The Boiling Crab To Go – Koreatown

Following a quick tour of LA’s famous The Grove and after enjoying a sorbet each from Bennett’s Ice Cream, we checked in our hotel and began the arduous task of choosing a restaurant with the help of strangers’ restaurant nitpicks, rants, and raves in the internets.  The winner would’ve been Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles, until I gave The Boiling Crab as an option to The Hubby.  He was all ears.  And it didn’t take long for us to agree on The Boiling Crab.

Thanks to Urbanspooners and  Yelpers, we learned that The Boiling Crab is popular enough that lines form quickly.  It was still around 6PM when I gave the restaurant a call to find out how long does seating take and they already had a wait of 20 minutes.  The hotel wasn’t far from the restaurant but considering LA traffic, it was a half an hour drive away.  We arrived just before 7PM and the wait has jumped to over an hour.  The host recommended The Boiling Crab To Go, which was just a few yards away.  So off we went to The Boiling Crab K-Town To-Go where the friendly staff works fast to get your order ready.  When we asked if there’s a place nearby for us to eat our seafood take-out, they suggested their neighbor, Café Home, which would accept eat-ins so long as we order drinks.

Fortunately, there were seats available and we were seated quickly.  It didn’t take long for us to get settled and put on the plastic bibs that came with our order.  Everything was pretty tidy.  The order even included a table cover, and hand wipes, along with the plastic bibs.

The menu was perfectly short, but because everything on the menu is what we wanted, it took some fast thinking and mental prioritization to figure out what to order.  In the end, we ordered the fried shrimp basket, fried catfish basket, and 1lb of crawfish with “the whole sha-bang!”.  The catfish were tender, the shrimp weren’t tough, the fries weren’t crispy but they weren’t mealy, and everything was flavorful.  The crawfish were so much fun to eat!  The sauce was piquant and slightly tangy, and we used it as a dipping sauce for the fries.

Being from the Pacific Northwest, we’re used to great seafood and it came to reason that we’d expect The Boiling Crab to deliver given the hype.  I’m glad to say that The Boiling Crab didn’t disappoint, though I’m very curious about the operations concerning seafood sources and how is it that the restaurant can offer prices at quite a low-cost.  Yeah, yeah, can the boos and party pooper comment.  I like good seafood at an affordable price just as much as the next gal and guy, but given that resources aren’t exactly unlimited, my interest has been spurred.