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| - After years of living here, I tried going in. When I left, I found out something very disturbing as to why I haven't before. It has nothing to do with the establishment or reputation, so don't let that dissuade you.
Out front, you see that it's in a strip mall and it's not a huge place. You go inside and it has the feel of a sports bar, but with a lot of families and bustle going on all around. Right away you see piles of napkins, bibs and seafood debris. No, it's not Aria, but that's what I like. People were comfortable eating with their hands, doing what needed to be done to get to their dinner locked in various shells and exoskeletons.
Service was the first and lasting thing I noticed. Someone sat me, and while I was deciding, 2 others came up to ask me if I was ready, what I may need, what to drink, etc. It was a tag team effort I appreciated. I have worked a lot of restaurants, and I know you have maybe 4-5 tables to take care of and honestly, 99% of servers don't give a shit about tables not in their section, "they're not tipping ME," or if the the customer has a problem with them, it blows YOUR tip. But here, servers help every table they walk by.
There were people waiting to be seated and 2 large groups were less than half occupying their tables pushed together. The only problems I had in this is seeing the solution. Some restaurants have a policy of not seating large groups until they all arrive which is how the first should have been handled. With the campers at the other party, I have and seen other servers take a table as people from the large group leave to set it up for a new 2/4 top.
The tables are funny, the table cloth is plain white plastic and the napkins are rolls of paper towels. I find it comforting because they don't mess around, there is high volume picking and peeling going on here.
The menu is a simple piece of paper with most options listed on it and the spiciness of how you want it prepared. Aside from crawfish, there's shrimp, crab, much more. Damn, I can't find my copy of the menu they let me have... They also sell sides, so I got rice expecting some broth with my order. I ordered a medium spicy combo. I can talk about different types of spicy all day, scoville units, the whole thing. But this had a nice lingering spiciness to it. Drinking soda (acids) doesn't help extinguish spicy food, but I was being good because I had to drive. No, beer wouldn't have helped, either. It may help some people to bring antacid if they want to show off. Ask them what the market rate prices are listed on the menu so you can compare, or don't get surprised.
Dinner was served, a server unceremoniously plopped a pound bag of crawfish on my table. Hahahaha. Rice came a few minutes later and I was already in my plastic bag. Crawfish is big in my family and I'm from the bay area. There is a LOT of work busting open the shells, sucking the heads and getting what little meat there is out. They had bibs and I opted to not get one, I thought I was a big shot. I didn't have a nutcracker either. You can tell some of the pros in the restaurant, they brought their own. But the shell was soft enough to bend and snap the claws (tip, snap towards the front of the bag, or rice bowl). The head can be scary to eat, there's cartilage and bits and things that I was used to having in a soup, hence the rice. It was a bed I let everything drip onto. People complain about how small they are, but you WANT that, the smaller ones growing have more flavor, just like peppers. You don't want a large or genetically engineered huge crawfish.
This is where it gets personal. To be honest with you, I haven't had crawdads in years since I worked at the Orleans buffet. But that was once and part of a larger meal. Before that, it was decades. I had a rush of all kinds of family situations and get togethers and people attacking crawdads. It's not like shrimp, there's a lot more savage carnivorous behavior in eating crawfish. I felt like I took the easy route with all the shrimp cocktail and larger crustaceans I've had in town. And there were a lot more memories than I was prepared for.
I made the mistake of reading some of the others reviews. Their complaints seem to be about places outside of the valley which I disregard. Everyone knows the south has better crawfish, "...everything is trucked into Vegas." But IN the valley, there's nothing like it.
I had about a quarter pound left to go for later, paid my tab. They have tee shirts there, which is nice. There's no greater advertisement I think than the local's place tee shirt. "Everything okay?" "Everything was fine, just a little spicy, baby doll" I lied. My eyes were red and teary from 25 years plus dormant memories.
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