I have been hesitant to try Brooklyn Crab for a while because I had heard that the prices were crazy expensive and the lines were super long. Plus as someone from Maryland, I have extremely particular tastes about my seafood - especially crabs. But after having taken a walk past this place the other day and seeing how fun it looked, I figured it was worth a try.
Holly and I got there around 4:30 and it was packed with tons of people just hanging out at the downstairs bar drinking and playing cornhole. If I lived closer, I could see this as being a fun place to just hang out and grab a couple of drinks with friends but it's really in a pretty hard to get spot without a car or bike. They quoted us a wait of over an hour, but that was expected so we grabbed some beers and just walked around the venue. After only 40 minutes they called us and we luckily got seated at the upstairs level where there is a fantastic view of the water. They did a great job with the decor and open design of the place - it really makes you feel like you are not in NYC. As expected the menu is all seafood with a focus on crabs - blue crabs, snow crabs, and Alaskan crab legs. I was shocked that they were charged $35 for 6 blue crabs - that's almost $6/crab!! Insanity - I could easily polish off 6 crabs in my sleep and without seeing what size they were, there was no way I was going to order it. We had wanted to get the lobster potato salad but they said they sold out of it a few hours ago - waa waa. But they sold lobster and potato salad separately so I'm not sure why they could just mix the two together and make more. Regardless, we started with the popcorn shrimp ($11) and fries ($3.50) to start. Holly got the Atlantic King Crab roll ($24) and I got the steam pot of the day ($28) which came with 8 mussels, 8 shrimp, 1 cluster of king crab legs, corn and sausage. The popcorn shrimp was small pieces of shrimp tossed in a spicy black pepper batter - they were sweet and salty although a bit too peppery for me. But combined with the fries - it was a good way to start the meal while we waited for our food. The steamed pot was served in a spicy cajun mix which was fine for the shrimp part but I didn't really want the mixture on my crab or mussels. I was very pleasantly surprised at how delicious the mussels were - they were the large New Zealand kind and they were super plumb and meaty. If I had known that, I might have ordered an entire order of them instead. The shrimp came with the head on, which I love, but they were on the small side so that was disappointing. The cluster of crabs came with about 4 legs and they were ok, there wasn't as much meat in them as I would have liked. The actual meat was sweet and good but there just wasn't enough of it and I was still pretty hungry after polishing off all the seafood in the pot. Luckily they had 2 pieces of corn to help fill me up and I had a couple pieces of sausage as well. I didn't try Holly's crab roll but she mentioned that it was tasty and it looked like a fairly decent sized crab roll.
They were quite strict about the 2 hour time limit without actually kicking you out. They would come by every 5 mins and "clean" our table or drop off the check without us asking for it. I mean, I get it, it's a busy holiday weekend but if this was any other day, I might have been annoyed by it but the waiter was generally pretty nice overall (and also a dead ringer for Landry on Friday Night Lights). Brooklyn Crab is a fun place to hang out and it has great views but if you are looking for really good seafood in Red Hook, I would say you will have better luck at the revamped Red Hook Lobster Pound down the street. They turned it into a full blown spacious restaurant with a fantastic menu (if I had to re-review it, I would give it at least 4 forks) and really great lobster at fairly affordable prices. I would go there for food first and come here for drinks. Total bill: $110 for 2 people with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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