The Crab Pot Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Long Beach

My fiancee and I dined here on a Saturday night with some friends, and while the overall experience was good, we felt it missed on a couple key points.

First of all the location is awesome--right on the water in Long Beach. I've always felt most comfortable ordering seafood when at a restaurant where I can, you know, actually see the sea? So I was pumped to try the food based on location alone, but the reviews of my fellow Yelpers should have been more of a warning to me to eat elsewhere.

We started with a round of drinks and an order of the calamari. The calamari here is cut in strips rather than rounds, which is unusual, but I thought it was pretty darn good. They ate almost more like mozzarella sticks due to the strip style, but we didn't dislike that. The marinara they served it with was rich and just what you want as a dipping sauce for calamari. Then it was time for entrees, and this is where things really missed a bit for us. The two ladies in our party both ordered the seafood brochette, and I didn't really hear any complaints on that dish. Loads of grilled fish and shrimp along with veggies and potatoes, the brochette is a good way to get a bit of everything, and after tasting a couple bites of my fiancee's brochette I was glad the waiter recommended it to us. I ordered the jambalaya and wasn't disappointed, which was surprising to me. As someone who has lived in New Orleans, I'm always angling to find authentic New Orleans-style food here in California, which is a chore, and I can be a harsh critic of poor attempts at New Orleans-style cuisine, but the Crab Pot jambalaya came very close to the down-home real thing. The sauce was very, very flavorful with plenty of shrimp and the rice was perfectly cooked. Only thing I felt the jambalaya was missing was a little bit of heat in the form of hot sauce or some other spicy element, but other than that, I took no issue with the jambalaya. The other entree out party ordered was the "Crab, Crab, Crab," (yes, that's seriously what it's called), which was basically a crab boil: big ol' bowl of crab legs served with boiled corn on the cob and potatoes. Sounds awesome, right? Not so much--I watched as my friend sat across from me cracking crab leg after crab leg, and coming away with minuscule amounts of crab meat. And these weren't some dinky little crab legs--these were some big honkin' crab legs, but for the most part the amount of meat within the leg was disappointing at best. But this can happen from time to time--you can't blame the fisherman for some skinny crab legs right? What bothered us the most about this was the waiter's response when it was pointed out to him. When our party mentioned to the waiter that the crab legs were mostly shell with very little meat, his response was "Really? Huh, that's weird. Well, here's your check!" Dude, what? We're dropping nearly $200 on dinner for four people, and we, the customers, are telling you the most expensive dish we ordered was disappointing, and you basically tell us "Oh well, that sucks?" Harsh. And to top all that off? Originally the guy who ordered the "Crab, Crab, Crab," had ordered the brochette like the ladies in our party, but the waiter was the one who encouraged him to switch to the "Crab, Crab, Crab," then he was flippant when we expressed our displeasure with the dish! After a dinner that for the most part was enjoyable, this last interaction with the waiter left us with a bad taste in our mouths (pun intended), and unlikely to return to the Crab Pot.

Overall, an awesome location with some dishes that are excellent and others that fall flat. Inattentive, checked-out service exacerbates the food flaws, combined with the somewhat pricey dishes when compared to the overall quality of the food, makes the Crab Pot a 3, maybe 3.5-star experience at best. Improvements to the service, along with serving crab meat inside the crab legs, rather than just serving basically meatless crab shells with corn and potatoes, would easily turn this into a 4 or 5-star...

We have gone to this restaurant every time we visit seal beach (about 4 times a year). We have always enjoyed sitting on the patio by the water and the view of the boats. The area we like to sit in only allows to order from the bar menu, so you cannot order from the full menu in that area. Not that big of a deal because the bar menu offers a lot of great options.

Our last visit was on Mother’s Day, we went in around 8:00pm for a quick night cap. The host that night was fantastic, he was so pleasant and checked in on us, turned on the heaters, we wish he would have been our server just because he seemed to really be so attentive.

Although our server was nice, our service was slow. We waited a long time just to be greeted. There was a mistake with our drink order and that was forgotten about so my dad just didn’t have a drink for 15 minutes. And were never offered water. When she remembered about the missing drink, she was very nice and apologized. Things happened so not a big deal. I imagine it was a busy day for her being Mother’s Day, so it’s understandable.

We all ordered clam chowder, bread, coconut shrimp and cocktails.

The bread came out 1st, which was nice and warm but wanted to eat with clam chowder so kind of a bummer that it all came out very separately. Then we got the clam chowder but it was so different than I remembered. More soupy, and extremely salty.

Our server mentioned that we would get the coconut shrimp soon, but we didn’t see that until 30 minutes after we ate our clam chowder. This was so completely disappointing, we were quoted it came with 6 pieces but it only came with 5. But honestly no one even wanted the 5th one because it was so overcooked. Chewy, dry, black-ish brown. The coconut was burnt and it left a horrible aftertaste. again, I’ve had this here before and it was so different. Actually gross. And such a long time to wait (our server said the kitchen forgot about it).

The only food we liked this time around was the bread, I’m not saying we won’t go back because normally it’s been good but I’m hesitant to order food again. The drinks were good, once it was done correctly. We were too tired to say anything at the time and could tell the server was feeling bad so we just paid and made sure to tip well.

Definitely try it out for yourself, it’s such a pretty place and the staff is...

We went there for happy hour and it was really good. We started out with Mai Tai and the electric watermelon and they were both very sweet and could’ve used a little more alcohol. The kids all got strawberry lemonade which was very good. The food was pretty good with a few exceptions. We ordered coconut shrimp twice and the first one came out a little over cooked, but the second one was much better. It is served on a bed of coleslaw. Oysters were OK just not very flavorful or salty but the cocktail sauce and horseradish were delicious, I think they grate their own horseradish. The fries were awesome and at two dollars on the happy hour menu can’t be beat. The fried calamari was very tender and flavorful. Ahi and mussels were very good, the mussels are called steamed mussels on the menu but came in a bucket of juice, not that I didn’t like them, just thought that was odd. I should have ordered the loaf of sourdough to go with it. Kids liked the popcorn shrimp but I forgot to try them. A nice man told us they had the chocolate landslide and he loved it so much that on his way out he gave us $10 so we could try it, it was delicious and the six of us couldn’t finish it. It didn’t have chopped walnuts but half walnuts which I thought was a varsity move on their part. Our waitress Sidney was very nice. The ambiance on the deck was wonderful and the views amazing. One thing I’ve never seen before, you had to either order off the happy hour menu or order off the regular menu but you couldn’t do both. And they sat you in a different location depending on which menu you were ordering from. The men’s room was out of paper towels and toilet paper, although they left a roll of paper towels on the sink, but when you do that, they sit in the water that accumulates...