The Crab — Restaurant in San Angelo

Graded on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being worst and 5 being amazing. Time ordered: 1300 Presentation: 1 out of 5 Flavor: 1 out of 5 Quickness: 4 out of 5 (15 minute wait) Price: $28 (Price was not worth the meal provided) Dish ordered: Snow Crab and Shrimp combo. Order Method: Pick Up

As a person that was raised on the Louisiana border I can be a bit picky with the seafood I eat. When I saw the sign I just had to stop and check it out cause there are not many seafood places in San Angelo.

I waited 15 minutes after calling in my order and waited at the window for 4 minutes. I had to call the restaurant again to let them know I was at the window. What raised a red flag was when the person on the phone asked what level of spicyness I wanted with my food. Either they have 4 different vats of which to cook out of...or they went the most cost effective way in pre-cooking the food and then tossed it into a boilers with a specific type of spice in it.

I received a paper bag for the take out and when I took it to my desk and reviewed the contents...everything was simply tossed into a plastic bag within a plastic bag and the base of the bag was a huge soup of seasonings. Seasoning is important when it comes to seafood, but also the time at which you cook it. Overcooking can lead to rubbery meat, under cooking can lead to sickness. For 28$ I received HALF of a Snow Crab and about 10 shrimp with a corn cob and potato (Which is usually used with cooking crawfish)

When cooking seafood the one way to know that food has been overcooked is three different ways. 1.) The shell color. If the shell color is a bright orange or red, that is a sign that the seafood has been cooked perfectly. If the shell is a more pink color then it has been overcooked. 2.) The shell texture, especially with shrimp and the like you will notice shells become rubbery and slide right off the meat. 3.) The Meat texture...if the meat is rubbery then it is overcooked.

The dish I received had all of the above issues. The body of the crab was so soft it just fell apart in my hands while trying to pull the legs off. Ontop of that I was not provided with any utensils. I had to get creative with napkins and pliers. The outside was very seasoned and lead to quite messy slop. Yes, eating shrimp and crawfish and the like can be quite messy but not to this extent. The heads of the shrimp just came right off and each time I grabbed one a cacophony of spice soup just gushed everywhere.

Final Critique: It is my belief that a lot of corners were cut in terms of cost when it came to preparing this meal. Seafood should be served FRESH. The crabs and shrimp should be crawling around alive in the back until they are scooped up and tossed into the broiler . I do not believe the seafood was at all fresh. I have a suspicion that the seafood was pre-cooked and then refrigerated only to be pulled out and tossed into a vat of spice and boiled up until hot enough to serve. The reason for this belief is the same as the many 1 star reviews that say "No Flavor". In order to have the Shrimp and the Crab retain the seasoning in the meat is to cook them fresh with the seasoning. That way all of the spices seep into the meat as they are being cooked. I read in another review that someone got food poisoning from eating here....that's definitely not good.

Suggestions: Lose the "Pick your spice level" Thing. Use one or two levels and stick with it so you can serve fresh food that has been broiled properly and it retain the flavor of the spices. Don't pre-cook then refrigerate, it leads to overcooking. Don't hesitate to reach out to other local businesses who have experience serving seafood. I recommend the owner of Mesquite Bean Cafe. I have tried his Crawfish AND Shrimp and he delivers on seasoning and flavor.

(There are a lot of Hypothetical and I could be wrong about a lot of methods in which this food was prepared. The bottom line is that this meal was bad and I did not enjoy it.) I will try again later with crawfish, but if that is not good I will not recommend this...

Everything about the to-go order experience was horrible!!! The person on the phone that put the order in kept saying “hold on a sec” in an angry voice and then said “what did you want again?”I had to repeat each part of my order several times and then she had to have a conversation with someone else asking them what it was that I was ordering and where it was on the menu (I ordered seafood gumbo and the shrimp combo and a soft shell crab). When I arrived the restaurant it was completely packed and in total chaos (tables less than 3 feet apart and none of the customers were wearing masks and many of the wait staff had their masks below their mouth and no one was being waited on). When I asked where to pick up a to-go order the hostess said “go over there”. Being my first time there I walked towards the back and was run over by one of the wait staff and she just kept right on going. Three people ran up to me and were arguing over who would check me out and a forth brought me my food. They finally figured out which to-go order to charge me for and slammed the receipt on the counter “sign it!” Another woman came up and grabbed the receipt and commented that I hadn’t left a tip. I told her that tips are for customer service and I hadn’t received any. When I got the order home there were no potatoes or corn in the shrimp combo, the gumbo consisted of gravy sauce and a small amount of rice with one tiny shrimp and I don’t know how to describe the soft shell crab except as a gooey fried shell. When I called to let them know the order was incorrect, the hostess at the door answered the phone and passed me to two people and they told me the manager was in the bathroom. When the manager finally spoke to me I was told in a very angry hard to understand voice “that’s how the crabs come you just eat the fried shell there’s no meat”. She yelled at me and said that if I wanted she would refund me the price of the potatoes but that’s all I would get, and that she would write my name down for the $2.50 for the next time I came in. I told her no thank you I would not be coming back. We did try the shrimp and it was very tough and even coating it in the sauce didn’t help the flavor. Zero stars for The Crab...They need Jon Taffer of Bar/Restaurant Rescue to even have a remote chance...

I took my wife to The Crab for our anniversary dinner this evening. She ordered the catfish basket and was pleased. I ordered the crawfish basket, and was very disappointed to find that it was inedible. The crawfish was overcooked and hard, and I was unable to chew it. I ate some of my wife's catfish while we waited for the waitress to come back. When she asked how the food was, we told her that the catfish was very good, but that the crawfish was not edible (I have NEVER not eaten the food in front of me at a restaurant; this was a first in over 50 years of life).

If this had been the only issue, I would overlook it and would be more than willing to give The Crab another try, particularly since there are many 5-star reviews about their boiled seafood. I believe that they are known for their boiled seafood, not their fried seafood. However, far larger than the fact that the food was overcooked was the waitress's reaction.

She did not apologize.

She did not offer to get the manager.

She did not offer to see if there was something she could do to make it right.

She just smiled at us and did not acknowledge anything at all.

When the bill came, we were stymied as to how to handle the tip. We believe in tipping and do not believe in not tipping, though tipping meant that we were getting ready to pay $33 for an okay catfish basket that we split between the two of us. We went ahead and tipped 20%, but had buyer's remorse about the tip immediately upon leaving the parking lot.

We will not be returning to give The Crab a second chance, though not because of the quality of the food. I am always willing to give a place a second chance because of that; often, trying something else on the menu makes all the difference in the world. The reason we will not be returning is ONLY because the waitstaff did absolutely nothing to make things any better after being told the food was...