Crabby Bill's Palm Harbor — Restaurant in Palm Harbor

For the record, I want to see Crabby Bill's succeed. This is constructive feedback. I've personally opened 2 restaurant/bars in the past and know how difficult it can be. I got much better productive feedback from the secret shoppers who were hired to test the experience. It is tough, but the only way to get things right is to open and start serving...

Service:

It was great and our server was attentive and very nice and professional. It is hard to get a new place going and work out the kinks, but it seemed everyone was understanding of that and making good progress. We didn't wait long and the drinks, then food came out quickly - 5 stars.

Atmosphere:

It was well done and much better than the previous 2 restaurants there. Some sound panels may help in the larger indoor areas to reduce the echo, but overall 4 stars

Drinks:

I had a sweet tea which was ok and my wife had a Happy Hour special Crab Trab cocktail. Even though her drink was happy hour priced at $5, it seemed to only have a hint of alcohol. Not sure if they scale back on the alcohol during happy hour and let you make it up in volume, but I'd expect that they make the happy hour drinks the same as the regular priced ones ($11) and just charge less. I'd be upset if we paid $11 for that drink and it had that little hint of alcohol.

Food:

The Jumbo fried soft shell crab appetizer was amazing. $19 - I would not say it was "jumbo" but rather medium sized. It came to the table hot temperature and very tasty... It came on a bed of shoestring fries that were cold and tough.

The 1lb of Mussels Marinara were not good. $18 - The mussels in the picture on the menu were very large, meaty, and filled the shell. Ours came out and the mussels were 1/3 the size of the picture. Also about 10% of the shells were empty. On top of that the sauce and mussels were cold, and there was no garlic bread.

The 1lb of snow crab legs were barely average for $35 price tag. There was a full pound and we had slaw and fries on the side. The crab legs were luke warm/cold coming out and those things get cold fast on the table, so they need to come out hot hot. They were "lightly seasoned" and were decent quality legs with good meat content and easy to extract the meat. The fries were cold and tough so we asked for more and they came out hot the second time. The slaw was cold and great. It came with a side of clarified butter but we didn't use it.

I...

We had an amazing evening at Crabby Bills Palm Harbor tonight. We showed up (early) as a table of 9. Three of them were our younger grandkids. Fran was our amazing server who dove right in getting everyone comfortable and started service. We watched as our orders came out of the kitchen and the manager on site (Louis) inspected every meal for perfection before being brought to us. There were a lot of servers and each one of them appeared to help each other out. Just great communication amongst everyone!

Our grandkids are picky eaters and out of the last 10 days here in Florida on vacation, this is the first meal that they ate everything on their plates! They seriously said this was the best meal of their trip! How can you not be super happy to have your last night in Florida with grandkids having such a positive experience too. They had a cheeseburger, chicken sandwich and my wife and youngest granddaughter had the chicken Alfredo (yeah, land lubbers 😁). The others in our crew had a cheese dip and Grouper. I had the blackend shrimp and my son in law had the lobster tail. I told him, he's here, go all in buddy! Awesome food! Drinks were great too and it was happy hour. Their happy hours drinks were very tasty by the way.

I don't write a lot of reviews, but like to feature positive moments we experience. I hope you might have the same great experience we just had if you visit Crabby Bills Palm Harbor. They have only been open 4 weeks as of this review. We have more family coming to visit in a few days. We will be back with them too!

Thanks...

When you first walk in your greated by a fresh oyster bar, which would have been great! However after watching the oyster shucker he clearly was slow and clueless on how to do it, which made me not get any. He busted up the shells, let all the oyster liquor drain out, by turning it on its side. Dropped them on the floor. Put crushed ice on top of the oyster, presentation was terrible. I watched while waiting for my seat about 40 min. And he just finished 1 dozen. I am sure there where bits of shell in the oysters since he never cleaned off his tools. I also saw him dip a shucked oyster into a bucket of what looked like water? Maybe to clean the shell off the oyster that he mangled? But there goes all the oyster liquor that he did not spill out already. Got a crab cake for appetizer but ve prepared you only get 1, so it's really not sharable, it tasted good, the bed of fries it was served on is cold hard garbage and they would be better off serving in on a lettuce leaf. Next was the soft shell crab sandwich, which was not flesh, a bit under cooked and not much flavor. The fried shrimp where over cooked and hard. Told watresss about the terrible fries and she brought more out, but they where no better. So basically the whole meal was under impressive. And sadly I don't think we will ever go back, which is a shame because we really wanted to enjoy this dinner. The manager comped the crab cake, nice of them, but the cake was the best thing we ate! Oh well strick this one off of our list of seafood places, so...