City Crab & Seafood Company – Restaurant Week

Recently, Dr. PB and MK wanted to grab lunch in the city… it happened to be Restaurant Week (which I’ve decried extensively in the past), and they wanted to check out City Crab.  It surprises some people that I’m generally not one to complain about restaurant choice – this topic came up when a friend found out I was at an Applebee’s with some non-food-obsessed friends.  Honestly, I go out to eat with my friends mostly to hang out with my friends; if they’re food-inclined, great, we’ll eat somewhere awesome (and, as you can see, most of my friends are indeed food-inclined).  If they’re not, I’m okay with going to Applebee’s or Friday’s because I should be able to find something to eat.  In any case, I wasn’t going to complain about going out for Restaurant Week to a restaurant that I’d been before and disliked, because that was easily 7+ years ago, things could change… and Restaurant Week is whatever, right?  I’m easy going!  Really!

MK and Dr. PB both ordered the soup option for the appetizer.  Weird skin on the soup (see it in the left part of the picture), but neither got sick after lunch, and both enjoyed their soup sufficiently to tell me so. 

I opted to go for the spring rolls just to be different.  A little overcornstarched on the outside, creating an ugly and unpleasant tasting exterior. 

But inside was chunks of lobster and crab, and abundant crunchy veggies.  Doused liberally in the chili sauce provided alongside, not too bad.  Nothing amazing, but then, nothing horrible. 

All three of us went for the lobster stuffed with crab and were surprised when a whole lobster came.  I think we all thought it would be just the tail or something… but instead there was a crab stuffing with a drizzle of a mayo-based sauce.  I ate the crab stuffing separately with a fork first, and it was a bit mushy, a lil on the bland side without the sauce.  The lobster itself was a decent size, and while it was NOT fishy, it didn’t have that succulent sweetness of very fresh lobster (ie, straight from the ocean).  But we didn’t expect it to; this is January in NYC, afterall.  It was good enough to eat plain – I didn’t use much butter except for the corn on the cob – but again, no great shakes. 

MK ordered chocolate mousse and seemed to like it quite a bit.

This is, of course, where she revealed her impending nuptials.  Congratulations again, MK!!!  Love you!!!  🙂

They scared me off ordering the Key Lime Pie – I’d hoped to order it for something tart to cleanse my palate a bit – but they told me in no uncertain terms that Key Lime Pie is sugary hurt-your-teeth-sweet, so Dr. PB and I went for the apple pie a la mode.  It would have been nice if it was warmed, but no matter.  The apple pie was decent – the apples were a little bit hard – but the top sugary crust had this crunch to it that both Dr. PB and I commented on being simply wonderful.  The apple pie part, mehhh, nothing special, but that crackly sugar crust with a bit of ice cream… mmm, awesome.  It was like they’re put sugar on top of the crust while it baked or maybe added it later then torched it?  Good stuff.  Love. 

Yvo says: The Restaurant Week deal wasn’t a bad one but wasn’t a great one either.  Yay for having whole lobster as an option, but nothing really stood out or was an OMG you HAVE to go here to eat this!… so I’m going to have to say resoundingly mediocre, which was my impression of the place 7+ years ago when I went for a regular meal.  (I actually got sick that time, after ordering the lobster bake, but… what can ya do?) 
middle of the road… nothing special that I had, anyway