Crafty Crab Woodbridge — Restaurant in Dale City

My wife and I are native to the DMV and usually frequent Tasty Crab among other seafood restaurants in the area. This Saturday evening, we decided to give Crafty a shot. We were greeted by a pleasant hostess, which gave a good first impression. It was just before 10:15, which is the last call for in-house food ordering. There were about 5 families and a few couples in the large seating area. There was a USPS guard on 'special duty'. Must get pretty rowdy at times. But I digress. Our waiter took our order almost immediately after sitting down. Another great impression. Pleasant individual also. I ordered a pound of King Crab Legs(why go to a crab joint and not order the best)? My wife settled on the shrimp. BTW, we choose boils. We only received 'lobster' crackers. On occasion, King Crab shell is bendy and soft, and you need seafood scissors in a case such as that. My 2 legs were such besides being extremely spiney. I'm a veteran at purchasing, steaming, opening, consuming, and serving it to my friends and loved ones. When ordering the most expensive single dish at a restaurant, the owner/management should know what needs to be included as far as utensils for the patronizer to be able to enjoy that dish. A blue lobster shell knife, stainless steel seafood fork, and pair of seafood scissors are a must for any type of soft shell crab.(And I do not mean that in the literal sense. I mean when a crab is served and the shell sections are able to be bent completely in half with ease.) If not one, all three utensils. I only know because I purchased 6 sets that included a lobster cracker, seafood scissors, stainless steel seafood fork, and blue lobster shell knife in each of the 6 sets for about $15 on Amazon. They sell sets of over a hundred of each individual utensil, and you can buy enough to supply your entire restaurant capacity many times over for less than $600. My bill came to $130. with one Margarita, two sodas, and the two boils I mentioned. You make that $600 in a few minutes. Would it kill you to accommodate your patronizers with only what they require to enjoy their meal with what you make in a few minutes? Next, I wish I would have brought my scale with me. You get my drift. I do not drink alcohol and would have loved to have been offered a refill on my soda. That never happened. I would have liked to maybe order dessert. I never got the chance. My waiter brought the bill folded in half, dropped on the edge of my table, and walked away. I was going to let this go here except the same young man brought the bill to the neighboring table in traditional 'bill presenter/check holder'(you know, the often leather bound small binder that your bill/check is inside with a pen to sign it?)on a silver plate with hand wipes on it. All that being said, the food tasted good. But I know of a few other places that serve King Crab and who cater a lot better to their crab purchasing customers. We did not offend anyone, were extremely quiet and respectful. So, I know the weird treatment was not due to anything we did. I normally express my approval or disapproval in the amount I tip. I only tipped at 20% because my wife did not want the young man to feel any type of way. I initially chose 5 stars for the atmosphere, but when I posted my review, Google gave an overall review score of 4.1!!! Shame on you, Google! That is why I edited my review to 2 stars for the atmosphere but in reality I rate...

The first issue we had was the Sign. Yes, the Sign. We walking down the packed parking lot at Potomac Mills Mall and were actually headed to the Cheesecake factory when we saw the other building beside it and I saw the picture of the Crab claw but since the sign was black we could not read it. I had to open up Google maps and zoom in to find out what the name of the restaurant was.

Being seafood lovers we decided to give that a try. We were greeted and seated immediately which was nice and the waiter came right away and took our drink order.

The second issue we ran into was the menu, it was confusing. It showed menu items with half pound and 1 lb pricing but then underneath everything it said you could not order in half pound increments which was extremely confusing. After our waiter explained how things worked... we still weren't quite sure but I ended up ordering a pound of the Alaskan king crab legs and the wife ordered 1 lb of the Snow crab legs. We had never been here before and I noticed that they were going to put seasoning on the crab legs which I prefer my crab legs just steamed so I asked to have the seasoning on the side and I am so grateful that I did that. They served the seasoning on the side which was a bowl of butter and a bunch of seasonings and I cannot imagine trying to crack open the shells with that all butter already all over them on the outside.

I'm a firm believer that you eat with your eyes and the presentation was extremely odd. Your order comes served in a bag that is blown up on a plate so you can't even see your food until you unwrap it. Again this type of presentation was very odd in my opinion.

You are served this with a plastic fork and crackers. When I tried to crack my Alaskan king crab legs they were so rubbery I could not even open one. And trying to use a plastic fork was a no-go as well. Our waiter had not been back so I grabbed another waitress walking by and asked her if they had a knife and she was gracious enough to bring me a crab knife.

The wife's snow crabs were cooked properly and she was able to crack them open and enjoy her meal.

After struggling with my crab legs which I should have sent back but our waiter never came to check on us after bringing the food even though I saw him at another nearby table he never bothered to come over to check on us, so I just pushed through.

When our waiter did finally come back at the end of our meal, I think he knew he had messed up because he saw us talking to the hostess asking him to get our waiter so we could get our check he intermediately came over.

Unfortunately I just can't recommend this place, not just because of the service but the food and presentation were extremely bad...

It’s unfortunate that I’m writing this review as someone who was a loyal customer to this business but everyone needs to know about the unprofessionalism coming from the staff here. My fiancé and i ordered boils from here via Uber eats and when the food got to us the bags were small and we could tell right away it wasn’t our order. The name on the bag was also an indication that it wasn’t our order. We called Uber first to see if they had any other orders or how he got the wrong order and ended up calling crafty to let them know they still had our order and we had someone else’s. We even offered to take the order back to the restaurant and if they could give us our order or remake it due to the inconvenience. After all, it was confirmed that the staff handed out the wrong order to the driver. The manager was so rude and nasty and tried to refuse us of any help. He told us that it’s not his problem and to call Uber and eats. He stated that we didn’t pay him we paid Uber. The issue is that we paid Uber to deliver but paid almost 200 dollars for dinner. You got majority of the cost for the food and we are supposed to be left w no dinner, no solution even for another day? Absolutely not, i had To argue him down and let him know how much of a mess up both them and the Uber team made to allow him to finally listen and understand that they handed out the wrong order. He finally stopped arguing and said to just come in. I was already close and went in with the order that wasn’t ours. He didn’t even greet me. Just took the bag and looked at the ticket saying Oh… i see I see . We remake it for you. He went to the back of the kitchen w the biggest attitude as if we made the mistake. He then yelled and scolded his employee and 15 mins later came back w the new order instead of apologizing he tried to dumb down the situation and said the only difference is the quantity other than there was no issues w the order. I would Think paying almost 200 for a meal and not getting the amount for that price is deff a difference. Also he still didn’t make it right, the flavor wasn’t what we asked for. I took The order and at home went to take the bags out of the crafty crab bag and sauce squirted everywhere all over my house. I realized That they punched both bags purposely to allow the sauce to spill everywhere!! That has never happened to us before and the bags are thick to avoid that sort of thing . Ridiculous! Trying to punish us as if we made the mistake. Disgusting business and people. Lost loyal customers because we will never...