The Boiling Crab- Alhambra-Moved

The Boiling Crab- Alhambra
742 W Valley Blvd.
Alhambra
626-576-9368

Much like The Boat House, The Boiling Crab is another no frills, Asian meets Canjun seafood place. Your table cloth is butcher block paper, your napkins are from paper towels. This isn't the place for those pretentious jerk people of Orang Curtain or the Worst Side. You order from seafood by the pound, with prices depending on the supply of seafood.

Fried shrimp, $8.99. This was great. Cornmeal batter covering sweet tender shrimp. This was awesome. Hot out of the fryer and crunchy, a steal for the amount and quality of shrimp. A great appetizer.

Shrimp, $9.99/lb. These are peel and eat shrimp with the heads on. The shrimp was tender and so fresh it must have been swimming earlier that morning. We got mild Cajun seasoning. Not spicy at all but tons of flavor.

Dungenous crab, $13.99/lb. All the seasonings were added to the dungenous crab. Lemon pepper, cajun, and garlic butter combined to make this a very flavorful, though over powered by the garlic seasoning. The crab was sweet and tender and there were a ton of crab!!

Blue crab, $7.99. Lemmon pepper seasoning added to the flavor of the blue crab. The crab was great. I like the taste and flavor of blue crab over dungeness crab.

Service was very good. But The Boiling Crab gets very crowded, you're so close to the next time, they might as well be part of your group. But the food comes out quickly, drinks are refilled quickly and the food is great. All in all a great time. But be prepared to wait for an hour or more for a table and they don't take reservations.

What is the difference between The Boiling Crab and The Boat House? Prices are going to vary due to supply. But I think the seafood is fresher at The Boiling Crab since they go through so much seafood. The Boat House seafood is fresh but The Boiling Crab tastes as though the seafood was swimming in the ocean just that morning. I wouldn't be disappointed if I had to go to The Boathouse but my first choice would be The Boiling Crab.

Cafe Sierra

Café Sierra
555 Universal Dr.
Universal City
818-509-2030

WOW talk about a seafood buffet. For $39.99, Cafe Sierra offers a great seafood buffet. Lobster thermador, king crab legs, shrimp, prime rib, all kinds of good stuff. Cafe Sierra is in the Universal Hilton Hotel. For the seafood buffet that is offered Friday and Saturday, they basically put buffet tables outside Cafe Sierra and have people sit all over. Our table gave us a great view of the parking lot.

The first food pictured is the king crab legs. They are served cold but are sweet and tender. Oh soooo good. They are already cut in half, ready for you to dig in. This was so great, I went back 2-3 times. The crab legs alone is worth the price.

The next picture is the prime rib and the lobster thermador. Since this was all you can eat, I just ate the tail. They were sweet and tender. The prime rib was rare. But with any buffets, it depends when you get the food. The prime rib was pretty tender and juicy. Maybe one of the better examples of buffet prime rib.

The next picture is the albacore and the beef rib. The beef rib was pretty bad. Not much meat and it was very tough. I loved the albacore. They put the albacore in a brown gravy, with tons of mushrooms. This was sooo good. I put it over rice. The albacore was tender and there were huge, I mean huge pieces of albacore.

Their famous shark fin soup is pictured next. It was thicken with lots of tapicoa. I've hadn't had shark fin soup enough to know, if they shredded pieces of meat were the real shark fin or not. But this was very good.

The next picture is the assortment of crab. They had duness crab, which had a ton of meat and was tasty and some of the king crab legs. The crab was served cold. The best thing about the crab is that they were not salty at all. Many places use a very salty brine to boil the crab. Cafe Sierra does it right.

The next picture is medium to large size, peel and eat shrimp. These were firm, tender and tasty. The cocktail sauce had a nice kick to it and added to the flavor.

I love Cafe Sierra. There are many other items served during the buffet. But it gets to be too much. I just worked on eating the king crab, lobster and prime rib. Service was good though our server answered her own questions. "Do you need any more drinks?" No, thank you." But she was attentive after she asked us twice what we wanted to drink.

I would go back to Cafe Sierra anytime.

Crab Cooker

Crab Cooker
17269 17th St.
Tustin
714-573-1077

Crab Cooker started in Newport Beach and has a location in Tustin. I ordered the large shrimp cocktail for $5.95 and the cracked dungeness crab for $16.20.

The shrimp cocktail was fresh. Nothing special but I couldn't help but think I could have gone to a Von's or Albertson's and for about the same price gotten much more shrimp.

The cracked dungeness crab was served cold. The crab was ok. A little bitter and that's not something you find in dungeness crab. The rice pilov was a little overcooked.

Service here sucks. When I got there, the host gave me the menu and told me to find any table I want. I though the job of a host was to take people to their tables. Then I waited at least ten minutes before I got any type of service. The waitress was OK though it took forever to get refills on water and ice tea.

I wouldn't go back to Crab Cooker again. Way too many other good restaurants with much better service and food.

Newport Seafood

Newport Seafood
18441 Colima Rd.
Rowland Heights
626-839-1239

The Newport Seafood in Santa Ana, that I went to a few years after this review, is owned by a different company than the original Newport Seafood.

I normally do not want to be social around September 11th. With the 5th anniversary of Sept. 11th coming up, I changed my way of thinking. Sure I am still very angry and sadden by what happened. I don't need reminders about that horrible day. I WILL NEVER FORGET. But being angry and bitter doesn't do me any good and more importantly it doesn't honor the memory of all the innocent people who were killed that terrible day. So I figured I would go and enjoy the company of a new found, fellow foodie and the food of Newport Seafood. Great company and great food always make a great combination. Newport Seafood provided the great food and my fellow foodie provided great conversation and company. All the while I had these two songs in my mind Calling All Angels and Proud to be an American.


We ordered the Newport Special crab and the shrimp with curry sauce, white rice, and two beers was about $47 with tip. The crab is listed as seasonal price, which tonight was around $9lb.

The Newport special crab is steamed and then topped with the special sauce, green onions and jalapeno. It made for a spicy wonderful dish. The crab was steamed just right and it was the so flavorful. It was messy but worth it.

The shrimp with curry sauce was label hot and spicy but I found it a notch below mild, and I'm not one for anything over medium spicy. The shrimp were large and tender. The curry was very good with a spicy but not too spicy flavor. The onions, green and red peppers added to the dish helped add color and a crunch to the dish.

Service was good but you do get the impression they want you to order, eat and get out as soon as possible. We sat down and barely took a look at the menu when a waiter came by to take our order. But we were so busy talking, we didn't really decide what we wanted. They must have came by 3-4 times asking if we were ready. They could give us some time to actually look at the menu. The food was served quickly and was served hot.

I would go back to Newport Seafood anytime.

Update 6-25-08




I went back to Newport Seafood for their Newport Special lobster, $15 per pound. I got a 5lb lobster for three people. The Newport Special is made with lots and lots of black pepper, ginger, garlic, and green onions. But the black pepper really overpowered everything. They used finely ground pepper. course ground pepper and even half peppercorns.

The lobster was tasty but a bit tough and of course had the overwhelming pepper flavor. I did enjoy the lobster because I like pepper but next time I'll ask them to go easy on the pepper.

Service was below average since the server actually left while I was ordering. What the hell kind of service is that?