Crabby Cafe – Chinatown BYOB

The food is pretty good here Nothing beats the crabby special sauce. I always start off with appetizers such as the calamari basket and the muscles marinara, love that sauce too! The fresh crawfish is my favorite and I love the snow crab legs. I usually go for one of the bucket deals! It’s great you get a bucket full of everything! Overall great service and food, I can’t get enough!

I waited for approximately an hour for a dozen raw oysters. Yes, it’s totally ridiculous! The manager (owner/​whatever) neglected smaller tables to place his focus on the larger party… oh, a party that was hosted by himself. The crawfish that I ordered was «mistakenly» given to the larger party and the restaurant eventually ran out. He «generously» gave me a measly 10% off for my bill to compensate my lost time. I mean how much can a dozen oysters cost when everything else I ordered was out! (What about I give the manager a 20% tip for him to give me back my hour wasted!!) It’s such an unreasonable exchange. I suggest prospective customers not to sit in when there’s more than two tables. Evidently, the restaurant can’t handle having too many customers and everything is «sold out.»

I gotta say that I appreciate having Crabby Café here in Chinatown, but the food and flavor isn’t as good as locations in the northeast or northern liberties. Quality isn’t consistent. Service is good and location has simple and clean décor. However, to those who are owns Crabby Café, Bön Chon, and many many places opening up recently in Chinatown that it is about quality and not quantity as one of my friends would say. Again I do appreciate you guys opening up these places though because it provides a closer location for us diners. What is also cool are the deals that Crabby Café has on specific day of the week like all you can eat, which you should check out their Facebook page for more details. Anyhow, for the same price I recommend going to South Philly and trying Dex and Syd, they are amazing on flavors of their seafood, especially crawfish.

I had a great time here. The staffs were really friendly and thoughtful. I also love how it’s BYOB.
First, we ordered the wings and fries and they were great. I loved the sauce that it came with.
We also had crawfish, clams and their sausages. The crawfish were a bit tiny for my liking but they were still good. However, the clams and sausages were perfect! I definitely recommend this place.

They got a special way to eat seafood that I didn’t see it anywhere else in Philly: they put all your seafood in the bags. Hands down! It’s not that strange because I tried it in other places before, but in Philly this is the only restaurant that you can get this kind of experience. The sauce is perfect! Can’t go wrong with the Cajun Spicy — it’s not that spicy to me to be honest. Phở is a bit off but don’t expect too much since you are in a seafood restaurant. It’s worth a try tho maybe you would like it. If you love mussel then come in on Monday they do $ 6 mussel. $ 1 raw oyster is 5−7pm weekdays on their happy hour.

The food is delicious, and above of all, the sauce.
The service is great and friendly.
Especially, all you can eat for $ 39 per person including snow crab, crawfish and mussels.

So, just a quick update on this restaurant. I enjoyed myself so much, that I’ve actually been there three times in the past week. I guess I had a backlog of crab craving to get through! I’ve since me the owner, Tony, who was very nice and acknowledged some initial tweaking they needed to do with their menu and service delivery. I would say that I’ve had no issues service-​wise at all, and both Tony and his staff have been very accommodating. I’ve gone through a number of the main menu items, and I’ve really enjoyed everything. After my initial visit, I did a little research on their preparation using the plastic bags for cooking and serving, and apparently this is not that uncommon. Learn something new every day.
So far, so good, hope they keep up the good work. Cherry street between 10^th and 11^th is slowly developing, which is nice to see. There are a few restaurants, commercial businesses, and a hotel. For a once sleepy alley, the recent development is a welcome change.

I had a bad experience here, unfortunately. I really wanted to like it since there aren’t a lot of spots that have similar grub.
First the good. Like many Chinatown spots, it’s a BYOB — makes eating out a tad more affordable and you can always guarantee you’re sipping on exactly what you want, right?
Now, the rest. The menu was pretty varied. I was expecting just crabs, but I also spotted a lobster roll on the menu, so I went for it. Now I will say that I am used to Cape Cod lobster rolls, so I guess you could say I’m spoiled in this department, but what I got was a pretty dry and meager amount of lobster on some plain, white, overly buttered sandwich bread. Bummer.
Many of my buds ordered the crabs and everyone’s meals came out all at different times so there were many dishes that got cold as we waited for everyone to get served. I understand this can happen (especially with large groups), but a little warning would have been nice.
Now the kicker! There was a piece of wood poking out of the bench and as we slid in, I ended up with a monster splinter in my leg. I’m talking ¾ inch thick chunk of wood. It went through my jeans and deep into my thigh. When I asked for a first aid kit and a bathroom, I received a box with a dirty set of tweezers and a tube of Neosporin. I wish I was kidding. What if one of their cooks injured themselves during work? This just isn’t acceptable. Glad I didn’t end up with an infection…

