Raleigh Crab House

This place is just opened (4/20) and there were a few speed bumps, but that’s to be expected. It shouldn’t discourage you. It’s delicious.

For those who don’t know, Viet-Cajun is a spin on the standard low country boil. It hails primarily from Houston, where you can find it all over the place. And that’s exactly what this is.

The ingredients are the same. Potatoes, corn, crawdads/crab/shrimp. But after the boil, is where things get the big change. The whole thing gets tossed in a wet sauce afterwards. A buttery, garlicy, lemony delicious mess. If you thought a regular low country boil was messy, well…just don’t wear your nice clothes. They give you a bib, and plastic food handlers’ gloves. Personally, I find that makes it hard to handle and de-shell the food, so I go bare-handed. Maybe I’ll bring my own nitrile gloves next time. It comes to your table in a bag, and if you go to dump it like a normal boil, you’ll get a lot of spreading juices and sauce. If you open the bag and just roll down the outside, you can contain that sauce for dipping.

We got shrimp and crawfish in the Big Bang (All three options) sauce, with a half pound of sausage. The sausage got a bit on the salty side, which I find happens sometimes if it’s cut too thin. It was still good, but we put most of it in the container to take home with our Cajun fried rice. The fried rice was pretty good, but I’d be hesitant to pay $8 for it again. You get a good amount, but there’s not much in there beside the rice, seasoning, and a few pieces of sausage. $6 and I would suggest it to my friends and get it every time. Oh, and we got ours Mild spicy level. It was definitely mild, with only a hint of heat, so it’s only barely above the No-Heat level. You also get a little container of garlic butter, but if you take my above mentioned suggestion, you won’t even need to open it.

They haven’t gotten in the beer yet, which was a sad, because a good quaffable beer goes great with this kind of food. My corn was also soggy and over boiled, so was disappointed by that. Would have rather had more potatoes.

I’m so happy that one of these places has finally made it to the Triangle. With the large Viet community here, it was only a matter of time, and that time has come!! PS: Not a first date place!