The Boiling Crab

7-9 Osullivan Rd
Glen Waverley, VIC 3150
https://www.theboilingcrab.com.au/

If those ASMR mukbang videos give you the heebie jeebies, look away now. If you love those however, then The Boiling Crab is for you. Hailing from America, this restaurant chain brings the traditional crab boil experience to Australia. You pick your seafood, pick your sauce, and the kitchen cooks it all up for you and dumps the entire mess onto the table for everyone to dig into with their hands. You do get gloves and bibs though – they’re not monsters. Unsurprisingly, the quality of the seafood tends to vary depending how easily that particular item is found in Australia, but let’s be honest – no one is here for primo seafood. You come here for the experience, and if the thought of eating nothing but crustaceans for a meal fills you with elation, rather than dread.

Rating: 12/20 – good fun.
Which seafood is freshest? Prawns, crabs. Octopus are ok too.

The recommendation is 2-3 orders of seafood between a pair, depending on how much shell your chosen item is. So instead of missing out on a big chunk of the menu, I opted for 2 serves of the All In One Bag ($39), with some Snow Crab Legs ($39, 300g) thrown in, as well as Okra ($7.5) and Potatoes ($4.5, 3pcs) for good measure. Sauce-wise, I couldn’t decide, so I went with The Whole Sha-Bang – a mixture of the original Cajun, lemon pepper, and creamy garlic.

The crab legs and prawns are reassuringly delicious, the flesh sweet and firm, noticeable even after being drowned in spicy, salty, garlicky sauce. Speaking of the sauce, it was so delicious with the fluffy potatoes, and the crunch of the okra was a nice change-up of texture.

Not so good were the scampi and crawfish – they’re really not all that common in Australia, and it shows in the mushy texture and slightly fishy taste. And in the ‘passable’ level sit the mussels (plump, though occasionally gritty), clams (about what you’d expect), and octopus (pretty chewy, but I actually kind of like that).