Charleston Crab House — Restaurant in Mount Pleasant

Having tried the Crab House chain when they first opened and been appalled and offended by the food, I was reluctant to return but was with a group so I just went with it. I checked the reviews and was surprised by the number of good reviews, but when I looked deeper the raves were generally from tourists (who are the preferred victims of this chain as they don’t know better). The appetizers were generally tasty, but enough bacon makes anything good. The crab dip actually was a pretty good version.

The hush puppies, though, were just fried corn mush, dense as rocks. Not sure where they went wrong with the batter- perhaps they forgot the leavening, and didn’t know enough to use self-rising corn meal. They were totally bland- absolutely no evidence of onions or peppers in the finished gut-bombs.

The She-Crab soup had a very good flavor. It was the thinnest, wateriest She-Crab soup I’ve ever seen, but good flavor.

Now we get to the major problem with this restaurant group- the call themselves the Charleston Crab House, yet their menu is almost 100% local food free. The only Blue Crab on the menu is the cover picture. 100% of the crab on the menu is from the West Coast or Alaska. This alone shows a complete disrespect and disregard of Lowcountry quality and tradition.

For my entree, I specifically asked what local product was available. I was told only the flounder was local. This is a travesty, as there are shrimpers docked just down the creek with phenomenal local product available, but tourist traps like this one prefer the ultra-cheap imported farmed shrimp to serve to unsuspecting tourists and transplants. There is a MAJOR difference in quality and flavor. Things being what they were I ordered the Crispy Flounder. It came fried in some hard, crunchy coating that was hard to break through. Traditional Lowcountry fried flounder has a simple salt, pepper, and cornmeal breading. The fish was either old and freezer burned, or badly overcooked, and was dry and stringy- hard to do with flounder.

All in all, they should pack up this chain and move all of the locations to the plains states, and compete with the other chains.

Do yourself, and the Lowcountry, a huge favor, and avoid this and all “local” restaurants who completely ignore local food traditions and producers. The world will be a...

I did visit while having a day trip with my family. We ordered to go but the restaurant staff greeted everyone that walked in the door. Took my order promptly and even helped with suggestions, being it was the first time. From the kids' menu, my son ordered chicken tenders, seasoned fries, and smashed potatoes. He definitely enjoyed it because it was devoured. We also ordered hushpuppies( they were really good fresh served with honey butter), fried green tomatoes were good as well with the sauce, grilled shrimp with 2 sides charleston red rice and collards. The shrimp were season well the red rice was good and the collards. My daughter ordered flounder with red rice and fries. We enjoyed everything and will definitely back...

I had really high expectations! The hostess girls were welcoming and fun!

It was the hush puppies that let me down! They tasted decent but were really really greasy- the honey butter that people raved about in the reviews turned out not to be butter, instead it was some kind of spread with artificial flavors in it so I wouldn’t touch it.

I ordered a crab bucket with snow crabs and Dungeness crabs. Snow crab was good but the Dungeness crabs weren’t.

The restaurant was uncomfortably hot (inside) so it was just not a good...