The Roasted Crab — Restaurant in Santa Clara

In the last few years, there are many restaurants specializing in seafood in the SJ area. The crawfish and crabs seem to be the favorites because these restaurants have their specialty sauce dialed in perfectly for the taste of customers. We happened to be in a new restaurant in Mercado shopping center. It’s close to HomeGoods and Movie theaters, one stop shopping and dinning. The parking lot is huge easy to find a parking spot on a busy Friday night. The place is new and clean, full bar but not too many tables, therefore reservations is recommended. The prices are on the mid level $$ but the food is excellent. The sweet potato fries were amazingly crispy and mouth watering for appetizer. The shrimps on skewers were so tender and well marinated. Deep fried calamari was crispy and can’t stop eating. Cajun squid was just right amount of spice and tender. The crab we had was big and full of meat, the sauce was extremely tasty, I’m a good cook but I can’t imagine how they roasted this crab with full flavored like that. Some crabs have less meat inside the shells, but the one I had was full to the shells, they do know how to select their crabs. It’s all in the sauce, flavorful and the salt was just right. We had crawfish also, they came in a bag with the special sauce again, quite excellent, we asked to take the sauce home to eat with baguette or steamed rice. I normally don’t like to eat crawfish because there’s not much meat and lot of work to eat them, but they’re actually satisfying when tasting them with the sauce of course. The fried rice was specifically fried, a little burnt to have some crispy, crunch taste, quite unique and good IMO. The salt was just right also. The oysters were so fresh and sweet, they’re supposed to be a special hand picked from some famous source, I couldn’t have enough of them although they’re not inexpensive LOL. The clams were amazing, haven’t seen any of the full bodied clams before, so juicy and tender and their sauce was delicious. We were insisted on trying their signature drink, shark, it’s a huge glass with some blue mix with shark gummy beat type in it that you can actually eat. It’s big enough for both of me and my wife and quite unique. We will take our children back here for dinner, they will love this place although they’re not crazy about seafood, but my daughter likes crawfish and my son...

Me and my girlfriend decided to try this place a few weeks ago, the service and the food where ok. The seafood boil wasn't bad, it didn't have to much sauciness probably because we like it with more sauce and it definitely doesn't have enough seasoning. It's weird the garlic sauce they have is just a scoop of garlic out of the jar with the mussels which is strange, it was uncooked and was just sitting there on top of the mussels. The server brought our bill in the middle of eating, I'm not sure if she thought we would run out in the middle or if we would be surprised when we saw our check, but it was very weird and unprofessional. She didn't even ask if we would like dessert or if we needed anything else more less we felt like we were profiled. We go out to eat crawfish boils very often and we go to different restaurants in the Bay area so it's kind of disappointing being profiled and our bill being handed to us in the middle of eating without even asking us if we needed anything else. Quite honestly we were even looking at the dessert menu and we where about to add even more food to make it to go, but the server was ready to kick us out, so we didn't even have a chance to do that. At some point I believe it was the manager that even came and checked on us, I'm not sure if he overheard when we were whispering about the garlic being uncooked on the mussels, but it was nice and brief to see how we were doing. The thing that disappointed me the most is the fact our server brought the bill before we even finished our food. So we paid and we left and overall it wasn't extremely bad, however with this kind of issues the food being not at top and at the same time being profiled with the poor servers judgment it's annoying. So that's why we're giving this...

Excited to bring our family of 5 here for the first time and it was so disappointing we walked right out. Upon entry, My husband and I stood around with our 3 children for 15 minutes with not even so much as an approach or Acknowledgement to seat us. (The restaurant wasn't packed at all) Finally, they got someone to seat us in the corner. And walked away immediately after seating us. No utensils. No waters. No, 'a server will be with you guys shortly' nothing. We sat there another 15min with absolutely no one to approaching us, I accounted it to being short of staff but then people were being sat down after us & served drinks immediately. At that point, with 3 anxious children 3, 5 & 9yrs old- we just got up & walked out.

Customer service was poor- only because we didn't recieve absolutely any service at all. Can't comment on the food since we didn't even get a sip of water. Just going to stick to boiling crab.

Walked right over next door to Pho Hoa, immediately was approached by staff, given waters right after we were seated & within the 1st 2 min. Another staff approached to take drink & food orders. Totally different vibe. Much more packed. & more of a vibrant atmosphere.

Roasted Crab was just so disappointing. 🙄 & we've been wanting to try this place out for a LONG time now since we only go to...