Crab Hut — Restaurant in San Diego

I'm not sure if it was due to COVID, but the quality of food has taken a negative turn. I used to eat here once every few months (for the sake of my heart as well as to avoid the horrific parking situation even prior to the pandemic), but I'm not sure how often I'd be willing to return after giving them a few chances. I used to enjoy eating shrimp and crab in the restaurant, it was always perfectly cooked, well-seasoned, and overall enjoyable to eat. Once the pandemic hit, I ordered take out to support one of my favorite restaurants but arrived to an order that wasn't ready, was not hot when it was ready for pickup, and had overcooked shrimp. I'm not sure if it was a disconnect between the FoH and kitchen but the state of my food really didn't match with the amount of time I spent waiting for it. When outside dining was made available, I visited again in hopes that I had only had bad luck with one take-out order out of the many they have daily. I would never fault the service at this restaurant. I've always had good, friendly, and attentive servers. The servers were doing their best juggling take out orders and the wait list for the limited seating available. Unfortunately, once again I received overcooked shrimp as well as overcooked king crab legs. I'm not sure when it was implemented but Crab Hut started charging a dine-in service fee where an additional 18% was added to the bill. They state that the fee gets distributed among the staff, which means it's essentially a forced gratuity but I really hope the servers get a higher percentage of it because the kitchen staff really haven't been doing a good job. Most recently, after all of the pandemic restrictions were lifted, I wanted to give them one more try to see if dining in would bring the food quality back up to the pre-pandemic levels. Unfortunately it wasn't the case. Once again, the shrimp was overcooked, except this time the king crab legs came out warm. Normally the bags of seafood would be almost too hot to touch when brought out to the table but for some reason, of the 4 different items we got, the king crabs legs were just warm to the touch. The strange thing is, when inspecting and tasting the meat, the meat was perfectly cooked so I was wondering if we received food that was previously cooked and left behind. We decided to comment on this to our server who understandingly brought the food back to the kitchen. But it only took a few minutes for the same bag to be brought back now piping hot. The only thing I could think was they had tossed the bag into the microwave to heat it up and bring it back to us, because the same bit of meat was missing from one of the crab legs that we had tasted earlier. At this point we didn't want to cause anymore trouble; the rest of the food was cooked fine, and the service was exceptional. I really hope this restaurant improves their kitchen because when they get it right it's absolutely delicious. Otherwise there are other places in the area that have more consistent quality of food as well as...

Went here to compare to boiling crab since it was closer, unfortunately I was quite disappointed. It was nice to be seated right away with a party of 5 people, but it was strange because we went on a Friday night at 7, which I thought was a prime time to eat dinner. I love the bibs! they were super cute and said I like it dirty at crab hut which was completely true at the end of the night. However, the prices for everything here is more expensive than boiling crab as it is mostly market price rather than the set one at BC.

I decided to get the same thing I usually do at Boiling crab, I share with one other person 1 pound of shrimp, 1/2 pound of sausage, an order of corn, and potatoes with cajun fries. They call their sauce full house and I got it 1/2 medium spice which was different that others i've been to. My friend also got the Fish and chips(fried cat fish) and sweet potato fries.

When the fries and catfish came out it was nice and organized and it was nice because they gave us complementary ranch. However the catfish was really over fried and not moist at all when eaten. The cajun fries were really nice and criss cut which was really different and much more filling which i enjoyed. The sweet potato fries were really good as well, however i would just stick with the cajun ones as they go better with the sauce that the shrimp comes in.

When the rest of the food came out it there was very little sauce to soak and dip the rest of the shrimps in. As in, the bag was very minimally filled to dip the newly peeled shrimp after deshelling. The shrimp however tasted quite old or not fresh. The shell did not peel off very nicely at all, It was sometimes mushy and not very crunchy. The sausage was different than boiling crap and not very meaty. It was more rubbery? The corn was small and not soak in the sauce enough. And overall the sauce was just not as good. The garlic buttery flavor was not present and It was pretty watery.

In the end the crab hut is okay. It was nice that it wasn't as crowded and the bibs were cute. However everything else was sub par or just plain...

Food quality: 4/5 I always get the crawfish and shrimp combo with the full house sauce and medium spicy with extra sausage in it. We also always get some cajun fries for the appetizer. I thought the food was for the most part spectacular, the only qualms I had were that they had mixed frozen and fresh crawfish in the bag, creating a dice-rolling effect when you ate one as to whether it would be delicious and fresh or mundane and frozen. Also the cajun fries could have used a great deal more cajun spice... They were just lightly dusted with cajun spice. Those two reasons are why it's minus 1.

Food presentation: 3/5 I'm torn, because on one hand, it seems a little weird giving you food in a giant plastic bag just plopped down in the middle of the table (even though I've eaten at crawfish places in OC many a time), while on the other hand, it's a norm for the crawfish food to be served like this. It gives it a very dive bar feel, but at the same time it's a sit down restaurant and you use a bib. The main reason I'll knock off two points though is the fact that the crawfish was swimming in the sauce, which didn't make the food soggy, it was just a pain sometimes to dig through the sauce to find those last straggler pieces.

Ambiance: 4/5 The place has a very nice dive bar feel to it, but one where you sit down and eat with a bib. It's a fun place to eat. The only thing I thought slightly weird was the grass hut-looking roofs on the inside when it's a Louisana-style food being served... It gave off an islander theme to a Southern-food styled restaurant which I thought was odd/funny.

Customer Service: 4/5 Our server was nice. The person who brought us our food even asked us if we needed anything else which reminded me that I was wanting some more cajun spice so she brought it out to me right away.

Overall...