By Kenneth Stepp
It’s not often I revisit a restaurant and change my mind about it. The Juicy Crab in Douglasville would be, I thought. One of my go to eateries near my home. I love having a few steady five star experiences locally so I can take friends out and know what to expect. Today, my logic got the best of me. I took a friend to an early dinner to The Juicy Crab near my home. I’d been there before. I visited them when they first opened up near me and was blown away at how perfect they executed everything. The food was excellent, the service was phenomenal, and the place was amazing.
Today I visited again. My experience was anything but what I had the first time. We ordered the crab legs. They brought them to the table and we couldn’t wait to dive in. It’s a favorite of both my friend and myself. My friend owns a restaurant locally as well. They left the crab legs, we unwrapped the bag they were in and tried to begin eating. They didn’t bring us the utensils to crack the legs with to open them. After trying to flag our server down and get them. We were finally “allowed” to have them. I say allowed because our server marked our table that we were using them. Wow! After the shock of this, we noticed they left us no small forks to dig the crab meat out with. Again, finding our server to bring them. This time she said they didn’t have them but she had told her manager they needed them. Wow! Again.
At any rate, we tried but failed to eat the crab legs. Impossible without the proper utensils for us. My friend was more successful than I was and managed to eat a very small portion of them. Then gave up as well. I told our server we couldn’t eat them and she went to her manager. She came back and took them back. She unformed us they would take them off the bill. All total, my friend ate two crab legs and one potato. I had a piece of corn. Imagine my surprise when she brought the bill and half the entree was still on the bill. Along with extra corn on the cob she took back with the crab legs. I paid it anyway. Even left a tip I probably shouldn’t have.
The take away on this last visit to The Juicy Crab… The first time we visited the crew consisted of several from their Duluth Ga store. So service was great. My friend who owns the restaurant nearby says people steal utensils (cost of doing business). This is probably why They marked the table when we received the cracker. The utensils were very cheap, made overseas, no doubt. So for the threat of someone stealing $2.00 worth of utensils, we had to have a very bad dinning experience. To say this is my last time here would be an understatement. If they are too cheap to supply patrons with proper silverware. How many other shortcuts are they taking? Disappointed and at a loss as to how a place that was so good could so quickly be so awful. I won’t be going back…
