Ventura Crab N Spice

Reviews

• ME

  Maribel Estrada

  Sep 27, 2026
  4.0
  Good stuff!
• WD

  William Dawson

  Sep 19, 2026
  2.0
  Okay, been coming this place for several years now. Used to really love it. This was the first visit in a while, probably a year or so. Anyway, it was only myself and my sister-in-law. We ordered the Pirates platter or whatever it’s called. We asked the server to make sure our shrimp was peeled. We did the all in spice and medium level. We waited and waited and waited…it was almost 45 minutes for our food. Mind you when we walked in there was only a hand full of people. By this time the place was packed. Finally the food arrived, we opened it up and put in the tray, the shrimp was not peeled…okay, fine it’s a mistake. No big deal. We wave down the waitress and ask about it. She apologizes, takes it back and then returns a few minutes later with peeled shrimp just lying on top of the food. So basically they removed the unpeeled shrimp from our tray and then put a bunch of cooked shrimp, just laid it on top. Not cooked in the spices or anything, just plain, cooked shrimp. Okay…so we have to flag down the waitress and ask for a fork, so we can mix up the food and get the spices on the shrimp ourselves. As we are eating, we start pulling out mussels that had not opened. At first it was just a few, but then we dug around in the tray and found all of the unopened mussels, a total of 8, out of a pound of mussels. That’s like half…we flagged the waitress down again and showed her the mussels. She said she would take them to the back and get them opened for us. We assumed that meant cooking them so they would open up. No, that’s not what she meant. She meant, they would just open them up, like an oyster or something. Uhm, no…that’s not how you do mussels. Another waitress, perhaps the manager, was near and heard the conversation and she stepped in to make sure that WE knew that was how you did it for mussels and continued to argue with us about it. Look, I’ve never been one to believe that the customer is always right. I worked on food service at the beginning of my work life…and know just how bad it can get. As a result I have always tried and maintained a standard of being extremely polite, friendly and respectful to the wait staff at any restaurant I go to. THIS, however, was a different situation…neither of us were rude about our intentions of the mussels being cooked, but the other waitress with her tone, body language and demeanor and the way she was telling us, that basically that’s how it was going to be, was a different story. I didn’t feel comfortable eating them after just being opened. They should have been steamed and cooked to open. Sorry, not sorry. Our actual waitress, requested to get us a discount because of all of the trouble we had and she was having to explain everything to the other waitress, again I assume a manager, and really had to push to get the discount. The only reason I know this is because our table was literally right next to their “stand” and I could hear their whole conversation. And the manager waitress made some offhand comments about us not even eating the muscles after they went through the trouble of getting them opened up for us. Uhm, duh, I told you I wasn’t going to if you guys didn’t steam them to open them up. Yeah, just no. Like if you want to make comments about your customers, at least wait until they are, like, not sitting right there where you can be heard. Although I’m pretty sure that her intentions were to make sure we heard her. Just rude…I’ll not be back ever. In this day and age when there are more options of this type of restaurant around, I’ll take my money elsewhere, thanks. I’m giving the 2 stars, because even though our waitress was kinda spacey, she at least was nice and tried….
• MS

  Mudermystery 2 Squad

  Sep 5, 2026
  1.0
  Idk
• NM

  nancy mendoza

  Aug 30, 2026
  4.0
  Food was great. Maybe try a different sauce next time
• RR

  roger

  Aug 20, 2026
  2.0
  Food was delicious but terrible service! Our waitress kept disappearing on on us, would just drop off our food and leave before we could ask for condiments Had to keep asking workers that were not even servers to help us Our waitress definitely did not deserve the 10% tip I left for her