Crafty Crab — Restaurant in Lauderhill

While on my way here, a few friends described this place as "The McDonalds of Seafood". It didn't take long for me to figure out why. The menu is a bit limited: Steamed crab, shrimp, crawfish, and oysters made with 1 or 3 generalized seasons of your choosing. There are also the usual finger side foods. Drinks are also a bit limited. About 7 alcoholic drinks to choose from alongside an acceptable selection of beer. Deviating from these choices will leave you with a "we don't make those here" response. They have rum, they have carbonated beverages, but your choice for rum drinks are exclusive to what's on the menu. If you're not into seafood, there are wings. No appetizers and I didn't notice any desert on the menu. My table waited 30-minutes to receive drinks and nearly an hour for our orders. The establishment also does not allow split checks for any size party. There's a sign when you first walk in that expresses this. The wait staff let it be known that they don't like the rule, especially for large parties. The manager gives a slew of reasons as to why they have the policy, but none of them make sense. This place is simple, simple simple, but often simple sales, hence the continuous long lines. Average wait here is about 45-minutes. In one instance, a family told me that a 2hr wait is not out of the ordinary. The strange thing is that upon getting a table, I noticed quite a few empty tables, which remained empty during my entire visit. The long wait time ultimately sounds like bad management or employee scheduling. Other patrons said that, as well, was the norm. While I understand how this place stays in business; simple menu, simple process, no allowing of any deviation, somewhat competitive prices; I can't help but wonder how much better the dining experience would be if the manager worked a little harder to fill holes. When I tried to ask the manager if the complaints he heard were frequent, he suddenly excused himself and disappeared to a back office. Most patrons said they only see the manager when there's a problem and he's requested. Short of that, don't expect the occasional managerial table check.

3-Stars because there's a lot of outside seating (with long waits in mind), the food was good but lacked any feeling of a real balanced meal due to the steamed seafood and fried sides. Manager could have been more attentive, and the wait staff aren't the most pleasant. At the end of the day, it wasn't a great dining experience, but the satisfactory check boxes were checked, in some...

This was by far the worst dining experience we have ever had. We wanted to take our son out for a nice dinner for his 13th birthday. It started with the waiter forgetting to take one of the guests in our party's order. He was walking away when we had to call him back to take her order. He then forgot the same guests glass of wine. We placed our order. When the food came as he was passing the food out, the waiter said I forgot your calamari to another guest of ours. Then said I didn't forget it the kitchen said it will just be another 2-3 minutes. No silverware was given to eat with. No crackers to open the crab legs. No sauce for the 3 orders of chicken fingers. We asked for the crackers for the crab legs and silverware. We were brought 4 plastic forks for 8 people and 1 cracker for 4 people with crab legs to share. 10 minutes later we asked another employee who walked by to check on our calamari which was the meal for another guest and for more silverware and crackers. He said let me get your server. 10 minutes later I got up to ask for a manager as our food is now getting cold waiting on utensils to eat. It took 5 employees and 10 more minutes to find the manager who turned out to be the same guy we asked to check on the remaining order and utensils. He literally just asked the server in front of me 30 minutes later to check on the food and bring us more utensils. Then proceeded to walk up to our table and rudely say I said your food is coming. To top it off when I went to wash my hands their was an employee blocking the sinks in the filthy restroom playing on the phone. I went around to the sink got soap, put the water on and looked down to find a huge clump of hair in the sink. I said that is disgusting. The employee said nothing and did nothing. We will never return this establishment. I would never recommend this establishment to anyone other than a food critic and the health department. Do yourself a favor...

I was going to give this place 3 stars, but because of our waitress I gave it one extra. Let’s start off by saying on any given day, this place is going to be packed. Severely packed. You will be waiting outside for a good half hour to 45 minutes. Once you’re called in, everything is much less chaotic. We were sat at our table and our waitress promptly came over. This shocked me because it was so busy I was prepared to sit for 20 minutes before being served. She took our drink order, came back immediately and took our food order. The raw oysters I give 5 stars, best I’ve tasted and very fresh. I ordered 2 seafood platters, a pound of king crab, and kids meals for my 2. The seafood platters we ordered with boom sauce were very good, however, very salty. If they could took a bit of salt from there it’d be perfect. The pound of king crab legs was not a pound. They merely put one side of the legs in there with potatoes and corn. That’s ok because I didn’t like the king compared to the snow crab, I’m just disappointed with the price versus the quantity received. The kids meals tasted great as well, no complaints there. I should make you aware that you will not get crab crackers here. Your waitress only has one, it’s hers, and you must share. To eat king crab without tools is quite difficult since it has spikes on it, bring tools if you plan on ordering king. When we left we ordered key lime pie to go and I was pleasantly surprised by this. The color was a pale yellow which is good, and the flavor was good also. It still had a slight bitter taste at the end so you can tell there wasn’t any or much genuine key limes present in the pie. I paid $160 for everything and I can’t say I wasn’t happy. Please get your hostesses in order to prevent long wait times and provide tools for customers. If not real tools, plastic ones like Joes’s. I might think about...