Giving this location 3 stars because your mood affects how you eat and if you aren’t happy, you’re not going to enjoy your food.
Let me start by saying that the sauce here is not a disappointment and if you have been discontent with Castor’s sauce recently, then Chinatown is not going to disappoint you.
My friends and I ordered separately. I asked for snow crabs, clams, and a 1lb of sausage. The waiter told me that the sausage is a lot, so I informed her that it’s okay, I will be sharing with my friend. When my food came out, I realized my sausage was not in sight. I asked the waiter for my sausage and she said she already told me when she brought out my food that she mixed it in with my friend’s order (my friend ordered a bucket of snow crabs with shrimp — it comes with corn, sausage, and potatoes). I felt as if this could have went wrong in many ways. First off, Why is my order with my friend’s order? I said I would share with her, not GIVE IT TO HER. They put it ALL in her bucket of order. Secondly, my other friend DOES NOT EAT PORK. What if the sausage were to have been mixed in her order instead? Last but not least, NO ONE ASKED FOR MY PERMISSION at any time while I was waiting for my food.
Another thing I disliked was the lack of professionalism when my friend asked for her corn to be on the side. The waiter first said «no we can’t do that». Then later said «I can ask the chef but I know he’s already going to say no. I know cause I’ve tried». She could have at least asked, came back and told us the answer. Not putting in the effort makes us feel like you’re being lazy. When she did ask the chef, it was loud enough for us to hear and was really uncomfortable as if we were asking the chef for too much.
Maybe it’s waiter. Maybe it’s the chef. But whoever it is, customers should at least have some say in their food.
***EDIT***
Came here for the all you can eat special for a second impression. New staff on the floor and they were extremely nice and caring. Food came out slow on the first round considering it is all you can eat. We were technically the last table so food began to come out quicker after the 1^st round.
However, some delay is a given since it’s a new thing they’re trying. Sauce tasted amazing but, it lacked the garnish I was expecting (lots and lots of garlic!) and it wasn’t as spicy as I thought it would be (I chose the burning sauce).

I’m not from Philly, so when I came up, I let my friends pick the spot. I don’t know if it was because we got there at 11:15 or what, but I was very disappointed with my entire experience here.
We arrived with a party of around 20, and when we did, they told us the kitchen closes at 11:30. That wasn’t a problem, since we had 15 minutes to order. However, one of my bros came late and when he came and placed his order at 11:23, the waitress told us the kitchen was closed and they weren’t taking anymore orders. The fact that they explicitly said the kitchen would close at 11:30 and they didn’t honor it is bad enough, but they couldn’t take just one more order!
Next comes the food. Half of us ordered a shrimp poboy and the other half of ordered phở. We got the shrimp poboy over twenty minutes later, which I don’t mind that much. What bothered me is I felt the chef was rushing all of the orders, since he closed the kitchen early and all. The shrimp was very dry, and there was extremely little sauce in the poboy: it was maybe a drop. When I asked for more sauce, I of course got declined because the kitchen was closed. About 20 minutes after the poboys came out, the phở finally arrived. Phở is extremely easy and quick to make, and is usually the fastest thing out if the kitchen in every other place; but it took them 40 minutes. The phở wasn’t even that good; the bowls were huge but not even a third of it was filled. Not only that, but one of my bros’ phở was still frozen; all the noodles were still stuck together and the meat wasn’t cooking in the soup because it wasn’t even hot!
Honestly if you’re looking for a place to eat, I wouldn’t recommend it personally. If you do end up deciding to come here, come earlier to see if that makes a difference.

Their phở is soo terrible that the beef wouldn’t cook when I leave It in the cold ass broth. The beef was frozen too. The bowl is huge the portion is so little!

