Dancing Crab Restaurant

Review by nljago on May 18, 2004

When I think of dropping $90 for a seafood dinner, I anticipate a few things. First and foremost, good food. I clearly overshot my expectations on that one when I went against my better judgement and settled in to a dinner for two at The Dancing Crab.

Expensive food has its time and place and this total dive in Tenleytown was neither the time nor the place. The decor was drab at best--picture a very bad diner from '72 that you found one morning drunk, and on the other side of the tracks, as they say. In an attempt to dismiss my perhaps initial snobbishness, we opted to eat outside thinking the view and fresh air might win us back over. So there we were, outside, about to be seated at a table for two. Sounds great, except what we were lead to wasn't exactly a table for two so much as a corkboard glued on to a tree trunk and some planks nailed together to serve as seats. Our seating suffering went something like this... "Hmm, this table doesn't seem too sound (wobble, wobble). OUCH! That was a splinter! (wobble, wobble) Wow, this table is really at an incline and..oh..uh-oh...OOPS! There went my beer. Wow, plywood sucks that up FAST, huh?"

Plowing right ahead though, despite it being really cramped, the seating being unstable, our table neighbors being annoying and the mediocre service, we stayed for the eats. And to be honest, the food was edible. Not great. Not good, but you could consume it. The steamed shrimp were a standout, seeing as they were made directly as the recipe on the Old Bay box dictates. The snowcrab legs were overpriced, as were the small crabs they served--the only size on the menu that night. And in the end, only "fair" fare doesn't make up for what an establishment lacks in every other department.


I'm a low-key diner, ready to shell out some clams on a good meal but save your bread for the ducks. They'd eat better than you would at this joint.