The Holy Crab – One of the Better Seafood Boils in Town
If you haven’t noticed lately, Vancouver has been catching on to the seafood boil fad and new restaurants have been popping up everywhere promising a fun engaging meal with mallets, bibs, and lots of good ol’ seafood.
The Holy Crab is one of Vancouver’s newest additions and it is chain that originated from Singapore.
What I really liked about this chain was that their entire wall was an instruction board to deshelling! Seeing as how cracking whole seafood is not usually self-explanatory, it’s a great way for beginners to learn without feeling embarrassed.
Their menu is pretty simple. Keep in mind a lot of seafood options are based on market price so it’s hard to judge exactly how much you’re going to spend at any given time.
These seafood cutting scissors are something I haven’t seen before (even at other crab pot places in Vancouver and Seattle) so it was cool they offered these for us to open our shells more efficiently. The longer edge is used to slide inside the shells of shrimps and lobsters and it makes cutting the shells super easy.
Out of all the seafood I tried at The Holy Crab, I enjoyed the shrimp the most because I found it super juicy with a bouncy texture. Sometimes crab pots can overcook the shrimp into mush, but they fried the shrimps first which gave it a crispy exterior, and it nicely maintained the structure of the shrimp really well. I will absolutely be ordering this again.
Their freshwater crawfish were delicious and perfectly cooked. If you’ve never tried this before it’s worth a try, but just be warned you’ll get very little meat for a lot of effort. 😀
For a seafood boil restaurant, they surprisingly had really innovative drinks! Both of these had a component of lavender in it, hence the purple in both, and they were really delicious. I forgot the exact names of the drinks so I’m sorry you’ll have to look at the menu to find these lavender drinks. 🙂
As you can see, their sauces are really thick and they just slather a bunch on each seafood. While the sauces were good, I think I would prefer them being mixed in with the seafood prior to serving.
If you want to impress friends or relatives trying seafood boil for the first time, you should order the king crab legs! They are ginormous and absolutely scrumptious. Top notch seafood for a top notch price.
They source their dungeness crabs from the Pacific Northwest and these crabs are known for their sweet and succulent meat. The cool thing is that they also serve them whole! Forget them being opened and cracked for your pleasure… you get to do the hard work! I personally love that because I love playing with my food but not all people may think the same. 😛
Typical Fish and Chips. Nothing out of the ordinary but solid if that’s what you’re feeling.
Onion rings.
If you are to get anything fried from their menu I would suggest this, the Deep Fried Soft Shell Crab. It comes in a cute little fry basket and it was delicious. They use the same kind of spices in their deep fried items as their seafood boil so it’s incredibly flavourful.
All in all, The Holy Crab is a great addition to the seafood boil and their location is pretty prime (Robson St). If you have friends visiting from a city that doesn’t normally serve seafood boils, it’s a great restaurant to bring them to. The dinner is super interactive and fun!
Service Rating: 4.5/5
Food Rating: 4/5
Price: $$$
Overall Rating: 4/5
Happy Eating!
