New Crab Cooker Packs ‘Em in With Freshness, Simplicity

The Crab Cooker is the latest Orange County eating institution to break down and open a second branch, following the trail of Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant, Burrell’s Rib Cage and other venerable establishments. Hail the new world food order.

Anyone who has eaten regularly at the Crab Cooker’s claustrophobic Newport Beach location has braved the restaurant’s legendary lines at one time or another. On almost any Friday or Saturday evening, winter or summer, you could count on seeing dozens of the faithful clumped together on Newport Boulevard, waiting for their chance at bowls of rust-colored clam chowder, paper plates piled high with Alaskan crab legs and goofy plastic cups filled with various jug wines. Richard Nixon has waited in that line, and so have thousands of others over the years.

Now that a new and larger Crab Cooker has opened in a Tustin shopping mall, the long lines of Newport Beach are bound to become shorter. Some people would even call this progress.

That’s not to say that the Tustin location doesn’t fill up, because it does. It’s just that this expanded version--an oddly shaped red structure that from a few hundred feet away looks like a giant strawberry--is about twice as big as the Newport Beach restaurant, and it seems to move ‘em in and out even faster than the original.

Here are two huge, boisterous rooms, both well-adorned with Tiffany lamps, red-topped tables and a variety of sturdy wooden chairs. The walls are hung with replicas of the better-known fish and bits of local memorabilia such as like old photos of Tustin. All the tables have plastic containers filled with hard bread sticks and puffy oyster crackers.

Service is strictly of the high-volume, low-patience school. The Crab Cooker is not a restaurant where you ought to hand the waitress a list of questions. You’d better know what you want or you can plan on waiting until she has finished with the customers who do.

I always know what I want here. I start with a bowl of chowder and then have a plate of crab claws. The chowder is ladled from an enormous stainless steel caldron that is big enough to bathe in. It’s a rich, thick broth full of huge clam strips that the restaurant buys especially for the soup, as well as spices and chunks of potato.

As long as we are on the subject of appetizers, I also want to tout the smoked albacore tuna and salmon, available both by the plate in the restaurant proper and by the pound from the tiny fish market next to the front door. Of the two, I have to say I prefer the albacore. It’s on the dry side, firmly packed and sweet, and it has a much smokier flavor than the salmon. The salmon doesn’t exactly reek of the hardwoods it was smoked in, something the best Northwest salmon does. It’s also oilier than it needs to be.

This is simple food, and none of it has to be dressed up. Because it does such a high volume, the Crab Cooker is able to offer the freshest seafood of any restaurant in Orange County. Freshness is especially important when it comes to crab, because the fatty acids in crab meat oxidize over time and the crab loses flavor.

Order a special appetizer such as king crab claws, served steaming hot with drawn butter, and you’ll get the idea. Oh, you may want to embellish the natural taste of this crab meat, which flakes out of the shell like snow, with the tangy house cocktail sauce or some of the unctuous tartar sauce, but that would be a shame. I prefer this crab straight, and I’d wager you will too.

Crab actually comes in several incarnations here. If you don’t order the king crab claws (the best meat), you can have crab legs big enough to be props in the movie “Arachnophobia.” You won’t have any trouble taking the meat out of the shell with this one, and the pieces you do extract will be huge. Crab cocktail is probably the least appealing crab choice, because the meat has already been shredded and therefore exposed to the air. Dungeness crab, in my opinion a more delicious variety than Alaskan king, is served cold and partially cracked, but unfortunately it is not quite as fresh-tasting as the king crab.

There are other things to eat here, of course. One evening I tried shrimp on a skewer (two skewers, really) and counted 36 shrimp. The Crab Cooker “spices” the shrimp with bacon (sprinkles them with crushed bacon, actually) and cooks them up on a charcoal grill. It does the same with scallops. There are occasional specials such as good grilled swordfish and halibut, plus menu regulars such as Atlantic salmon for fish lovers. Because the menu is kept small and simple, the quality probably won’t vary much.

Eat your brain food with delicious side dishes that come two to an order, your choice. The coleslaw looks like mulch from a food processor, but it is actually almost perfect, striking the right balance between salty and sweet. You could get a nutty rice pilaf with toasted vermicelli or fresh sliced tomato instead. The best of the litter is Romano potatoes, a big scoop of cheesy mashed potato with a crisp bottom crust. Coleslaw and potatoes for me, please.

I do wish the bread, a flavorful Styrofoamlike dome they call fisherman’s bread and have the audacity to charge extra for, was better. I furthermore wish they had a few desserts.

But then, look at it from a modern point of view. Adding desserts to this concept would mean lower turnover and then--you guessed it: All that progress would go out the window, and you’d find yourself twiddling in one of those lines again.

The Crab Cooker is moderately priced. Chowder is $1.25. Appetizers are $3.30 to $7.15. Dinners are $4.95 (child’s plate) to $19.95.

* THE CRAB COOKER

* 17260 E. 17th St., Tustin.

* (714) 573-1077.

* Lunch and dinner 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, till 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

* Cash and personal checks only.