Joes Crab Shack...Oy, Vey...

Yesterday, I convince my fiancee to take me to eat at Joes Crab Shack. I've been seeing their delicious looking steam pots whirl around my TV for a while, and I wanted one like WOAH.

So, we go. And to eat at our local Joes, it's quite a trek - it's not anywhere you'd just go - you have to make a pretty specific trip.

We get seated by a hostess that I can only assume was under the influence of something, because she was looking at the restaurant like she'd never seen it before. Kid you not.

We put in our order. And we wait. And we wait. And we bloody wait some more. Eventually, a manager turns up to explain that because we've waited more then 20 minutes, he'll "take care of it", but offers no explanation for what that actually means.

The food eventually turns up from around the corner.

My steam pot? I won't lie - I got the West Coast steam pot, and the crab legs were so hot that I could hardly touch them, and I probably could have played basketball with the shrimp. And as for the delicious looking pot full of seafood? Don't be fooled. They bring a normal, regular size plate inside the pot. It's just like any other entree, just a little more gimicky. Like I mentioned - the crab legs were so hot I could hardly touch them, everything else was...room temperature? I ate the majority of it (the "majority of it") pretty much consisted of the crab legs and shrimp. And a ear of corn on the cob, which is a food you just can't screw up, even if you serve it cold, which they did)

My sons food was freezing cold. He's pretty temperature sensitive, so it wasn't an earth shaking tragedy, but really? That's pretty gnarly. If I sat there for 20 minutes, the very least you can do is serve me hot food.

The bill comes, it's $58. We were pretty rattled. Food that was OK if you were being optimistic about it, a server that I'm not sure remembered we were there, and cold shrimp - that weren't supposed to be cold?! And you want $60 for that!?

The managers offer to "take care of it" meant my fiancees dinner was free. Which brought the meal down to $31. Which isn't bad. Crab legs for 2, and a kids meal shouldn't be $60.

Every time I go eat at Joe's, it kind of just serves to remind me why I don't go there more often. Something ALWAYS happens - the service is lagging, the food is weird, or like in the case of yesterday, the quality control takes a bit of a holiday. For families in this economy (I mean really. Two adults and a kid, it was $60. I come from a family with five kids. There's no days that we could have afforded to eat at Joe's), Joe's just isn't a practical buy. People these days don't have alot of extra money or time, a fact the good people at Joe's apparently don't understand.