Meet Crab — Restaurant in Albuquerque

Whenever I travel somewhere, I always opt to order food that I wouldn’t normally have access to back at home. In this instance, it was shrimp with the heads on. This was something my mom used to make me when I was younger and having it is always nostalgic.

I selected this place because of all of the positive current reviews. I usually sort to the most recent and based on what reviews have been added for the past 5 months are what influences my decision on a yes or no.

Today, I made 1 order with the headless shrimp and corn, mild with garlic butter sauce. I also ordered 1 of shrimp with heads, mild with garlic butter as well. Lastly, an order of the corn.

The shrimp is priced by weight. At the time, is was about $30 for the whole order BUT, we had about 15-20+ shrimp for each order. Flavor alone, it was so fantastic! The thing is, when you cook shrimp with the heads on, the flavor from the heads change the entire composition of the dish. The flavor is richer and, although more work to shell them, I promise it’s entirely worth. Here’s where it gets tricky. When you eat headless shrimp, the fatty and flavorful component of the dish is missing. I kid you not, the flavor changes completely and, not in a positive way. I’ve noticed this with many other places who serve the same dishes.

At MEET CRAB, however, this was not the case. Both orders, regardless of amputated bits, are both similarly flavored and satisfying as all hell. I’ve never been more excited about a place. So much so that I may or may not have come back the following day and made the same order and I’m not ashamed.

So, if you are looking for a place with great service, a clean and relaxing environment, and delicious food, this is definitely the spot! I...

My husband and I tried Meet Crab for the first time yesterday, and it was overall a good experience! Friendly service, tasty seafood, and a reasonable selection. (Sorry, no pictures, as we already had our gloves and bibs on when the food came to our table.) I called ahead to see if they had Dungeness crab based on recommendations in a Facebook Albuquerque Foodies group, and they had limited stock, so we made our way over.

At first when we arrived, we were told that the Dungeness is off season, but when I informed the server that we called ahead, she explained that it’s only for the non- all you can eat menu. They had about 10 lbs left for customers who requested it specifically. Because of that, we built our own bag and took the server’s recommendation to mix the sauces (both the House Cajun and the garlic sauce, mild and medium spice levels). Great flavor!

Only hiccup was that our bag came sans shrimp at first, but the server got the cook to whip that up quickly and we added it to our original bag. I love how they devein the shrimp so we don’t have to struggle so much with bulky gloves peeling them! The crab, green mussels, shrimp, and scallops were all cooked perfectly, and the service was excellent.

They were also prepping for a 30-top party when we were wrapping up our meal, so good to know they’re willing to accommodate large parties with advanced notice 😊 We will be back! Highly recommended trying them if you haven’t already! (Also, if you do visit, don’t steal their silverware…they only had crab scissors left because folks apparently keep stealing the crab...

We had the all you can eat. We were a party of 4 adults. If you order the all you can eat option, everyone at the table must order it. It was $56.89 per person. So we all ordered the all you can eat option with crab legs. They only offered snow crab when we went. The crab is not all you can eat. It’s 2 pounds, which is 4 clusters. They also have chicken wings on the all you can eat. They also are not all you can eat. Each person can have 2 wings. We didn’t care for the wings. The shrimp was ok, it was a bit tough. It was peel and eat. My husband got the clams. There were several shells in his bag, but only one actually had a clam. The corn was decent. We each got 1/2 of a mini red potato. It was good. We asked for more and they brought out like 6 more halves which was plenty. We got 2 pieces of sausage. The couple we were with tried the calamari, they didn’t care for it. Some of our party tried the fried oysters, they didn’t care for it. Sweet potato fries were ok. Butter to dip crab in does not come with the all you can eat so you have to pay per person apparently for butter. One person asked for it. They brought out 1 bowl for them. The mango pudding seemed to be mango with milk poured over it. Wasn’t very appealing to us. All in all it was less than mediocre. It wasn’t horrible. Our server was great. Very sweet and very attentive. Her name was Rayna or Raina. Not sure how...