Crab Hut

I’ve given this place a few chances and think it’s pretty good, but not great. I always leave full, but concluding the food was just average, while the prices are downtown San Diego-​style = too pricey for the taste.
Was just here a few days ago and got one of the buckets. For two of us, there wasn’t nearly enough food. The only impressive thing I can say about this place? They know how to kick it up for the spicy! I love me some spicy food, and the spicy sauce is kick-​ass spicy. I could have ordered a shot of that sauce. Otherwise, I think I’m still on the lookout for a truly good, affordable seafood place downtown.

The good was very average and I find that Joes Crab shack is better. They do have good gumbo here but that’s about it. The jalepenos poppers were dry, the fried orka wasn’t a hit either. For my meal I ordered the ½ shrimp ½ crawfish. I regretted the crawfish since it has no meat. I hate that the shrimp is left with everything on. If I wanted to work for my food I would have ordered crab. My mom and I also felt sick few hours after eating here. Skipping this place from now on

Decent food for decent lunch prices. Enjoy an app if you don’t want one of the entrees, they’re a good lunch size too.

Always have a great experience at the Crab Hut. parking is limited and the place is kinda small but the seafood is delicious with great portions and reasonably priced. Staff is friendly and accommodating.

I’ve been a shameless addict at Crack Hut for years. Best Louisiana seafood this side of the 56 freeway.
Sauce = Full house (because I’m a hoarder and want it all)
Spice level = half-​medium (because I want to taste flavors not lick Satan’s booty)
* a side of rice (because I like to remind myself I am Asian)
My Fatty McFatson sides of choice include:
calamari
tomato basil soup
all da fries (crisscut/​cajon, sweet potato)
I usually pillage a village of crawfish with each visit. And if their cousins, the skrimps want to battle on the dining table, I am also game. They’re a little bigger, so I end up taking the remainder home for the next day. I then add some more skrimps from Ranch 99 to sweeten the pot and fill my belly (that has a 6-​pack beneath it, I swear). The garlic breath afterwards help keep away the hooligans from grabbing my elbow as I walk by. Sorry fellas, the ladies don’t dig that kinda «hollerin». Introduce yourself in proper English, don’t rub your palms together while licking your lips and maybe you will get a decent response. Speaking of licking lips, the sauce at Crab Hut is super-​bomb. It’s thicker and garlick-​ier than the other crawfish establishments.
Sodium level = 1 million mg per tablespoon, but if you run from the cops on a weekly basis, you basically sweat it out, right *shrugs*? Win/​win, baby (and I am not talking about the VIetnamese surname). Was this review helpful? Damn skippy.

Crab Hut is possibly the best seafood restaurant in San Diego. I compare it to a cross between Spondivits and Pappadeaux
in Atlanta. The staff is attractive, friendly and always gives good service. The bar is always fun and I love the «dig in and get messy» vibe. If you’re ever in San Diego, you have to go here! Try the Dungeness with full house sauce, but know to pick your spice level wisely! Five stars all day!

Was not impressed by this restaurant!
I’ve worked at an establishment similar to this: Cajun seafood/​creole mix. I’m fully aware of the nuances of working in a restaurant of this style!
Service was adequate. They were very understaffed on a weekday, midday. Only saw 3 – 4 employees in this pretty large restaurant. Didn’t have anyone to bus tables so several tables were open but still had several groups waiting.
My boyfriend and I waited about 20 minutes, which was accurately estimated by the host.
We sat down and were starving, so we immediately ordered an appetizer and, not long after, our food.
Appetizer was the calamari and fries. My boyfriend and I basically inhaled this because we were starving. Calamari was chewy even though it was fried and lacked flavor/​spiciness. Fries were average, nothing special. Tartar sauce works wonders though and we finished it before our server brought out the food.
FAIR WARNING: «Hot» level spiciness is REALLY hot. I couldn’t even enjoy my pound of shrimp because it was burning my mouth and insides. Only reason I didn’t send it back was because the poor server was all by himself doing all the tables. The rice I ordered and the butter given on the side couldn’t even reduce the spice.
Our bill was a total of $ 47.50 + gratuity.
Overall:
Service — pretty fast, decent. Please schedule more people, the servers look so tired!!!
Prices — not worth the quality of food to me. I paid more for shrimp than usual and the sauce ruined it. I would rather spend $ 30 at another establishment for better food.
Food — average/​below average. Wouldn’t come back here.

