Tonight (6/28) we chose one of our shore's favorite restaurants-- Crab Trap in Somers Point, NJ located at 2 Broadway. We have been going to this restaurant for many years and can honestly say that we have never had a bad meal here.
Typical for a very good shore restaurant, this place is just over crowded at dinner time on summer weekend evenings. This is compounded more so at this establishment because they do not take reservations. It is not atypical to wait 90 plus minutes in season here, but they have a very nice outside bar located directly on the bay to help alleviate this wait. Should you wish to go and avoid the wait, a terrific option is to eat at the bar which offers a full service menu This is what we do most times when dining here.
I chose the soup sampler as my appetizer. This is one of the nicest offerings for soup served anywhere ($5.95). This provides a small (approx 3 to 4 oz each) sampling of their 3 soups. There is a manhattan clam chowder, a maryland crab bisque and finally a creamy clam chowder. Each soup is delectable in its own right with terrific flavor. The Maryland crab is a tad bit spicy for my liking, but still good-- the creamy crab is unbelievable. That would be my winner of the three.
My companion chose steamers first which are a dozen littleneck clams in a nice buttery garlic broth. These were quite good ($9.95).
We chose to split the cold seafood combination ($25.95). This is an extremely large platter and did not disappoint. The platter comes with an ample sized lobster tail, 3 large shrimp, 3 clams, a scoop of jumbo lump crabmeat, chicken salad, potato salad, cole slaw, hard boiled eggs and tomatoes on a bed of lettuce.
Everything on this platter was truly delicious. The chicken salad is homemade and the scoop of jumbo lump crabmeat is impressive in the amount that is o The bartender who served my companionn the platter. This dish is also served with a side salad which isn't really necessary and almost seems repetitive since the platter is also a salad in nature.
There is a bread basket served with the meal which has very good rolls along with blueberry muffins.
So, is there a negative here? Not usually, but tonight there was. The bartender who served my companion's wine was nice, but our order was taken by a waitress over our shoulders at the bar. This young server should rethink her career choices-- dealing with the public is not her strong suit. Her name was Tia and in trying to come up with a pseudo nickname to describe her I would call her "Tia-- wouldn't want to be ya or serve ya".
Upon taking our order she asked if we wanted to pay the $6.95 sharing charge. Huh? Of course I don't want to pay an extra fee! She seemed exasperated and finally explained that this was an extra charge enabling the additional person to have a side salad and another side as well. Once we heard this, we politely declined the charge.
Tia's next shining moment came when she brought my side salad with dressing on it-- I immediately told her I ordered the dressing on the side to which she responded curtly, "I'll get you another". There was no apology or admittance of a mistake and the attitude was less than desirable.
Finally, when our check was given to us, I had still not gotten our separate bar tab so I started to fill in the credit card slip for the meal while still awaiting the other. Before I was done with both slips, Tia had come back and tried to take the slip for the meal portion. I told her I wasn't finished-- again no apology and no real thank you for the business. I will say this restaurant is terrific and this blog is about the food, but a server like this can significantly impact the experience. This is also the first time we ever saw poor service/attitude here.
Tia-- I hope we don't see ya again!
Dinner for 2 with 2 glasses of wine was $59 before tip.
Overall 4.25 Brownies
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