Craving Claw's?

Claws Restaurant

12125 Brookhurst St. 

Garden Grove, CA 92840

I have wanted to go since I heard about Cajun/Vietnamese/Southern fusion restaurants. Which one to try, though? We had gone to one of these restaurants before, but the wait was over two hours, so we did not get to try it on that trip. Another time, we had it all set to go, but Katie suffered from a migraine, resulting in another aborted mission. This was our third attempt to come here, and like my Mom always says, "The third time is always the charm."

For this dining adventure, we were with our Asian food expert and fellow blogger, Kat, from Kat's 9 Lives. She has been to all these places and enjoys Claws the best. She rarely steers us wrong regarding food, so we decided to bite the bullet and listen to her boring stories to have a good meal. The price we pay as food bloggers is sometimes great!

I will explain it to those who need clarification on what kind of restaurant this is. It is a seafood restaurant with a twist. They offer about seven types of seafood, depending on availability. All seafood is served by the pound, and you are asked what kind of seasoning you would like out of the three offered, or you can go all the way and order a mixture of all three, which is the most popular choice. Your last option is deciding what heat level you want your seafood sauced in. They offer four heat levels here. You then can add extras to the baggies that the seafood is served in, but more on that later.

We arrived at Claws at a good time. We only had to wait about five minutes. The restaurant is a little small. They probably have about twenty tables for now. By the start of next month, the waitress says they will be moving into their new location in the same shopping center but is triple the size. This will significantly reduce wait times here. Guess this means business is doing fine. The decor here is a little dorky, but I like pirates and fishnetting everywhere. When you walk in, they have all of their fish selections for the evening on a blackboard, along with the prices. I like this. It leaves the guesswork out of guessing how much the market price is for items. I never thought I would type these words, but luckily, we had Kat with us, so we left the ordering to her expertise. This is what she selected for us.

Kat and I split the 4 Pound Meal Deal ($51). This came with four pounds of seafood and the three appetizers above. My favorite of the three starters that we got was the Fried Calamari. This was heavily breaded, but I still could taste the squid on the inside. It's not too rubbery, and I enjoyed the tarter sauce this came with. I ate my fair share of these. Our meal came with Cajun fries, but we upgraded to the Garlic Fries for an extra $2. This was a wise choice. These fries were fried well, and the garlic flavor was prevalent. The Butterfly Shrimp were okay but were my least favorite out of the bunch. These reminded me of the frozen ones my Mom used to fry up when we were kids. These were not frozen, but the taste reminded me of them. The breading was dominant, and the shrimp took a back seat to it. The odd green sauce was also bland. Cocktail sauce or ketchup would have been better.

Here are a few shots of how the seafood is presented at the table and a look inside the bags that we got. We got two pounds of shrimp, a pound of crawfish, and a pound of clams. They offered four types of seasoning, Cajun, lemon pepper, garlic butter, or a mixture of all three, which they call Cannonball. This is the one that we got to go along with our medium sauce. I would have liked a spicier sauce, but Kat did not want to go hotter than medium. This was my first experience with crawfish. I was not too excited about it. These little lobster-like animals are tiny, painful to crack open and yield only a small amount of meat. I felt these were not worth the trouble. Also, before you ask, yes, I sucked the juice from the heads, but it really did nothing for me. I really liked the large shrimp that we got here. I should have gotten it peeled for an extra dollar a pound, but Kat feels it tastes better whole. The clams were good because they were easy to eat and soaked up a lot of the seasonings and sauce. I mentioned adding extras to the bags of seafood, and we took advantage of this. We added potatoes for an extra 35 cents apiece, and for a very reasonable 25 cents each, we added two dozen sausages. I really enjoyed the sausage. They went well with the sauce, and like the clams, they were easy to eat. The potatoes were heavy and did not soak up enough of the sauce.

This is the messy aftermath of our meal. My hands were caked with sauce, while Kat was good about keeping her hands clean. I'm not sure how she did it, but I got down and dirty while eating at Claws.

If you are not into peeling seafood or getting your hands dirty, you can opt for a more traditional dinner. Katie selected this option by ordering the Garlic Seafood Pasta ($12.99). The pasta is sauteed in a garlic butter sauce with scallops, shrimp, and calamari. Katie asked for the calamari to be left out because she is not a fan of squid. She liked the seafood in this dish and felt the plate had a well-balanced flavor. It had a little kick to it without being too much. The garlic was also present but not overpowering. This was served with fresh veggies, which were okay, and a small side salad she called "better than she thought it would be."

I really enjoyed Claws. I realize that it is not for everyone, though. Many people prefer to avoid getting messy when they eat, so this would not be the place for them. All of the food was fresh and flavored well. The prices were reasonable, even with the items we added to our bags of seafood. I felt full but was not overly stuffed when we left Claws. The service was excellent on our visit. The wait staff was on top of refilling drinks, ensuring everything was good, and asking us if we needed anything else. We will definitely use Claws as the benchmark for these types of restaurants. Can not wait to try others. Thanks for taking us here, Kat!

Out of five stuffed animals (because when I hear the word claw, it always makes me think of those horrible claw machine games filled with stuffed animals and other junk that I have never won), five being best to zero being worst, Claws Restaurant gets 3 stuffed animals.

For more information about Claws Restaurant, click here: http://www.clawsrestaurant.com/index.html