I squeezed into a booth here with my friends Bill and Nancy, and her cousin Valerie, about 6:00 on a Saturday. The Crab Shanty does a volume business in a number of regards; by the time we left, there was quite a wait. Lots of garlic bread and an assortment of vegetables arrived a moment after our menus. I couldn't even tell you what Bill and Nancy ordered, since Valerie and I were fully occupied with the "banquet for crab lovers" ($52.95). The softshell crabs, at left, were good; the nearby crabcakes, overfried and bready. A stuffed Dungeness crab, just visible at top right, was OK, but naturally I would have preferred picking my own meat from a whole crab; I couldn't say just what that crabshell was stuffed with.
Two snow crabs yielded lots of leg meat and sizable chunks from the body, much of which I enjoyed for dinner the next evening. We hardly touched the six hardshell garlic crabs beneath them (let alone the french fries or those two half-cobs of corn) — when everyone else was leaning back, it was time to have our leftovers wrapped — but picked at home, the crabmeat I didn't scarf up immediately found its way into a pretty good pasta sauce.
The Original Crab Shanty Restaurant
361 City Island Ave., Bronx
718-885-1810
