The Crab Bucket

Proper Cajun sauces pair zesty spices and seasonings with such character and complexity that they seem to cross each of the 10,000 taste buds on the tongue. The Crab Bucket honors that tradition with enthusiasm – plus bibs and paper tablecloths designed to manage all the ensuing mess.

The Crab Bucket opened last September in Salinas, replacing the Flying Chicken, an Asian wing restaurant. You will find the same owners, layout and staff. They recognized that they could not compete with Buffalo Wild Wings and Wing Stop so they decided to go another route. The Monterey Peninsula had no Cajun food restaurants open for dinner (unless you count Bubba Gump), and the closest comparable restaurant to The Crab Bucket is in San Jose.

A simple menu and snappy service keep the focus on sauce. The ordering process: Pick your creature (crab, lobster, shrimp and crawfish among the choices), your flavor and your level of spice.

But first comes the entrance to the restaurant. As you open the door you are greeted by a 6-foot chicken costume, a remnant of the restaurant’s past. A security guard stands at attention in the corner while the staff greets you from afar, down the long corridor of tables and wall-mounted televisions. The wait staff ushers you to one of the butcher-papered tables. They are diligent from the start, as they are throughout the dinner, offering popular meal suggestions and citing the drink options.

The Crab Bucket utilizes the same blueprint – namely, Louisiana-style seafood boil – as many of the popular Bay Area Cajun seafood establishments, most notably The Boiling Crab in San Jose. Getting a table at The Boiling Crab during peak dinner times is near impossible as there are, at any given time, another 10-12 tables waiting ahead of you. It can be a two – or three-hour wait.

Shellfish is the central element of The Crab Bucket; they serve various crab, oysters, lobster, crawfish, shrimp, mussels, green mussels and clams. Everything is ordered by the pound and listed as “market price” with exception of the mussels ($10), green mussels ($12) and clams ($11). Prices are mighty affordable, which hints that the sourcing likely isn’t the most responsible. A manager reports the crab comes from Russia, the oysters from Virginia and the shrimp from Ecuador.

It’s clear when you look around that shrimp is the best seller. Chloe, my waitress on this occasion, confirmed, “shrimp, kawa-banga style.” Sold.

We ordered a pound of shrimp ($12) kawa-banga style with medium heat, a pound of mussels ($10), garlic butter style with mild heat, an order of garlic bread (three slices for $3) and the popular lemon pepper fries ($3.50). We washed everything down with a Coke and water, although they serve bottled beer ($3.50) and have a few selections on tap like 805, Blue Moon and Stella ($5). We requested the fries come out first.

The lemon pepper fries are a must. Everyone in the restaurant had the same opinion, apparently, as lemon pepper fries were coming out of the kitchen as often as shrimp. They are golden in color, have a crispy texture and enough lemon pepper to make me salivate thinking about it. A single order of fries is perfect for two to three people to share. But bring your own mustard or other dippers; this Bucket only serves ketchup.

Your shelled dinner is delivered in a large plastic bag with the sauce of your choosing. Add in the optional corn on the cob ($0.75), sausage ($5/half pound) and potatoes (three pieces/$1.50) and you have a typical seafood boil.

There is a systematic way of eating head-on shrimp: Pop off its head and suck the juices from inside, pry off the shell, rub the precisely cooked shrimp in the sauce and gobble it down. Repeat these steps until a mound of shrimp shells lays in front of you.

Fortunately they have a washing station outside of the bathrooms.

The mussels were cooked and cleaned well, but the garlic butter sauce was unpleasantly overwhelming. The sauce itself has too much garlic, and the butter tastes almost oily. I tried it on a separate visit with snow crab legs ($16), and again it left me unimpressed.

The king crab legs ($25) are second to the shrimp on the list of recommendations so I opted to go for them on my following visit. They also serve crispy-on-the-outside-and-juicy-on-the-inside chicken strips (three pieces are $6). All of which, along with shrimp, was ordered by the table. This evening visit we took a larger crowd, and service was timely. The crab legs were steamed just right with sauce ordered on the side for dipping.

Everyone at the table and in the restaurant agreed, big ups on the lemon pepper fries and kawa-banga shrimp. But there’s more to recommend the place than that: The attentive service (overseeing without being overbearing) and mouthwatering food (starring that Cajun sauce) make The Crab Bucket a messy experience worth repeating.

THE CRAB BUCKET 1260 N. Main St., Salinas. 4-10pm Monday-Friday, noon-10pm Saturday-Sunday. 443-0111, www.facebook.com/TheCrabBucketSalinas