Hot N Juicy Crawfish
 Las Vegas, Nevada      Date of Visit  12/15/12       http://hotnjuicycrawfish.com/

Man vs. Food and Unique Eats both made trips to this storefront in Chinatown in Las Vegas so we were going to give it a try. A lengthy cab ride later and we were sitting in a better looking place than I had expected. The service was friendly if a little disjointed. The place was filled with all sorts of people and every table was a complete disaster, a good sign. We had hoped to get out here before Steph’s sister joined us in Sin City but her plane was earlier than expected. She’s not a seafood kinda gal and that's regular seafood as opposed to thems that got faces.
 

Lunch For Seafood Objectors
 

She lucked out and was able to order dinner rolls and corn fritters. The rolls were rolls and the corn fritters were better than expected with nibblets fried into a corn batter. The dipping sauce was spicy which became a theme for our lunch, remember, I am the only one of the four of us who digs the spicy stuff. At Hot N Juicy they have a number of shellfish and mollusks which are all dosed with a variety of sauces and then hit the table still in the bag. We ordered a pound of king crab legs with mild garlic butter, a pound of snow crab legs with mild lemon pepper and a pound of crawfish with the medium hot and juicy special. The hot and juicy special is a mix of all of their sauces…garlic butter, lemon pepper, juicy Cajun and Louisiana style.

The spice worked well on the crawfish and I would have enjoyed the whole pull the head off, suck and pinch but for one thing. The crawfish had not been depurated meaning they had to be deveined after cooking. Kinda gross. I’ve had crawfish in the company of native Louisianans and it was simply much better than this.

The crab legs were nice legs. The only problem was the mild sauce is still pretty darned aggressive and I am the only one who likes the spice. The thing is I don’t want it on crab legs. Sure the mudbugs can stand up to kick but the delicately flavored crab is just obliterated by the stuff. It would make more sense to have the legs and a little butter to enjoy and follow it up with a shooter of the flavoring some other time. You might as well boil play dough in the bags with the flavoring…it wouldn’t make a difference. Give me spicy wings. Give me spicy crawfish (without the full colon please). For God’s sake I even like spicy ice cream. Leave the poor lightly but beautifully flavored crabs alone. Flawed in conception.