Recently for a friend’s birthday my hubby and I made a trip out to Burnaby Heights to try out So Crab So Good Restaurant & Bar, a seafood restaurant similar to The Crab Pot in Seattle. If you haven’t been to The Crab Pot, basically it’s a seafood restaurant where they cook all your seafood in a giant pot and pour it directly out on the table. Diners are given a wooden board and a mallet so they can hammer away at their crab (and anything else you want to smash up!).

So Crab So Good is located on Hastings St, in Burnaby Heights – a bit hidden as it’s actually located upstairs, above a breakfast hole-in-the-wall restaurant. It’s a fairly small restaurant, so you will need to make a reservation in advance otherwise risk being turned away or waiting quite a long time unless you come right when they open at 5:00PM for dinner. They are also opened for lunch. Note, they are closed on Tuesdays.

As we were a large group reservation, we had to arrive by 5:30PM on a Saturday. We were presented with a one page menu with the key order being either the So Good So Crab Combo A or the So Good So Crab Combo B. Combo A includes shrimp, clams, mussels, corn, red skin potato and sausage cooked in your choice of seasoning (Hala-Cajun, Lemon Pepper, Garlic Butter, White Wine, Origin of the Sea, The Holy Smoke – a combination of Hala-Cajun, Lemon Pepper and Garlic Butter) and your choice of spice level ranging from No Spice to Extra Spicy. Combo B includes everything Combo A has plus dungeness crab. Both combos require a minimum of a 2 person order. They also have various fried seafood items and burgers, but you’re mainly here to experience eating off the table and smashing your seafood to bits with your mallet!

My hubby and I ordered the Combo B to share. As a special, you can also Like their Facebook page and Check In for their special promo – which they will add pasta to your pot of seafood! We had that added for free and made for quite a filling dinner for two. The seafood was cooked to perfection. We chose to have the Holy Smoke seasoning with medium spice – which turned out too spicy for me in the end. I think next time I’m going for mild. Also I found the garlic and spices lingering in my mouth hours after dinner – so probably best not to choose that option if you are on a romantic date.

Dinner worked out to be around $60 after taxes and tips for 2 people – a great deal if you don’t want to cook all that seafood as we paid more than that at The Crab Pot in Seattle. However, I found the service particularly slow. Perhaps it’s because it takes awhile to custom prepare each diners’ orders – whatever the reason, it took us a good 30-40 minutes to receive our meal. Also, they didn’t provide plastic bibs for us – so don’t wear white or nice clothes if you come here as it can get messy. It would’ve been nice if they provided plastic bibs with their company logo similar to The Crab Pot.

Hopefully they can improve their service time and provide bibs for their diners the next time I come back. Or perhaps, I’ll have to bring my own!