The Rockin’ Crab & Boiling Pot

This place is so good!!! They are way underrated.
If you come, check out their fried chicken special!!! It’s the chef special one. So so good. Also they’re sauce on the crawfish is so good.
We got a pound of shrimp, pound of crawfish, and pound of clams. All were great! They only have one type of sauce but have different levels of flavors.
It’s sweet and tangy but soooooo good.
You got to check out this hidden place!

Nice foray into the Asian Cajun fusion. Nice for big groups too. The flavor is filling without being too salty.

The food was great, especially the lamb soup. The waitress was nice. Pretty great place. The prices are a lottle bit high, but the quality is good.

This place is a good solid spot if you’re craving boiling crab. I’ve always had great customer service here. We’ve been here so many times that they know our usual order.

The place was nice, clean, and comfortable. I have to give this place a ³⁄₅ because the food was alright. I feel like I could just make the hot soup at home. The food was okay and wasn’t worth the hype.

Amazing!!! We had soup and Cajun muscles omg best thing I’ve ever had!!! Spice level perfect, garlic and the marinated muscles delicious!!! PERFECTION! No wait I don’t understand why it’s such low rating! This place deserves 5 stars! This place is definitely for garlic and spice lovers!!!

He loves nola and the foods accociated with the area so i had to take him here! No plates, no forks, all food. It’s a fun experience. You order most things by pound. A bit sack of crawdads sit between us for only a moment before we begin to ravage these mud bugs. crab bibs & thick paper rolled out will serve as your plate. Sinks are standing by to wash up the massacre. fed two hungry adults for under $ 30. Shall return. (Tho there is an excessive amount of televisions.)

I’m a weekly regular for hot pot, because it’s good.
Love their crawfish sause too, so flavorful.

A one visit 5 star!
I’ve recently developed a bit of a… well, let’s call it an obsession with hot pot. Love it! But it’s a social thing and if you want to get any variety, you have to either A) go with three or four people or B) pay through the nose and be that one weird person at an obviously social dining event.
Queue the Rockin Crab! They have hot pots for one! And not in a sad, lonely, this is my last meal before I walk in front of a bus «for one» way, more like «I’m an individual goddamnit» way. You don’t get the pleasure of tossing your meat (ha ha, tossing meat on 82^nd ave.) into the broth but it’s still darn tasty. You basically pick from about ten different combos, choose your spice level (hurt me for me) and whether you want rice or noodles (noodles, duh). It then come out all boil-​y and sterno-​y and rad.
Oh yeah, cheap beer! Make as big as mess as you want because the tables are covered in paper. Staff was really nice and made sure I had a lot of water because I asked for the «hurt me» level of heat. And granny might hate it, but the dubstep bouncing off the place was pretty cool!

So we stumbled upon this place by accident. We originally wanted to try the restaurant a block before, but they had terrible long lines for their empty tables. So we took our money elsewhere… which is HERE at the Rocking Crab boiling pot.
Customer Service: It was the best decision EVER! We were seated right away and the waitress is HILARIOUS! She totally has my vote for best customer service! We got waters right away. She gave us time to look at the menu. Since this was out first time visiting, our gracious waitress helped explain the dishes and gave us recommendations.
Ambience: the place has a crab house log cabin feel to it. It was a warm place to go for three uslanders missing warm weather. The restaurant was not busy at all, but it was a pretty big place.
Food. We ordered our food and in maybe 10 minutes, we were served. I ordered one of the hotpots that she recommended it was spot on. Deliciousness! It was seasoned so well, and the portion was perfect. My boss loved her hotpot and my boyfriend loved his stirfry dish. When you come, there is something for everyone. There is seafood and there are other entrees. So much to choose from, I wish I had a longer trip to try it all.
Price: the price was very reasonable with their portions of their food. Its affordable and even better since its not taxed!
Overall, this was one of the restaurants that stood out for us at pur trip to Portland. I loved the food and was really delighted about our server. She was awesome! This will forever will be on my to do list on my Portland trips from now on!