If you’ve never had Hot N Juicy before, than this is the next best thing. I’ve been a frequent to their NE location. However, since my move to Delaware, this was the nearest. The prices of their seafood by the pound does fluctuates according to the availability of the season. Not only that, they also serve Phở.
Service was a bit slow, but the waitress was very nice and also gave me a 10% off discount of my total bill.

Too salty and sauce isn’t the fishsauce base that you would expect from Vietnamese crab boil places.

Took my friend’s recommendation and went this Sunday. My kids and I enjoyed our dinner! We ordered the crabby bucket with king crab since they are out of crawfish. The cajun flavor is amazing and makes us want to order another one! Fried Calamari and lobster rolls are not my favors though… Raw oysters are very fresh. Overall we had great experience and can’t wait to return!

It’s still summer and seafood weather, my friends and I were talking about how we don’t have a crab shack in Center City and we had to depends on the likes of Red Lobsters and the Joe’s Crab Shacks around King of Prussia/​Cherry Hill/​Delaware to get our seafood fix when one of them mentioned seeing a commercial on FaceBook that mentioned something called Crabby Café opening up in Chinatown so of course, we had to try it.
We had an address, but driving by Chinatown it’s hard to locate the place with their signs being barely noticeable. The façade blended in the background, you would have never known it’s there unless you really, really look. Apparently this is not the first ever Crabby Café, there’s another one located near the Piazza. This Chinatown location is planned to be opened on ⁹⁄₁₈ but the soft opening period started yesterday ⁹⁄₄. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of advertisement for it. While the store is located in Chinatown, none of the servers speaks Chinese and the menu items are not translated. I mean if you’re located in a neighborhood where almost 50% of the people use Chinese as their main language, don’t you want their business? Although that shouldn’t be surprising since there seem to be this slow invasion of other Asian cuisine into Chinatown. Bonchon across the street has nothing but English and Korean on their menu, at least some of the servers speak the language and when all else fail there are pictures to point at.
When we got there, there weren’t a lot of people and the air conditioning was a little too strong so we asked for some hot tea and then those cups were dirty even worst, the dirt can be rubbed off so we didn’t drink them and just used the heat to warm up. We ordered some fried oysters which came 5 in an order, same with the Crabby Wings. The crust on the oysters were a little too thick but it wasn’t horrible. The wings, however, were pretty good. They looked very dark on the outside, like they were burned but it has a light crisp on it and very tender and moist on the inside. There’s a strong taste of soy sauce, lemongrass and fish sauce. We ordered the spicy one so there’s some chili and a slight sweet tanginess. It’s a very good alternative to buffalo wings.
For the seafood entrée portion of the meal we ordered the Captain’s Bucket (Spicy), it’s a steaming bag of crab legs, shrimps, crawdads, clams, mussels, corn, potatoes and sausages in a spicy garlic butter sauce. The menu said that there would be dungeness crabs but there weren’t any but that’s besides the point. The point is that it was delicious. Even the crawdads were on the small side, there were enough snow and king crab legs to feed all four of us even though it was meant for two people. The steamy hot and spiciness justify the strong air conditioning because after a while we were burning up. I keep on wishing there’s bread or rice that we can use to soak up the sauce. I can see myself creating excuses every month so I can come back for more.
Having that said and gave them a four-​star review, cleanliness seems to be a struggle for now. Other than the aforementioned teacups, the paper towels are flimsy and cheap, it does little to help you clean your hands and face. You have to go to the only bathroom per gender to wash up and there were no paper towels in the dispenser. Another roll of those cheap paper towels were placed right next to the sink and soaked with water. And what would happen when you have a place of 30 customers all waiting in line to wash their hands and you only have 2 bathrooms?
Their marketing also has some room for improvement. I mean how else are they promoting themselves? For a seafood restaurant that relies on the freshness of ingredients for quality, you need a large turnover right from the start. And even thought they are Vietnamese and proud of it, why serve Phở? It doesn’t go with the identity of the place. If you’re doing vietnamese as well then why not add in Banh Mi? You can surely make crab cake/​fried catfish banh mis. Why not add vietnamese iced tea/​iced coffee and all the other drinks
Anyway, aside from some minor issues that needs to be addressed, this is definitely a place I can see myself coming back again and again.