The Widder Curry Returns to King Crab in the Midway

Restaurant Review

King Crab
3960 W. Point Loma Avenue
San Diego, CA  92110
619-269-0800

By Judi Curry

It has been a while since I have eaten at King Crab – [October 2022] , and as I looked over places I would like to go to celebrate my birthday, I thought that King Crab would be the perfect spot to alleviate my yearning for cold, sweet crab salad.  I don’t get yearnings very often, but when I heard that the crab production in Northern California has dropped so much because of weather and other variables, the yearning for this delicacy has increased.  I do not like hot or warm crab; I truly only like the cold meat that I get out of cracking my crab just as I am getting ready to eat it.  So … King Crab it was for dinner on Wednesday.

Steve and I went about 6:30pm, and were surprised to see only a few people eating at the restaurant.  I asked our server – Maria – if they were having trouble filling up the restaurant during the weekdays because the restaurant is a very large one (the old Soup Plantation) and she said that February has been an off month but that the weekends are fairly busy.  More people did come in while we were eating, and it was heartening to see the newcomers.

We had looked at the menu before arriving, so had an idea of what we were going to order. Even so, the menu was enticing enough to reread it and change a few things of our order.  For example, Steve had trouble decided just what he wanted to have when he saw the lo mein noodles with shrimp on the menu.  It was on the menu we have at home, but it was more enticing in front of him.

And Steve loves hush puppies, so he decided to get a side order of them also.  It was only $5 for ten of them, and they were so tasty.   It was a cold night, and I knew that I was going to order Clam Chowder, so Steve decided to order the Gumbo ($7) which was tasty, but there was a lot of rice on the bottom that did not get mixed up with the soup, and the soup, although very tasty and spicy, was only luke-warm. And when I say the soup was spicy – it might be too spicy for people that are not used to spicy foods!

The Shrimp Lo Mein was very good.  It was served hot, there were a lot of shrimp, onions,  noodles, and so much that Steve took home almost half of it for dinner the next evening.

I knew that I was going to have something with cold crab, and so I ordered the Crab Meat Salad ($11), which had a mound of crab right on the top of the dish, along with regular salad fixings, cherry tomatoes, croutons, etc.  There were two small packages of 1000 island dressing on top of the salad, to use where I wanted them placed.  I have to say I wished that there was more crab in the salad, and I would have been glad to pay more for it, because after I finished the crab there was only salad left.  However, $11 is not a bad price for a crab salad; it just didn’t satisfy the craving that I had been having.

The clam chowder was good.  Both the soups were served in plastic containers – I presume this was in case we wanted to take any of it home all that would be necessary was a lid – and there was a lot of soup.  Personally I would have probably liked to have my soup in a bowl, but looking around at how things are served at the restaurant, this way was not unusual.  (There is a large – and I do mean large -trash can  on the table, for shells, bones and other refuse,; meals are served in large plastic bags, etc. so the trash can is not unexpected!)

And I had decided, on the spur of the moment, to have their sweet potato fries.  They were only $5.50, and there were a lot of them! In fact, there were so many of them the 4 of us will enjoy them for dinner tonight and no one will feel that they didn’t get a fair share!  They were served very hot, with a ranch dressing sauce to dip them into if we wanted to.  They were tasty and enjoyable.

Steve and I were pleased with our dinner; the service was a little slower that usual, but we were not in a hurry to get anywhere so it didn’t matter to us.  (For example – I asked for a second soup spoon so that Steve could enjoy my clam chowder with me while it was hot. By the time the spoon was brought to us, Steve had been served his Gumbo and no longer wanted to share the chowder.)  True, I asked a different server for the spoon, not Maria, and it was Maria that brought it to us so there is probably some rule about helping your assigned table only.

The total of the meal was $53.82 plus a tip, which was certainly reasonable for all the food we had.  And, as mentioned, the food was tasty and good.  I don’t think we will wait for another occasion to return.  There are other things on the menu we want to try!