Service was great!
Only thing that sucked were the lack of flavors for the crawfish/​crab/​clams etc. I got a pound of crawfish and clams. Got the hottest level for the heat. It wasn’t spicy at all. It just tasted like curry with lots of chunky flakes it in. Gave us bibs but no gloves or anything. Ive had better experience with crawfish in Seattle or Cali.
My two cousins each got hot pot. The Thai hot pot and seafood hot pot. We’re Lao/​Thai and eat Thai food all the time. The flavor for the Thai hot pot broth was just flavorless. We couldn’t even stand trying to sip on the broth. The seafood one was met to the expectations though so props to that

I’ve come here multiple times and I’m always happy with the service and the food I’ve had.
This latest time I went, we had a pound of crab legs. The sauce is pretty delicious. The waitress suggested we also get a side of garlic bread to dip into the sauce and she was so right. It was super tasty.
That alone isn’t worth the 5 stars but the waitress has always been super nice and helpful. I think she personally goes to buy the seafood every morning. She was super knowledgeable and gave us the best advice for what we should get.
Hot pots are top.
Seafood is pretty bomb.
Waitress is super friendly and helpful
I’m always down to eat here.

Came here for the first time with our family. It was a party of 11 adults & 7 kids. Me coming from Las Vegas I’m a big fan of Hot & Juicy Crawfish so my expectations was high.
Reasons for 5 stars
–They don’t auto gratuity big parties, in fact according to their menu «we welcome big parties»
–Service was great. Very friendly & efficient
–The sauce for the shrimp was very yummy. I really liked it.
–I added sausage & corn to my bag and it was delicious.
–Of corse me being Filipino, I had to have rice and the rice was yummy.
–My family ordered the clams & crawfish and they enjoyed it.
If your from California, this place is kind of like boiling crab but they also have this boiling pot thing lol
Enjoy!!!

I’ve been here a couple of times and haven’t had a bad experience. The waitress I had today was really nice and chill, she checked up on us and was friendly to give us anything we asked for.
I’ve had the hotpot before and it was okay. It doesn’t have a ton of flavor but if you’re craving hot pot then I wouldn’t mind going here. I think their seafood cajun is a lot better than their hotpot. It has a lot of good flavor and it’s not too salty. The prices are really good too compared to other places I’ve been to. We got their shrimp and clams with medium spiciness.

I can’t believe my first review on Unilocal is gonna be one star.
We got there 6:40, waited 15 mins to be seated while nobody was in line. Finally oh finally one waitress with short hair came, so we asked if we can seat at the booth for 2 people, simply we were told that’s not her section therefore she can’t take care of us thus we can not seat there!
Wow i was shocked.
Not only she needs an attitude check, this place also needs some serious management issue check.
Will not return, wasted my time here.

Really good I’m from southern Cali came to work for 2 months and it’s comparable to Boiling Crab minus the 2 hour wait. Season wise it needs to be less oily but for being in Portland and not that close to the ocean it’s pretty damn good. Will definitely come here again if I stay here that long. This place reminds me of home.

I have been looking for a Seafood place here in PDX and I think this is as good as it gets. I saw the reviews and decided I would try this place.
I went during early evening, so it wasn’t crowded and I was able to get a table right away. What most won’t tell you is that it’s like two restaurants in one. One is a Vietnamese and the other is a Cajun Louisiana seafood. They have two different menus. They seem to merge well.
I order the Cajun wings, with garlic added, and the Cajun Garlic Noodles to start off. The wings were good, but the noodles were GREAT! Just yummy! They were spaghetti noodles that seemed boiled in the juices of the seafood!
Next I ordered a pound of shrimp with corn, potatoes, and sausage. You can choose how hot you want the food and I chose a two. I should’ve gotten a three because I could’ve definitely handled the heat. The food came in a bag and you just go for it! You can get as messy as you want because they hand you a bib. Everyone is chowing down around you, so you won’t feel any shame enjoying yourself.
The reason I took a star away is because I wasn’t expecting my shrimp to still have their heads on and their eyes staring at me. I had to rip them off quick, so I wouldn’t be freaked out. That was my only problem there.
After you finish head towards the restroom. They had the genius idea to put the sinks on the outside. I was super happy! Even after I licked my fingers, I still had stuff on my hands. So the sinks being on the outside was a brilliant idea.
Overall this place has good seafood and a great atmosphere.

