Location: 2651 Connecticut Ave. NW
Readers’ pick: Clyde’s
If your meal comes with a plastic tablecloth, gloves, a bib and a bucket, it’s probably about to get seriously saucy.
Although D.C. is thousand miles away from Cajun Country, Washingtonians don’t have to travel farther than Woodley Park for a taste of Acadiana’s tangy and earthy flavors. Hot N Juicy Crawfish’s Dungeness Crab Cluster ($28) was worth braving the Metro transfer at Metro Center for a chance to savor the combination of the D.C. region’s most iconic form of seafood with the South’s most recognizable spice.
Directly across the street from the Woodley Park Metro station, a patio sprawls in front of the Hot N Juicy townhouse underneath a black canopy emblazoned with the restaurant’s name in flaming letters. A collection of wooden anchors and close-up photographs of models with various orange crustacean chapeaus — a lobster along the hairline here, a crab balancing atop a head there — lined the brick walls of the cozy yet bright establishment. After all, the orange hue of a boiled crab is the new black.
Two TV screens on opposite sides of the room played staticky live feeds of March Madness while the music in the restaurant oscillated between booming house remixes and nostalgic indie rock like Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars.”
My friends and I enjoyed our meal sans utensils or plates. I tied the bib behind my neck and donned a pair of plastic gloves as if I were a surgeon entering the operating room. Our crab arrived wrapped in a plastic bag that was half full of the restaurant’s signature marinade sauce. We ordered our crab coated in Hot n Juicy sauce at spice level two out of five at the request of my roommate. The vinegary, sweet and spicy edge of the sauce paralleled its strong garlicky and buttery undertones.
Channeling our inner sea otters, we began to literally crack into the meal by snapping the joints of the crab’s sauce-coated exoskeleton to reach the pillowy crab meat on the inside. We opted to add a third of a cob of corn ($1.75) and a singular potato ($1.50) into the bag to marinate alongside the cluster.
The corn was the ideal vehicle for the piquant sauce, which seeped into the crevices between each kernel, and the chopped up bits of potato provided almost a respite from the symphony of flavors as the fluffy core of the spud chunks were untouched by the zesty marinade. But as flavorful as the crustacean was, I would’ve appreciated a bit more claw for my buck.
With no surface left unsauced at the table, our check came with a wet wipe at the end of our meal.
