The Boil is a call from New Orleans to New York City. This experience cannot be missed especially if you didn’t grow up going to crawfish boil parties with potatoes, corn on the cob and that crazy smell stinking up your backyard for days. The best part of this party: you get blue gloves and bibs to wear as you dive into your buckets of seafood. Great first date spot right? Well, it is something to talk about for sure! At The Boil you can pick all different kinds of crustacean combinations such as crawfish, shrimp, snow crab legs, king crab legs and sauces that they are marinated in such as O’Bay and Lemon Pepper. The peeling and eating is part of the fun. You have to work for your meat. We chose the buttery garlic sauce which wasn’t too strong or intense like you might presume. Don’t worry the gloves protect your hands from everything. Duh, why else do they make you wear these? The shrimp are incredibly plump, meaty and cooked perfectly. You really could peel and eat these for hours and not get sick of it. Crawfish is standard but I just love shrimp. The oyster sliders are also a fantastic starter. They oysters are huge and overtake the soft, pillowy bun. I loved this. The crab roll was a misunderstanding on our part (3rd pic). While we thought it was going to come out like a lobster roll on a buttered bun with a handful of fresh crab meat, it was more like an Asian style spring roll. I didn’t hate it, I was just well not expecting that.
Photo Credit: Anna Malskaya
When dining at The Boil and you stop to breath and take your head out of the fish bucket, you can’t help but laugh looking at everyone literally diving in while wearing their bibs and gloves. It’s a sight to see and a place to join in with the crowd. The wait can be long no matter what time of day, so you can grab a drink at the bar or if there are open seats order food there.
I absolutely love this restaurant as it’s a unique style of dining for the New York restaurant scene and not expensive. You can get a combo bucket of 1 lb. of crawfish and 1 lb. of shrimp for just $25. Grab your posse and come here for dinner to hang and eat some legit peel-and-eat southern crawfish, lobster, dungeness crab and shrimp.
