Crab Avenue — Restaurant in Glendale

I was completely underwhelmed here, sadly. Of course this will always be compared with Boiling Crab, and this place I found to be lacking (and I'm not even that big a fan of BC). BUT, I see huge amounts of potential in this place. HUGE. I wanted to love this place, but since it's only a few months old, it has room to grow.

While Crab Boil Ave has an expansive menu, an incredibly spacious and modern decor, and decent prices...there a lot of things holding it back. Its bland sauces and food were just too much to overcome.

Atmosphere: 4/5 -- This may have been my favorite part. It's close to Glendale Galleria, but has free parking in a giant parking lot. Nice. -- The inside is HUGE, and has two stories. I think the second story is for big groups or can be used as a banquet hall. There's so much space in the restaurant, I felt like they could add 3-4 more tables and it still would be too much space. -- There's a bar, which is nice if you're into that kind of thing. Poor guy looked so lonely though, he had 1/4 of the restaurant to himself. -- There's also a game room/area near the entrance if you're waiting. I thought that was really cool. -- The men's bathroom...was just awkward and weird. One toilet, but with two urinals almost touching each other, which were both about 4 feet from the sinks.

Service: 3.5/5 -- Service was okay. They weren't bad or good, but they did their job. -- Our waitress seemed a little out of it though, like she hates her job. Maybe she was just having a rough day. -- I believe the owner(?) was walking around, checking up on people. That was a nice touch. -- People talking about them being understaffed: I think they listened to your reviews because it looked like they had at least six or seven waiters, almost overstaffed now!

Food: 2.5/5 -- This was where the real disappointment set-in, unfortunately. -- We ordered a lot for two of us (my girlfriend can out eat me, I'm more impressed than demasculinized now): 1lb of shrimp and 1lb of mussels, both in mild with their house mix sauce, and an order of fried catfish.... No bueno. -- Their mild is not spicy AT ALL. I'd read that in some reviews before we went, but I thought there was still some spice to be had. Never get mild, even if you don't care for incredibly spicy things. -- The sauce was very disjointed and incredibly oily. It was either incredibly lacking in salt (the oil part) or incredibly salty (the actual spices/garlic concoction). It was hard to get the right balance, so the meal was just really flat and without almost ANY flavor at all. -- The catfish had really lackluster breading, so it wasn't crunchy at all. The catfish was fishier than I'm used to as well, with lots of the skin left on. -- The mussels tasted kind of off, and were unusually soft. -- The fries were alright, but was missing lots of cajun seasoning and garlic. -- The coleslaw (that they give you with the catfish "basket") was actually pretty good and very refreshing. -- Their menu has so much potential, as they have a lot of things they make other than just the typical x pound of seafood in a bag. -- It COSTS $0.50 FOR EXTRA KETCHUP?! You seriously cannot make a poor Filipino boy pay for his ketchup... Every restaurant in America that serves fries has ketchup on the table. I feel like I took a star off for this alone.

Price: 3.5/5 -- The prices were decent, but they didn't offer half pounds, forcing us to make some bad decisions in retrospect. -- The 50 cents extra for more condiments also rears its ugly head here, again.

With everything that's been said about their food, I still feel like this place has loads of potential. They've got a great location, and I dig their giant restaurant and how they try to make the plating fancy and more refined. So while it's only 2 stars, I hope it gets better, and I feel like it easily can. I hope it was just a bad day...

This place has really gone downhill since the pandemic. It's understandable. A lot of places have barely survived, if at all, since 2020. We use to love coming here and supported their business during lockdown through take out. The shrimp was overcooked a couple of times which can tend to happen with to go orders so we let it slide. Coming back in after it reopened has never been the same though. We've been having mediocre experiences but this last time will be our last unfortunately. When I walked in I was called by who I'm assuming was the owner from the other side of the restaurant where the tables are. He yelled "hey" and motioned for me to come to him. It just felt kind of weird. Then, when taking our order he was distracted and kept looking at the table next to us so I had to keep repeating what I said. I ordered 2 lbs of shrimp with potatoes, sausage and corn. I kept trying to make it clear that I wanted one order of each item in the 2lbs but he gave me 2 of each, 1 order in each pound. After we got our food he came by once in passing (not even fully coming up to the table) and asked if everything was good. I asked for melted butter and the salt seasoning they use to give. He came back with just the melted butter. Again, didn't listen to me fully. Then he was behind the bar the rest of the time. The other server never came by and when we were done we sat there for a good 15 minutes just waiting for someone to pass. I could have shouted across the restaurant but I wasn't going to do that. Finally the other waiter came by (only because he was giving another table a check and I flagged him down) and I closed our tab out with him. That's when I saw I was double charged for all the sides and my husband asked for a water and was brought a water bottle and was charged for that. If they don't serve tap anymore that's fine I'd just like to be made aware. Because of all that it made it feel like he's was trying to change us for everything he could. We've tried to give this place many chances but sadly we won't be back. The food is great but not worth...

A waste of time and money. Hubs and I decided to try a new place and went here. At arrival there was only one woman waiting ahead of us. No hostess, manager, or server to greet us nor seat us, nor give us a wait time. We waited about 10 minutes until the woman in front of us decided to leave and told us “good luck with this place guys”. We should have just followed her lead and left but with all the good reviews we thought we should give it a chance. Finally after 15 minutes of all these workers (including the manager) literally giving us eye contact and deliberately ignoring us, a bus woman came over to seat us. After another 10 minutes the manager miserably came over to us and took our order. The whole experience was so bleak and it felt like some stuff went down just before we got there. Just tension throughout the entire 50 minutes we were there. There was a server who continuously checked on the tables around us, ignored us the whole time. We had to ask for our check 3 times before somebody took the hint. And finally the same aforementioned waiter ended up giving our bill and saying thank you. THANK YOU for what sir!? Where were you the whole time fam?! Just a bad experience, the manager needs to up the charm a little bit, just comes off as super rude and careless.

The surf and turf was literally cold and had no flavor. The shrimp linguine was a joke, I wouldnbe surprised to see prego alfredo sauce packets...