Dirty Dick's Crab House - Nags Head — Restaurant in Nags Head

I don’t often leave reviews but I felt like this was necessary. This was the WORST FOOD I have ever had at any restaurant in my life. The first clue should have been that this was the only place in a 5 mile stretch that we drove past without at least an hour long wait. But, we were hungry, so we stayed. We were seated at a table in the corner that smelled faintly of urine. I tried to justify it as being a weird beach smell because I was so hungry and just wanted to eat. We ordered a couple appetizers- the gator bites and the crab dip. I have never had gator bites so I don’t have a comparison but they were ok, I guess? The crab dip was awful. Hardly any crab, not creamy at all, the cheese was burnt on top and it just tasted like a mouthful of cheddar cheese. For dinner we ordered crab cakes, crab melt, a Philly cheesesteaks, and crab legs and my youngest got the kids’ spaghetti and meatballs. Kinda hard to mess up crab legs… the kids ate them and seemed to think they were ok, although watching them it didn’t appear that they had a whole lot of meat for what we paid. The only edible part of the crab melt meal was the chips on the side. The melt itself was no better than the crab dip other than the addition of super hard bacon- it was terrible. The crab cakes hardly had any crab and instead were the consistency of Stove-top stuffing with a taste similar to that of burnt plastic. The rice on the side was mushy and had no taste at all. None of it was edible. The Philly cheesesteak was literally just Steak-ems. There is no mistaking that taste- and while I don’t mind a Steak-em at home, I certainly DO mind spending $17 on a crappy sandwich at a restaurant that calls it, “ griddled ribeye slices”. Finally, the kids’ spaghetti- was undoubtedly scooped from a can of Chef BoyArdee. It was disgusting, and my son, who had just eaten 3-4 of the gator bites, was now pushing away his bowl of spaghetti. I left as hungry as I arrived and pretty pissed off at having spent over $200 on food that mostly went uneaten. I think it was pretty obvious by the plates full of food and the denial of boxes that we were weren’t happy with our meal but no one actually asked us and instead just brought the bill and cleared away the platters of putrid. Yes, it really was THAT bad. And I did leave a note on the receipt telling them that the food was horrible. I can’t make any sense of how the place is still in business or how they get away with charging what they do for the crap they’re peddling as food. I beg you- STAY CLEAR OF THIS PLACE if you have any standards at all and you value your hard-earned...

We had a party of 11 celebrating a pregnancy and a grandmother's birthday. Our server refused to serve one of the young men with us which I was in agreement with, but he became angry, even though the young man was intoxicated but polite, then walked away, failing to ask what our side of the table wanted for drinks. We had to flag down a food runner to get our waiter, who we had to request the name of, Rob, to get our water orders in. Then Rob failed to ask our side of the table about appetizers, while the other groups we receiving theirs. When we finally said we would like to place our dinner orders, he said he had to put my granddaughter's appetizer order in and left. When dinner arrived, my Mahi Mahi tacos were the catch of the day. I refused it and waited for my tacos. My tacos had no pico de Gallo, and were tasteless. One of the young ladies ordered a shrimp dinner, we had to ask for the accompanying cocktail sauce. He slammed a beer down at the further end of the table. We never complained until we asked for a birthday song for MeMe and he grumbled they were too busy. My daughter went to the manager who assured MeMe was celebrated. Then the checks came and I was charged 43 dollars for the catch of the day. I sent my check back, only to have it returned uncorrected. At this point, I went to the manager, and explained the evening to him. He refused to do anything but talk to Rob. We wanted to decide our own tip instead of the mandatory tip for larger parties, because this was honestly the worst service I had had. The birthday girl wrote "never have I ever" on her tab. We are not complainers. We are hard workers who believe in the best service gets the best reward and normally tip 25% because our daughters were once servers and I know the struggle. The manager simply refused to do anything to make the situation a little better, and all we asked was to decide our own tip. Wasn't happy with the food, service, or manager. The female bartender with red hair was happy and truly enjoyable while we waited for our table. I've only been to DD once before in Avon, and had a completely wonderful experience. Shame on the grey haired male manager, who had excellent hair, for failing to compromise with...

I said I’d be here to leave a review and here I am. This was the WORST experience I’ve ever had at any restaurant I’ve been to. Let’s start with the “we don’t take reservations” after we called (twice) to confirm that they indeed did take reservations and set our reservation for 7:30. Fine. Whatever we wanted crab and didn’t wanna drive somewhere else and wait the same amount of time. So we wait. For an hour. Once we get seated we had the sweetest, most attentive waitress! We loved her! However, unless you like your lips burning off your face, I’d avoid eating here as everything they cook is covered in chili powder or something spicy like that. Couldn’t put my finger on it. It was AWFUL. The crab was BAD overcooked - we had to scrape it off the shell to eat it. After our entire group of 13 couldn’t eat their food (besides the kid that got chicken fingers LOL) because it was SO gross, we decided we weren’t going to be quiet about it. 80% of it was cold & they reheated the crab I feel like. We call over the waitress, still love her, she didn’t cook the food. The kitchen did. We tell her about the issues with almost all our food, and she’s extremely apologetic and goes to find her manager and fix the bills. She comes back (and we got 4 separate checks) and my bill was $220!!!!!! ☠️ there was a 15% off “local” discount. And I told her I wasn’t paying $220 for food that we could not eat. She tells me her manager told her IF WE DISCOUNT THE BILL ANY MORE THAN THAT IM TAKING IT OUT OF YOUR TIPS!!!!! S’cuse me SIR did you know that’s illegal?! Yall better go to the labor board sounds like he does this a lot. 🤦🏼‍♀️ So then we proceeded to act a fool 😁 because no sir you’re not going to do that to this sweet waitress it’s illegal immoral and you’re trash!!! She was soooo nice. We cussed him & informed him he was illegally threatening to take a hard working woman’s tips and he could call the cops down right now they could sort it ALL out. Well, my mom didn’t want the cops to get called and I’m pregnant. So we decided collectively we’ll just dispute the charges because of how TRASH THIS ESTABLISHMENT IS AND HOW GOD AWFUL THE FOOD IS. HOW DO YALL EVEN STILL OPEN?!?!...