When I was about 10, I lived in Miami Beach Florida and besides having one of the best beaches just around the corner, I remember visiting the multitude of Crab Houses with my parents. You’d sit at a wooden table wearing plastic bibs looking very silly and having buckets of steaming crab served in huge quantities.  I have not seen anything similar to that in California until I visited Boiling Crab just a few minutes South of Pasadena in Alhambra on Main Street.

Replace buckets of crab with bags of crab and you have the Boiling Crab!  Wooden tables, tons of people, bags with your favorite seasoning sauce filled with shrimp, crawfish, crab or other seafood delicacies and night club music encouraging you to shell these babies as fast as you can so that you can get more.

You get a bib and wax paper covers the table encouraging you to dig in and make a mess.  And, a mess you will make.  Sauce all over your fingers, hands and wherever the shrimp or crab cracking takes you.  Be prepared!  This is dangerous work – no white shirts or pants please!  Get ready and dig right in!

We ordered fried oysters which were served very similar to what I had in New Orleans – hot and delicious with a spicy sauce on the side.  Oysters were followed by 1 pound of crawfish with their ShaBang sauce, a Dungeness Crab (about a 2 pounder) in lemon butter sauce and a pound of shrimp in the Cajun sauce.  My fave were the shrimp.   They were huge and steaming hot and didn’t require as much work.  🙂  But, the crab and crawfish were really good as well!

Honestly, this 365 Things To Do In (around) Pasadena® activity is definitely on my list of top fun restaurants to visit.  Be prepared for a long wait.  Yelp goers say that the wait is usually around an hour.  We were lucky, waited only a few minutes before getting our table.  And, remember that you can also order to go.  If you do, don’t forget to ask for wax paper to line your table and enjoy!

LOCATION:
Boiling Crab
33 West Main Street
Alhambra, CA  91801

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