The Boiling Crab — Restaurant in Santa Ana

So you have this sudden craving for spicy seafood, so fresh, you'd think they just caught it in the morning (well, I exaggerate, it's fresh, but not that fresh). Welcome to The Boiling Crab, if you've never been here before, be prepared to eat using only your hands. And, it's the best way too. We settled on the shrimp, mussels and crawfish. The shrimp was excellent, the mussels ok, crawfish was pretty good. With garlic butter sauce, and shebang sauce (what it is, its all their sauces combined! ). Spiciness ranged from mild to hot. First lesson. If you can't handle heat, don't! So their sauces were very yummy (and it's why you come here in the first place) but can be spicy even if you only ordered mild. So in the future, we will order mostly no heat, and mix in the spicy sauce as we go. Second lesson, order only what you think you can eat when you're full, because near the end, it was a struggle (you want to keep eating but your stomach has hit the limit). Last lesson, for newbies, there is a secret ritual... you have to squueze the lemon, and mix the juice in the salt and pepper containers that they give you (duh?!), only Captain obvious would not have known... This is your dip that sends the flavors to another level. Some tips, the corn is super sweet but super hot, have lots of towels ready, and wear that bib! (If this is the only thing you remember, wear the Bib! It will save your day and your clothes! ) All in all, a fun time for everyone, the staff are very nice and attentive to your needs. The place is very comfortable, not elbow to elbow. The wait time can be a bit long but tolerable. Come early or late, the food comes out quickly, and(again) very hot. I think I would ask for gloves...

1st time. A bit confusing, much of the prices are marketplace, which I understand, but you have to ask more questions than you want to to find out what's what price. So decided on the shrimp it was 14 bucks a pound, seemed cheap, she asked what side? Red potatoes, small additional $3 additional. But you don't want just shrimp and spice because it goes in a bag. I also ordered Catfish and 🍟 automatically comes with. So guy delivers bag of shrimp and says catfish coming. I'm like hold on this is plenty and I was hungry, they cancelled order, that would have been way too much food. Now the food is fresh, but you have to peel the shrimp out with your hands it was a lot of work, so everyone's table was a mess. You get a bib and a paper layed over top yo just throw your shells. I had to ask the mom and daughter next to me how do you peel this they showed me on her plate so flipping nice of them, saved me. Fun, tiring, priced right I thought if you know what to order. I got out for about $25, including a beer. Imbnotba huge fan of shrimp, but was priced right, I wanted the crab but I was a bit intimidated didn't want to walk out dropping $60 on dinner, next time I'll just get crab and side Ill see how that works. She was just suggesting I need to get multiple things; not sure I need to. Wouldn't suggest bringing kids here if they're a first timer unless the parents want to do double work. Would have been perfect to have some yummy buttered bread or a side of rice Ill have to check on that next time when I'm not such a newbie.I bet they don't serve great bread but I get why, they want people to buy more fish. Until next time Mr. Crab,...

The ordering system here is very confusing. My friends and I have been to a similar restaurant (Kickin' Crab) where they have "packages", which essentially allows you to pick 2-4 types of seafood with sausage, potatoes, and corn for a set price. Kickin' Crab was very user-friendly, in that way. By contrast, The Boiling Crab does not allow you to mix crab with anything, it has to come in its own separate bag. Also, crab is "by order", not a certain poundage. You can only order clams by the whole pound, but shrimp can be ordered by half-pounds, etc. It was an adventure trying to figure this all out. The Boiling Crab is starting with 4 stars from me, because of the anxiety the dining experience starts with.

Bags come out as they're ready - not all at once so heaven forbid you and other people at your table have similar things...its going to be confusing with different servers bringing different bags when they don't know who ordered what and you're all trying to figure out who's bag is whose.

The meat was high-quality (snow crab, clams, shrimp) and everyone enjoyed their meal, though we all agreed that we prefer Kickin Crab's sauce better (sorry to keep comparing). We added sausage, corn, and potatoes too. It was suggested that a roll of paper towels would be better than napkins and for a party of 7, having more than 1 crab cracker would've been nice. The sweet tea was good and I like that their bibs were pink.

Final verdict: I love eating seafood out of a bag, but wouldn't come back here to do it. There are other options that are less confusing and more delicious than The...