There seems to be a renaissance of bagged and boiled seafood options in Toledo right now. No fewer than three new restaurants focusing on the classic crab boil have opened recently. Being the crab lovers that we are at the City Paper, we had no choice but to try them all.
Cincy Crab
3535 Secor Rd.
cincycrabtoledo.com
Cincy Crab is located in the decidedly former Frisch’s at 3535 Secor, replete with well-known brickwork and a location where many can recall the Big Boy and Brawny Lad platters ruling for 50-plus years. The new tenant has transformed the space into an open, airy dining room with a fully stocked bar lining one wall. The look is clean and light and the menu is straightforward and easy to understand.
This location boasts the pride of the deep including oysters, clams, lobster, crab, shrimp and other delicacies. Orders are available for each mentioned item in half pound or 1 lb. increments and come accompanied, in crab boil custom, with red-skinned potatoes and corn on the cob.
The servers are friendly and accommodating and deliver a bucket to the table with supplies, including bibs, gloves and utensils along with plentiful napkins, which are necessary for this endeavor. The seafood is boiled before sauce, created in a separate saucepan, bathes the catch. The meals are delivered to the table in plastic bags where they are shaken, to coat the seafood, and then placed in a tray where diners’ fingers are used to remove the delicacies from their shells.
Spice levels for the sauces include the supposedly wicked-hot “XXX,” which we thought was not quite, as well as other options to coat the seafood, which was succulent and really very tasty. Cincy Crab on Secor is locally owned by brothers, Qin B. and Qin D. Chen, who also own and operate Kira Japanese Steakhouse, located just down the block in the plaza adjacent to El Vaquero. The association with Cincinnati harkens to the small restaurant chain’s origins in that Queen City on the Ohio River. Curious, as Cincinnati is not exactly known for its crab boils, however, based on this location on Secor Road, it could earn that reputation.
The seafood motif, with nets, shells and starfish throughout, makes for a welcome reminder that this is something otherwise not widely available in Northwest Ohio. This is definitely a place to try, and to love, in the future.
Boil Shack
4038 Talmadge Rd., Ste. 101
boilshackoh.com
In the strip mall near the corner of Talmadge and Sylvania, nestled between Panera and Sylvania Ave., the Boil Shack is in a spot that previously housed the Hot Pot. With new owners and a new concept which is pinching Toledo diners with delight, the Boil Shack is a crab and seafood restaurant with a menu containing several surprises. Appetizer selections include chicken wings (we tried the lemon pepper seasoning) as well as a number of fried seafood items. New England Clam Chowder is a standing menu item and there are several pasta dishes which incorporate the freshly cooked seafood which is offered on the balance of the menu.
Ordering the restaurant’s namesake seafood boil is a three-step process. First, pick your seafood feast consisting of crawfish, shrimp, several varieties of crab, scallops, lobster, clams or mussels (or a combination of those options). Second, choose your flavor — buttery, lemony, Old Bay or Cajun. Step 3 allows you to choose the heat level, ranging from none to hot, and then, the one that we could not resist, “punish me.” A few side items, such as corn, potatoes and a boiled egg, round out the menu. The food is straightforward and, frankly, spot on.
The setup for diners at the table includes a small bundle— a bib wrapped around napkins and plastic gloves— as well, several utensils for cracking crab or deshelling shrimp or lobster tail. The finished bags were presented to the diners, and we had to dump them out ourselves— a messy but fun process.
The lobster tail was sweet and tender and the shrimp, peel and eat style, while somewhat messy with the buttery sauces, was sweet and cooked perfectly. The crab legs (we tried the snow crab variety) seemed slightly larger than at the other new-to-Toledo crab boil restaurants that we visited. The staff is friendly and accommodating, although with all of the shells and napkins discarded while getting to the succulent seafood, the table could have been cleared more readily to make room and to allow us to spread out a little.
Note that this location does not have a liquor license, although you can bring in our own beverages (and we did). All around The Boil Shack provided an enjoyable meal and was somewhat less costly than the Cincy Crab and Red Crab eateries that we sampled on this Toledo Crab Boil Odyssey.
Red Crab Juicy Seafood
4941 Dorr St.
redcrabseafood.com
We dropped anchor and threw our crab pot in to see what we could catch at Red Crab, a makeover of a former Irish pub, Mulvaney’s Bunker, on Dorr Street just east of Reynolds Rd. The Red Crab lends itself to a seafood shack atmosphere. The tagline “Juicy Seafood” is well deserved. As with other boiled crab establishments, Red Crab offers a variety of seafood items including shrimp crab (snow, blue, king and dungeness) along with crawfish, lobster tail and a variety of mollusks like clams, green mussels, black mussels and scallops.
The offerings are sauced after cooking with your selection of cajun, lemon pepper, garlic butter or a combination of those. The spice levels run from “no spice” (although a member of our party, with an avowed aversion to enhanced Scoville units, who ordered “no spice”, still perceived some spicy elements), mild, medium, hot and, our favorite, extra hot. The place offers a full bar and a respectable beer selection along with a variety of seafood combos.
Red Crab’s menu features a slew of options for the adventurous seafood lover, moreso than the other stops on our crab tour. We were interested in the restaurant’s delicious looking oysters but sadly they were out that evening. We settled on the tasty garlic noodles as a side. We were also informed that the menu’s listed “daily specials” could be ordered any day of the week, so we took full advantage!
The presentation of the food has a flair for the dramatic, as the freshly boiled seafood selections, accompanied by red-skin potatoes and portions of corn on the cob, are brought hot to the table and in a heavy clear plastic bag which contains the seasonings and requested spices. The bag is then “tossed” at the table, which has a certain relaxing, ballet-like quality to the shaking (think perhaps of the old fashioned Jiffy Pop stove top entertainment of yore). The bag allows the seafood to be fully coated, staying true to the “juicy” moniker, and keeps the saucing from becoming a mess. The mess begins when you dive into the shellfish extravaganza and begin de-shellling and eating. The crab and assorted seafood offerings were delicious, but the included corn was a bit mushy for our taste.
There were many carry out orders leaving the restaurant throughout the evening. The bagged seafood and sauce would lend itself well to a gathering in the kitchen or dining room or, perhaps, better yet, without worrying about the mess, around the picnic table in the yard during the warmer months.
They’ve been open in Toledo for about a year and a half and Red Crab is part of a group that is operating in New York with a number of locations, as well as other states. The service is comfortable and friendly, the atmosphere, relaxed and welcoming, and the seafood is delicious. When you need to get your ‘crab on,’ consider Red Crab.
