139 Chrystie St (between Delancey St and Broome St, LES)
Fatty Kat Eats: Chicken Wings, Cajun Fries, Crawfish and Shrimp Combo
Short of getting on an aeroplane to the Big Easy, The Boil hits the spot of all spots with crawfish juice-flying precision. It's the best cajun restaurant I know of in New York. It's also the only non-crappy cajun restaurant I know of...great sample size, huh? But honestly, The Boil in LES serves excellent food.
We started out with a few Oysters from Virginia to get my fatty mojo going. They were good. Nothing too special. The mignonette was funky, but the cocktail sauce and lemon were fine. I like smaller oysters, particularly from the West Coast--Hama Hama, Kumamoto, Kusshis, etc.
These Chicken Wings were unreal! I called them nuclear wings, because they were served ridiculously hot and stayed hot for way longer than they should have. The salt rub was delicious, and I didn't use the no name sauce at all (aioli?) since the chicken was already perfectly seasoned. These wings couldn't fly, but they certainly had a kick. <<<< lame joke
Cajun Fries = Boom! Out of this world. Done.
The Fried Catfish was beautifully breaded and fried. It's so hard to find good fish and chips in the city, so I'm glad we got this, not to mention with a cajun twist.
I appreciated the server for being honest and telling us that the Mac n Cheese wasn't amazing. As a table, we decided to jump off the cliff together and ordered the cheesy appetizer. Apparently, the cheese gods were with us as our resident mac n cheese connoisseur, @whosyourscatdaddy, gave 2 thumbs up. Bread crumbs are always bueno. Really good mac n cheese!
And now, for the feature presentation....we ordered 3 Crawfish and Shrimp Combos for 6 people. That's 3 lbs of crawfish and 3 lbs of shrimp. Our server recommended 1 combo per person, but we knew better. We opted for more appetizers because one can only consume so much butter, garlic, crawfish and shrimp. You can pick among 4 sauce options for the seafood--dry (no sauce), garlic butter, Old Bay or Lemon Pepper--or you can do the right thing and order "the Boil Special," which is all of the above! Not surprisingly, the garlic butter was the most pronounced flavor, followed by the Old Bay and Lemon Pepper. The shrimp and crawfish tails were plump, juicy and most importantly, rewarding after all that deshelling. Potato wedges and corn were boiled with everything, but they disappeared FAST. We like carbs!
Don't let our cuteness fool you. We were fighters all bibbed and gloved up for the crawfish battle. Obviously, we won.
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