"Clean" is really the best singular word to describe what's going on with the flavor and spice here when it comes to their take on the signature seafood-in-a-bag thing à la Hot-N-Juicy Crawfish style swamp dinner. ("Swamp dinner" you say? I am coining that as my own right now as I just made that up.)
Is "clean" what you want when it comes to this very unique cuisine? Probably not. I ordered my requisite 1lb clams and 1lb head-on shrimp with built-in corn cobs and potatoes and totally missed the oodles of garlic I assumed would be a part of the sauce. There was barely *any* sauce, and there were barely any garlic chunks to be found in the sauce. And the Smokin' Crawfish sauce was light, almost watery, and decidedly *not* buttery and not as savory as the HNJ sauce. A disappointment, both obviously and subconsciously, as I found myself instinctively wanting more umami, more swampy mystery substance. It just isn't here. You can pretend and conjure all you want, but there really is no x-factor in the sauce here. More disappointment: the proteins here are at least one-level *smaller* compared to those at the competing seafood-in-a-bag joints. The clams are 25% smaller, and the shrimp are 21/25 count, not the 16/20 (or sometimes even 11/15) count you find at the other places.
Don't get me wrong, if you've *never* had the Hot-N-Juicy "Special" or Boiling Crab "Whole Shebang" sauce experience, you'd probably think, "Wow, this shit is good!" and order more. But I cut my losses and decided to order another $2 Miller Lite (happy hour special) and call it a check. I need garlic chunks in my swamp dinner sauce. It's a dealbreaker! Yeah, the sauce at HNJ is so murky and mystical it can even give you hives if you consume too much of a funky batch, but it's worth the risk - it's SO good!
Bonus points: on the "clean" tip, all of the shrimp I received at Smokin' Crawfish were poop-less. Not deveined, but poop-less. Not sure if this is on purpose, but I thought it was worth noting, if you care about this sorta thing.
Nevertheless fun to support a "new" local spot trying to grab some of the swamp dinner market share - and it's a very big market! I totally understand why Smokin' Crawfish decided to open up shop.