By Donna Price

dprice@americanpress.com

By Donna Price

dprice@americanpress.com

Fiery Crab opened earlier this month at 339 W. Prien Lake Road in the old Newk’s location, across from Long John Silvers. It’s in the same strip mall as a Starbucks and The Vitamin Shoppe.

When American Press webmaster Heather Mulkey and I walked inside Tuesday, we were immediately impressed. The place looks great.

“I like how they’ve gone with the whole Cajun/seafood theme, but it’s done well. It’s not cheesy,” Heather said.

I had to agree.

We were greeted by our food server, Heidi, who rolled out white paper across the top of our table to catch any mess we might make.

That’s because Fiery Crab specializes in seafood boils — which is seafood boiled in spices and then tossed in a signature sauce. The boils are served up in a bag. A boil can contain lobster tail, mussels, clams, crab, crawfish, shrimp or other choices. All boils come with corn, potatoes and sausage.

The granddaddy of all boils is the $88 boiled seafood platter with a wide assortment of seafood.

“The platter can feed up to four people, but I’ve seen two people each take one down all by themselves,” said Heidi.

As far as boils go, the menu says, “Get ready to get your hands dirty.”

But don’t fret. Heidi told us the folks at Fiery Crab aren’t going to leave you hanging with dirty hands. Gloves and even bibs are on hand for eating, and moist towelettes are available for cleanup, she said.

Still, since Heather and I were there at lunch during a work day, we decided on some of the less-messy options.

Heather ordered the $10 fiery Cajun shrimp pasta, which is angel hair pasta covered in shrimp and roasted red pepper cream sauce. For a lunch menu item, it was quite large, with a generous serving of shrimp.

“The sauce is really good,” she said. “Not too rich.” She ate it all.

I ordered an $8 appetizer of fried calamari — calamari being the Italian word for squid — which I’ve never eaten in my life. Fortunately for me, the squid did not look like an actual squid. It looked like a serving of 15 onion rings. It was wonderful, and was served with a spicy sauce.

I also had a $7 small grilled shrimp salad. This too, was a generous size. In fact, I wondered if I had accidently been served the large salad. But no — there was no mistake. My small salad was just big. It was fresh and good and the grilled shrimp were plentiful and juicy.

All in all, we had a great experience at Fiery Crab. The food was awesome. Service was quick. We were seated, ordered, ate and paid in less than an hour. Heidi checked on us regularly. Manager Sterling West stopped by to chat. Cajun music can be heard, but it is low enough to hold a conversation with the people at your table.

Fiery Crab is open 11 a.m. – 10 p.m. Sunday – Thursday and 11 a.m. – 11 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Phone is 337-564-6500.