This was my first visit and everything was great. The food and service is amazing. The oyster is great for the price. Would definitely come again.

Delicious — great, attentive service. Doesn’t substitute for Boiling Crab, but it’s a very close second :)

Second time we tried this chain– first time was in Kearny Mesa and the second — at this Gaslamp location. Right off the bat we were promptly greeted and told our server was a bit overwhelmed with tables but it would only be a few minutes, and then proceeded to take the drink order; I appreciated this gesture more than he realized.
Nevertheless the server attended to us in a timely fashion, king and snow crab legs combo bag was interesting to say the least. Not enough «combo» for the price, however to be fair the crab legs were succulent, sweet and savory, shrimp cocktail was a very generous portion, served on the rim of a chic and modern stainless steel martini glass, filled with ice and house recipe cocktail sauce.
Plating and presenting style left us a bit underwhelmed– no plates/​bowls, no where to temporarily discard crab shells/​waste.
Most definitely will return to get our crab on!

Me and my sister were just walking, looking for a place to eat. Then, we saw carb hut. We came in and was seated right away. Place looks great. We were seated by the window. Staff were nice, the host took our orders, drinks and food because the waiter was at another table. I appreciate that the host took the iniative to do that instead of just waiting for the waiter. Food came in at a good time. Wait wasn’t that long. Food was great. We had the calamari and sweet potato fries appetizer and the seafood bucket (medium) we didn’t finish it all so we took it home.
I will be back at crab hut when i’m around. Its worth a try!

I like this location better than the one off of Convoy. It’s not as crowded and even though it’s downtown, believe it or not parking is even easier downtown than off of Convoy. Crab hut has more menu options than at Boiling Crab. They have combos, house dishes, soups and appetizers on top of their boil specialties. They have really good jalapeño poppers if you need something to snack on before you get down and dirty. I don’t like getting the crawfish. It’s just too much work for such little meat. I do love the shrimp and the snow crab legs. I get the full house sauce ½ medium. They have a bunch of sauce options old bay, cajun sensation, lemon pepper, garlic butter, o-​butter, plain, and full house (a mix of sauces). Crab Hut also offers happy hour and daily specials. You can’t beat that! Now get crackin’.

Service is the absolute worst in San Diego. I would have to blame management for this.
Wilson (Manager) has no customer service skills and absolute douche bag.
Go elsewhere unless you’d like to have your day ruined.

Let me start by saying: the service is absolutely awful. The manager, GM or whatever is the worst!!!
WITH THAT SAID, TAKE OUT! FANTASTIC SEAFOOD. Forget all the hype on NOLA seafood, this place completely shames NOLA anything.
Just remember when crab season is… That changes everything. Let’s just stick with shrimp —
Cajun mild (medium gets a little on the spicy side)
— 2lbs of shrimp (comes with heads, THANK YOU)
— 1lb sausage
— 1lb corn
— rice on side
**don’t waste your time on mussels, clams, etc or crawfish (unless you’re being stupid and just dying for some crawfish) — everything is by weight so be smart about your order!
BOOM. THANK ME LATER.

