Holy Crab — Restaurant in East Peoria

Incredible seafood at very reasonable prices! Holy Crab offers authentic Acadian Cajun boiled crab, shrimp, scallops, and fish pots of several varieties and spice levels (cayenne & black pepper stands out more). They also have a few other Cajun specialties, including gumbo (one of my favorites) which has a subtly more Creole taste (tomato & paprika is more forward) and crispy sweet-corn hush puppies (reminds me of Paul Prudhomme's recipe which is more wheat than corn, and has sweet onion).

I enjoyed our seafood boil dinner so much, I went back for lunch the next day. I got the Holy Crab sampler which features catfish, oysters, shrimp, a crab cake, fries, and I added a tilapia fillet. All of the fish was expertly prepared, and their batter is a rich and crispy sweet-onion batter with a dusting of corn to add to the texture. The portions were very generous for the price. I also got the egg fried rice, which was very tasty, and filled me up after a long day of walking around.

For dinner, we went just after peak hours, and the service was fairly quick (for a seafood boil). It was much busier at lunch, but they were able to prepare and serve the food lightning-fast, even with a number of to-go orders being picked up during service. The staff are friendly, and checked on us regularly to top off drinks (we went with medium spiciness, which was perfect with iced tea).

Holy Crab ended up being my favorite stop of my trip in Peoria. The food, service, and prices were all quite good. If I'm in the area again, I will stop here to...

The food was good. You could order your desired spice level and flavored butter sauces. Prices were on the higher side. The waiter was polite, however when he asked his manager who had broken English if there were any grand opening promotions or anything special for birthdays, she was very short and rude demanding him to go serve a new table and acted like that was a crazy question to ask. We ordered 3 meals, 2 steamed and 1 fried. I had a combo crab, muscle , shrimp which was $38 served in a plastic bag which concerns me because of BPA plastics and hot items in plastic could be toxic. It still tasted good, but over priced considering the atmosphere which was previously a fast food restaurant converted into sit down booths . My son got snow crab $25 but he did not eat the boiled small potato or corn. He was still hungry and we asked for a side of clams. It still came with a potato and corn but at least it was a 1/2 order and 1/2 priced compared to the full order of clams. My husband got a fried combo basket that looked like a kids meal serve red in a red plastic basket $16. It was ok but the batter was kind of thick. The bill was placed in our table but we wanted to share a desert. They make a Thai rolled ice cream you can fill in flavors and rolled in toppings $5.99. I’d try them again if they ditch the toxic plastic and lower their rates to match the environment and management...

Service was fantastic, the place was clean. We ordered Crawfish knowing it would be frozen having good luck in the past with other establishments.

Hush Puppies for an appetizer, these were great! That's where the greatness stopped.

Ordered 6 lbs of crawfish, with an extra pound of sausage. It comes with corn, potatoes and boiled eggs. First couple bites of the crawfish and you can immediately taste that they were frozen, which we expected. However they were over cooked, dry and tasteless. The corn and the potatoes tasted exactly the same as the crawfish, like they were all just sitting in the juices all morning.

I approached the manager/owner and conveyed that we couldn't get past the first 1/2 pound or so, and the remainder was inedible. I asked for a discount and was offered 10% only. I explained the we eat crawfish quite often and unfortunately these were not good at all. I was willing to pay for the lb that we did start to eat along with our drinks and Hush Puppies.

The service was good, the place was clean, but that was about it. I really appreciated the manager discounting our bill to the lb of crawfish and our drinks and the hush puppies. This is the only reason they received two stars.

Perhaps we will be back when the serve...