‘Lick your fingers and get messy’: Seafood boil restaurant opens in North Myrtle Beach
Don’t wear your Sunday best for a meal at Mr. Crab.
You should be prepared to get a bit messy at the new restaurant in the Gator Hole Plaza in North Myrtle Beach. It specializes in seafood boils.
“This is a real crab boil. This is a messy crab boil. Lick your fingers and get messy. It’s the real deal here,” said Mr. Crab bar manager Rachel Barr. “We’ve got sauces and flavor. You’re going to need gloves.”
Customers can choose boils featuring crab (blue, snow and dungeness), lobster tails, shrimp, crawfish, mussels, clams and sausage, and they all include corn and potatoes within the boil. Prices start at $11 per pound for clams.
The boils are tossed in sauce and served in a closed plastic bag. The four sauce options are garlic butter, Cajun, lemon pepper and the house special, which is a blend of the three.
The restaurant opened on March 6. The owners saw a need for a seafood boil restaurant in the area.
“We heard Myrtle Beach was for seafood lovers so this is a good place to come, right next to the ocean,” said cook and partner Johnny Lin, who has been cooking in Louisiana for the past 15 years. “I might retire here.”
The restaurant provides claw crackers, bibs, plastic gloves and wet naps to keep or wipe the sauces off your hands and clothes.
“Some people prefer it without the gloves so when they go, even after they wash their hands they still smell the [sauce],” Lin said.
Aside from boils, Mr. Crab has fried seafood baskets with french fries and either oysters, shrimp, calamari, catfish or soft shell crab.
In addition to seafood, Mr. Crab offers a few bar food items such as chicken wings, chicken fingers and cheese sticks, and has a kids menu and crayons for use on the white paper table covers.
There are also a number of appetizers, sides and desserts.
A happy hour from 2-6 p.m. features $.75 wings and other discounts on food and drinks. Hours are 1-10 p.m. or noon-10 p.m. depending on the day, though closing hours may be extended.
The business location was previously an Atlanta Bread Company but it has been vacant for a few years.
This story was originally published March 18, 2021 at 7:27 AM.