Was in the area so decided to stop by here bc I was craving for seafood.
Ordered crab poppers, clams, shrimp, and sausages. Full house sauce, medium spicy. Also got two sides of rice because I love eating the sauce with the rice.
Once the appetizer came, me and my boyfriend finished that within minutes. We love the crab poppers at crab hut. When the rest of the food came, I was not as pleased. The taste was a little off. It was a little bit too salty for me. I always eat at the one in convoy and love the sauce there. This place was missing a little bit of sweetness. Ordered all the same sauce and spice level for the clams, shrimps and sausages but each bag tasted different. The best bag had to be the clams but there should have been a consistent taste since I ordered the SAME sauce.
I rather just eat at the place in convoy

I don’t know what all the hype is about this place. I was invited here for a birthday, and I was told to order the king crab bag. The crab was pretty good actually, but the rest of the food was not.
We waited about 40 minutes for our food to come out, and everyone had their food come out at separate times. (My dad, a former waiter, has told me the one rule of courtesy while being a waiter is to bring everything out together. Children, women, then men). Certain things in my king crab bag were tasty, while others weren’t. We had to continuously ask the waitress for our crab cracker and for paper towels.
We were there to celebrate a birthday and when we asked for a simple shot of tequila, the waitress told us that we could not order anymore alcohol because the bar was closing. Honestly, I respect that and see that she was probably wanting to go home, but if I owned this restaurant, and my waitress told the customers no about serving alcohol because the «bar was closing» I would have to take care of this issue. All she had to do was pour tequila into shot glasses and that would have raised our bill $ 30+ and brought her tip up as well.
This was just not a good experience, and the reason it gets 2 stars rather than 3, is because I have heard that this place was great from only about 20% of people. The rest are bad reviews. Go as you please… And have fun!

I love a good crab spot. This place definitely has potential! The food is delicious and is very flavorful. I got the snow crab clusters and a full pound of shrimp. I recommend getting the full house for your sauce flavor. It will not disappoint.
However, the reason I am only giving two stars is because of the customer service. Our waitress was not friendly and didn’t check on us at all. She did inform us that since we were a party of six or more that a gratuity would be added to our check. That’s fine, but at least give us the 18% service that you’re adding to my bill. We had two separate checks at our table and when we asked for the bill she only gave us one check. We then had to flag down the hostess to get our waitress so that we could pay the other check. The hostess was rude as well and said we needed to wait.
The food is great here, but the staff needs to be retrained.

Seafood is best served… Deliciously! And crab hut fully understands this concept. I normally get the spicy jambalaya. I’m never disappointed. Burp.
This weekend I ventured and tried the shrimp scampi and the creole pasta dish (forgot the name). As you can see, I’m quite adventurous… Pasta hopping. Ok, I guess that’s not so adventurous. But, anyway, back to the point. Each dish is full of flavor, delicious and the portions are enough to give you leftovers and serve as late night munchies. Please tell me everyone has those.
We come back as often as we can for our crab hut fix. Oh! And the purple haze beer is good, too!

I seem to always show up right as the rush is beginning but this staff can accommodate any amount of people and still make every individual still feel like a VIP.
The bartender Johnny has always recommended the best meals without fail and his specialty drinks are on point. I will continue to go here and have to tip my hat to the manager Tim for running such an efficient team.
Try the snow «S n S» (snow crab and shrimp) it’s HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!

Mmmm mmm mmm! So many great things I want to say about the Crab Hut!
First off I went to this place two days in a row for the steambag. The first time I had the crawfish, shrimp, sausage and corn.
And it was amazing and I was a lot of food. And the price actually wasn’t that bad.
The second time I went I go the seafood bucket and that was lot of good my fiancé and I both at the seafood bucket and it was a lot for us. It has king crab, snow crab, crawfish, shrimp, sausage, corn, potatoes, mussels, and scallions. To top that all off it was only $ 55. When I say it was a lot of food that’s and understatement.
I actually wish there was one where I lived so I could go to it once a week. I will definitely hit this spot whenever I’m in town it’s a must. Oh I’ve talked so much about that I forgot everything else.
The service there is good but the drinks are ok. Bathrooms are clean and the waitress was very friendly.