’t get shouted at for asking for what you ordered. Shocking customer service,

As most owners Omar will try to protect his business and deny the fact but that’s ok as people will realise...

You could tell the business had no hospitality experience and were grasping at straws on how to run the restaurant.

Asked whether we were booking or walk-in, replied booking but didn’t take our details and seated us on an unclean table. Waited over 20 minutes to be given a menu and another 20 for our order to be taken. The manager/owner went to every table to say how busy it was and apologised for the delays. The table next to us was a walk-in and he tried to explain walk-ins who order, their food takes longer as they cannot anticipate orders from walk-in customers as they are only prepared for bookings? Didn’t make any sense. Then he preceded to tell us the reason it’s so busy is because of these walk-ins who take up tables and food. He repeatedly complained it was too busy and the kitchen is too small for the amount of “business” there was. We were there for over 2.5 hours (mostly waiting for service or food) but there were always 3-4 tables vacant. Food arrived super late and was half cold, tasteless and half the items missing from our boil (sausages and eggs) but this was not communicated to us in hopes we wouldn’t notice. The table next to us was missing items too and everyone else was realising they were missing food items and bills had to be disputed accordingly. They don’t show you the bill and try to tell you the price of the meal with the receipt in the server’s hand. We had to ask to see the receipt first before rightly disputing the price. Waiters don’t know priority, serve other people when you’re waiting for something, someone received their boil before myself and two other customers possibly because they were “influencers” etc. and kept forgetting what our drink order was because they’d go and do something else. As a result of this poor experience, I’ve suffered food poisoning for the last three days. I was on the fence about writing this review but after falling ill, they need to shut down. The prawns still had the digestive track (black line through the back, essentially prawn poop) and some were cold. Crabbish staff have no experience in this type of business and in agreement with other diners, won’t be recommending or coming back.

On top of all that, what kind of business has no real website or uploads a menu to their social media? It’s bizarre. Good...