Le maudit Mo D.

The Mad Crab is a dump

(posted on TripAdvisor, only without the swears)

If you visit scenic Whidbey Island with hopes of dining in the style of a mid-level amusement park restaurant or are looking for a low-quality Applebee’s experience with the taste of an airport diner and the prices of a top-end steak house, wander down to The Mad Crab, where you will leave the restaurant mad and crabby.

The menu states that the owners of this culinary sphincter of Whidbey Island honed their tourist-screwing skills in Las Vegas before opening this school cafeteria-with-a-view in Coupeville. Scouring the shelves of Sysco for instant mashed potatoes, fishy-tasting farm-raised salmon, and two-day-old rolls with the consistency and flavor of a wool sweater, The Mad Crab owners serve unwitting visitors the lowest quality foods at the highest possible prices and are very good at making their customers unhappy to the point of hauling the cook out of his kitchen to offer face-saving but reluctantly comped entrees. Our table was so sticky that the paper napkins stuck, and the floor needed a good mopping.

The cooks clearly learned how to melt margarine in a microwave to make a thick “beurre blanc” sauce for the fish while cooking in a prison kitchen. Three completely-raw shrimp rolled in paprika plus Ragu spaghetti sauce jazzed up with clumsy chunks of garlic under the alias of “Firecracker Prawns” set us back $23. The “vegetable side” consisted of mushy zucchini. And beware: these prices are justified with a liberal shaking of dried parsley over nearly EVERYTHING to fancy it up. You could do a lot better driving into Oak Harbor and hitting the Arby’s instead of wasting your money at The Mad Crab. The Mad Crab is a dump and I will rejoice when they get shut down. They suck that hard.

P.S. The “Shellfish Selection” was adequate.

Posted by Zerd at August 16, 2008 04:19 PM