Laura Zastrow
It’s in the bag! Lobster comes with add-ons like corn on the cob and potatoes.
Being a seafood lover living in the Midwest sometimes means that love is unrequited. Sure, there are the ubiquitous Friday night fish fries, and certainly there are some tasty creatures that can be plucked from our many lakes and rivers. But as anyone who has been to a coastal region can tell you, it’s just not the same.
It is with these managed expectations that I sat down for a meal at Mad Seafood Boiler, which opened in May in the space that formerly housed AJ Bombers. The restaurant has been totally transformed — gone are the graffiti-covered wooden booths and the ceiling-mounted canisters that dumped peanuts everywhere. Now the space is sleek and modern, with bright white walls and minimalist black booths.
The restaurant was originally called Mad Boiling Crab, but last month the owners changed it to Mad Seafood Boiler because patrons had been mistakenly assuming that it served only crab, says manager Nikki Yuan. There are several types of crab on the menu, but the restaurant also offers lobster, shrimp, mussels, clams and crawfish. The shellfish are boiled and served by the pound in a plastic bag with choice of sauce — Cajun, garlic butter, lemon pepper, or all three combined. Diners specify the heat level and can also add corn on the cob, potatoes or sausages to their bag for $2 extra.
I began with a splurge, ordering king crab legs and a whole lobster. Mad Seafood Boiler gets deliveries six days a week from a variety of suppliers, including Fortune Fish and Empire Fish Company, the same suppliers that service other high-end restaurants downtown. Sure enough, the king crab legs that arrived at my table closely resembled those served at Tempest and Tornado, my go-to spots for spendy treat meals. The lobster was a little on the small side — I’d say slightly more than a pound — and looked tasty, too.
The presentation is basic but wins points for novelty. There’s really nothing else like it in town. There are no plates and no silverware, but you do get an array of shell-cracking devices and teeny little forks. Bib and gloves are also provided (and highly recommended). It’s a messy, labor-intensive way to eat, but it’s actually kind of fun. And servers were very kind about helping a man at a neighboring table who had a disabled hand.
The crab and lobster were tasty enough, if a bit over-boiled. The crab legs were massive and cracked easily; the meat was dense and rich. The lobster was slightly tough. On a return visit, we tried snow crab and Dungeness (that’s the one that looks like the crab emoji). Snow crab meat is a little fluffier and harder to extract. Dissecting the Dungeness was the most challenging of all, but my server provided a helpful diagram.
The sauce doesn’t actually flavor the meat (the shell acts as a barrier). But it works well as a condiment. It was tasty on the corn but made the sausage too salty. I tried the sauces separately, and my server was right — combo is the way to go. The “mild” spice level delivered almost imperceptible heat; “hot” was enjoyably intense.
I recommend ordering a few fried appetizers to share. The softshell crab was particularly good: large, crispy specimens served with a version of a remoulade. Tempura shrimp also hit the mark. Both came with a mound of very basic french fries, which could have used a few more seconds in the deep fryer.
My date, who hails from Massachusetts, groused a little about the flavor and the authenticity, but this isn’t a New England seafood boil. It’s a different concept altogether, an Asian-Cajun hybrid developed and popularized by Vietnamese immigrants. But Mad Seafood Boiler didn’t strike me as particularly Asian or particularly Cajun — it’s boiled seafood in spicy garlic broth. Still, I love the fact that Mad Seafood Boiler exists in the Madison restaurant ecosystem. And while it’s not exactly a budget eatery, it’s still one of the more affordable ways to enjoy a huge shellfish feast — or it’s as close as you’ll get in the Midwest.
Mad Seafood Boiler
201 W. Gorham St.; 608-819-6168; facebook.com/Mad-Seafood-Boiler-394370410949716; 3-10 pm Mon.-Thurs., 3-11 pm Fri., noon-11 pm Sat., noon-10 pm Sun.; $4-$30