I sampled the beef hot pot, beef noodle soup, and hot pot with fish balls.
We also got king crab legs, served in a plastic bag full of spicy schmutz. All of the exoskeleton comes pre-​bisected with a transverse incision, bypassing the need for primitive cracking tools.
You just don your plastic bib, pull the damn thing out of a bag and chow down.
That’s what I call, «crab-​vience.»
And not Krab with a «K» either!
The beef in the beef noodle soup was more rich and deep than any other beef noodle soup I’ve sampled in this town, including all of the phở joints.
Hot pots were excellent, but not better than what we have at home around xmas – but the fire below was good ambiance for a rainy Portland afternoon.
Other reviews deduct stars for «over the top, 80’s seafood extravaganza décor.» WHAT. EVER. I’m afraid that the quality of the food ALWAYS counts more than the décor in my books. If the food is equally bad, I will mock both unrelentingly, but if not… I experience food with my mouth, not my pop culture aesthetics.
Is this place purporting to be Cajun-​Asian fusion, as other reviewers have implied? i saw no sign of that, but either way I could care less. If the only good thing they served here was an excellent bowl of beef noodle soup, i’d be sold. And anyways, haven’t we all figured out that there is no good Cajun food – authentic, inauthentic, fusion or otherwise – to be found in Portland?
So, «f*ck it», I guess is the point I’m trying to make here.
Rockin’ Crab serves more than one good thing. I’m down with it. Brother, I’m hip.
And by the by, we did not order any of the menu-​advertised fresh crawdad, but we did observe four tables of four people each around us eating nothing but the crawdad, which appeared big, red and juicy, from my observations. we’ll get that next time.
The service – reputed to be indifferent and hostile – was opposite of what we were told. our server was attentive, friendly, and answered all of our questions in a calm, patient, courteous manner.

I have only tried hot pot at Chongqing down the street, so after reading reviews about this establishment I thought I’d give it a try. VERY DIFFERENT!
I was by myself, so I ordered the small ($ 10.95). There are about 5 choices in this price range (more for bigger), and I opted for the Japanese miso. Mild broth, chicken, 2 shrimp, mushrooms, potato? (maybe taro) pork meat loaf? (whatever it was, it was weird) one small ring of corn on the cob, (needed more, it was delicious!) fried, and regular tofu, topped off with lettuce all in the pot when served, versus dipping your own. The only thing you cook yourself are noodles (or rice).
Instead of a butane table burner, it was a wooden box with some kind of flame contained underneath. It brought the hot pot to a boil fairly quickly. Now with this set up, you can’t turn the fire down. The waitress must come to your table to extinguish the flame. By the time she did this, the noodles had consumed all of the remaining broth, making for a gluey conglomeration. (Yes I should have taken them out sooner, but your bowl is very small).
Only 2 dipping sauces available. Fake Siracha, and a Chinese BBQ– hoisin sauce mix (witch was very good).
Maybe I will try them again with more people for the bigger hot pot options, and for the Cajun boils. But I am happy with My Brothers and Chongqing, and after eating lunch here, I went into Fubon and bought my own hot pot burner ($ 20) and double pot ($ 18) to make my own at home.
There were only 2 other tables with patrons while I was there, so I had a very attentive but young waitress. And she kept going over to a mirror by the restrooms and preening herself, and not washing her hands after touching her hair. Management and staff need more training and restaurant etiquette, or this place will die quickly. Also please loose the club music. It just doesn’t fit. Well… If you think about it, a Cajun boil/​Asian hot pot restaurant in one doesn’t either!
Keep Portland weird.

3.5 stars!
Came here on a Friday night with some friends and ordered the lau hai san aka seafood hot pot for my non-​vietnamese speaking readers :) I was a little skeptical when we first walked in because we were the only ones there. Yikes, that was a bad sign. But I was hungry and I would have never walked out because that’s pretty rude.
The seafood hot pot comes with either vermicelli (clear, thin noodles) or rice. I went with the vermicelli because usually the rice makes me incredible full. The serving is a good amount of food for one person, I left feeling really full. It has cabbage, taro (weird), mussels, shrimp, squid, enoki mushrooms, another type of mushroom, tofu, and clams.
To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much. This place didn’t have great reviews and although this was like a 100% look alike of other cajun seafood places in California (Kickin Crab, Boiling Crab, etc), I was skeptical because who serves both hot pot AND cajun food? Only in the PNW. lol
But it turned out to be pretty decent. The soup was not super flavorful, but enough for me to want to come back if I was craving hot pot. I wish they had more dipping sauces for the seafood though. They only have imitation sriracha & hoisin sauce — sauces you would use for phở :(