What does CRAB-BQ mean to you?

Hi, this is The BBQ Guy’s wife and I am honored to be asked to write a blurb about our recent trip to a new restaurant. Last week in the Tampa Bay Times I saw an ad for “Crab-bq” a restaurant in St. Petersburg. I loved the name and envisioned a varied menu of smoked seafood and traditional barbecue fare. The BBQ Guy said he took the name to be seafood and bbq. Off we went Saturday to see who was correct. My mouth was watering at the thought of eating some new smoked seafood delicacy and The BBQ Guy skeptically went along for the ride.

The trusty GPS got us to the restaurant. We arrived around 11:30 a.m. to an empty restaurant and were greeted by a very personable hostess/waitress. Although there was no BBQ feel to the restaurant, it was clean and neat and did have a nice outdoor seating area (we didn’t use this because it was 55 degrees here in Florida).

The server brought us our menus and took our drink orders. Well, our BBQ Blogger was correct. The menu was low on BBQ and heavy on traditional seafood fare. So away went my dreams of new exotic smoked seafood. Brian did like the idea of the Pulled Pork Sliders and I decided on half rack of ribs.

Boy did my eyes pop when I saw 4 untrimmed pork spare ribs arrive in front of me. I was reminded of our first BBQ contest when The BBQ Guy didn’t know any better and had not trimmed his spares. I ordered them dry with the sauce on the side. They were tender, but a bit awkward because of their size and bones. (They looked nothing like the rib picture on the restaurant’s website.) I was not all that fond of the flavor without some bbq sauce. I would definitely recommend having the sauce served heavy on them. My baked beans side item was not very warm, but it tasted fine. The bbq sandwich slider idea is still a really good idea, but they were served with cold meat on a toasted bun and The BBQ Guy didn’t really like that. His steak fries were delicious though!! He had to slap my hands away from them on several occasions.

Neither of us tried seafood, but I did hear 2 couples that came in after us comment on the chowder and I believe the waitress said it was made fresh there in the restaurant.

As a BBQ restaurant I have to give this a C-. Cleanliness of the dining area and bathrooms A+. Service an A- (our waitress was very sweet, but she never offered to refill our drink). I don’t think we will make a special trip over to St. Pete again for this restaurant, but would probably give it one more try if we were in the area - but we would definitely order seafood and not bbq.

Thanks to my hubby for letting me have a voice!!