Meg Cline: Dining in the Dash: King’s Crab Shack

Winston-Salem needed a restaurant like this. A down-home, pretend-you're-at-the-beach seafood place. My husband has said for years Winston needed a "good seafood place" and I think we finally found it. Yes, there is the one out by the mall but we hate driving out to that trafficy-retaily side of town and there are lots of restaurants that serve amazing seafood dishes - Mozelle's, Milner's and Meridian's come to mind - but this is the kind of place where seafood is the entire point and your meal comes in plastic red baskets with a side of perfect tartar sauce and a lack of any pretense. Basically, the only thing missing is a nearby source of saltwater.

As Anne wrote in her post (she always beats me to it!), we were originally attracted to what we heard was the weekend lunch special - all you can eat crab legs. Turned out that they were $28 per person, which I did not think was very special. (I often get confused by restaurants calling something special - do they mean it's just the only time you can get it or do they mean it's a good price for something they offer regularly? I think this case might have been the former, but either way we decided not to opt for it.)

The good news is, despite the initial disappointment of no endless crab legs, everybody was very happy with their meals when all was said and done. Matt loved his spicy catfish sandwich - he is a catfish aficionado and has been disappointed ever since Village Tavern stopped carrying it on their menu a few years ago! I debated between a shrimp po'boy and clams and finally decided to go with clams. I love me some clams, and could easily have taken down 2-3 dozen of these suckers but since that wasn't an all you can eat special, I limited myself to a dozen plus a starter salad. They were excellent - briney and delicious, with the right complementary sides of melted butter, a tangy cocktail sauce and pungent horseradish. Matt had a Pacifico to go with his meal, and I perused the fun drink menu for future reference.

I liked the set up of the restaurant too - it had a really long bar area, plenty of tables on the inside and lots of outdoor patio seating. (Given it was our 100+ degree Saturday, no one was taking advantage of that... no big surprise.) There were enough things on the menu I'd come back regularly, and there were options for non-seafood eaters as well too. Our meal came to $35 with gratuity and everything, so that included 2 meals, a salad and a drink - which I think is very reasonable for delicious seafood! It was just an easy, laid-back place to have a delicious seafood meal. Definitely a place we will make future visits to!