Blue Crab Restaurant — Restaurant in West Point

Update 4/18/22

After posting this, I received a very kind email from the chef. She apologized profusely and explained that she was not made aware of the issue I had while it was happening. She said she would have taken care of our table, no problem at all. I’m impressed by the professionalism of the chef, and honestly, the food was really good. I would go back to this restaurant, and hopefully I would have a different experience.

I have no complaints about food, but I had the worst service of my life today. We made a reservation today for 1:30 hoping to get brunch. We put our order in, and the waitress had to come back and tell us we couldn’t order brunch anymore because the kitchen switched over at 1:45 (even though the sign outside said brunch was from 10-2). It was extremely disappointing and strange because the waitress gave us NO heads up that the window for brunch was closing (we were given brunch menus), and I have NEVER been asked to reorder before because of a mistake a server made. She should have been on top of this and told us before we ordered that brunch was not available. I think a better kitchen would have just cooked our brunch order. It continued going downhill. Our apps were served without napkins or silverware or app plates. We had to ask multiple times for water. The waitress seemed like she was constantly in a hurry to leave us (the restaurant was NOT busy, believe me.) My husband had to physically get up from our table to tell the waitress (who was hanging out by the door with another member of staff) that we needed the check and the to-go boxes. It was unbelievably bad service. I wouldn’t be surprised if the waitress was new, which is fine, and it happens, but the fact that we had to REORDER OUR LUNCH because of a mistake she made tells me that the kitchen didn’t even care about the level of service we were getting. One member of our party runs a chain of restaurants, and even she was appalled. This is a poorly run restaurant because if that waitress was new, she clearly was not getting the support she needed from management, and it impacted our Easter dining experience....

An early Friday evening visit..should have got the clue when only 2 others were seated. Read the chalk board that said it was "Happy Hour". Asked the Waitress about happy hour specials and not only did she not know it was happy hour she didn't have a clue what the specials were, only that it was "cheaper". Whatever...I ask for the IPA on draft..."we're out of that". Got drinks and was time to place food order...I asked for 1lb. steamed shrimp.. "we're out of that" so was forced to order something else, Mahi it was...along with an order of hushpuppies. Wife ordered salmon and my daughter ordered NC BBQ. Food comes and the sides were all mixed up and on the wrong plates, the BBQ literally looked like 4 day old meat thrown into a dish and microwaved until it was the texture of wood mulch, with no sauce whatsoever. The green beans were off color(spoiled) and wrinkled, fish was bland with a freezer burnt flavor that clearly had been microwaved (far from "fresh"). The hushpuppies came after we were about over this place, tasted like burnt grease and where almost black. So hard and crunchy but the center cold.. pretty clear that they were leftover from a previous day and tossed into the fryer again to heat up. A totally disgusting meal served by an inept waitress in a incredibly mismanaged restaurant...oh all to the tune of $96. If I were the owner I'd be shutting this place down to assess what the point is. I guess when you're a restaurant group that is trying to monopolize the area restaurant scene, you get spread too thin and this is what you get. Well, not from me again.. and that goes for Trojan, Coopers and all the Grub locations. Do better.

Update: After the "owner" promptly responded here to give the illusion they care I did indeed follow up with an email as instructed to offer more insight and answer whatever questions they may have. 48hours later and not a peep. This should be enlightening to anyone reading these...

I have high standards for restaurants, but I always try to be fair to what the restaurant is trying to be (not fine dining, greasy spoon, waterfront experience, etc). But when a restaurant charges a certain amount for this area, that comes with expectations.

The service inside is very good, there waitress (there’s only one) was quick and prompt and friendly, continuously making sure we were taken care of. Unfortunately that’s the best I got.

The food (for the price) was not up to par. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. There were several flaws in cooking (unevenly sliced chicken leading to drastically over cooked pieces, crab cake items without enough binding to keep them together, soup cups not filled to the top, drowning certain things in sauce or spices) and plain old ‘shalt not’s like serving canned green beans (or they were made hours ago and left to get soggy in water). This all could have been somewhat forgiven at a lower price point, but if you are going to charge $13 for four smallish crab bites, they better be pretty good without major preparation errors.

Ambiance is cute, but owners didn’t take the time or money to correct poor flooring leading to trapped dirt and grime, and the place is wildly over lit for dinner. They need to ditch the can lights for dinner, or install a dimmer on the switch.

So overall it wasn’t bad; but it wasn’t good enough to warrant us going back with many other options in the Williamsburg area. For the locals in West Point though it’s probably pretty good, since the options in town are pretty limited to fast food and pizza joints.

**Adding a star for the prompt response to review, and the tone of that response. Being willing to take feedback is a healthy sign for a food business. The pics on this profile definitely didn’t match what I received, we’ll check it up to a bad day in...