New Modesto seafood boil restaurant has customers cracking crab, crawfish and more
Does food taste better when you’ve worked for it?
Modesto’s newest seafood restaurant puts that theory to the test with tasty results. Akitaca Crab opened on Prescott Road in mid-January and already has happy return customers.
The restaurant specializes in seafood boils, hearty mixes of crab, shrimp, crawfish and more cooked in their shells with potatoes, corn and sausage and then served either in a bag or dumped onto butcher paper on your table. That’s when the real work begins.
Seafood boils originated in the South and on the East Coast and have become a popular dining trend across the country. Akitaca Crab joins a handful of restaurants in Stanislaus County that offer seafood boils, including Turlock’s Shrimpy’s, Modesto’s Crawfish Noodle & Grill and the newly opened Bag O’ Crab in north Modesto’s former Tahoe Joe’s space.
Modesto restaurateur Kevin Lin spent the last two years renovating the former home of the Four Seasons Buffet, which moved across the street. Now the 5,400-square-foot building has a new kitchen, bar and dining room design with nautical touches. The open, contemporary space can seat about 250, and a private party room is under construction.
Lin is no stranger to the Modesto restaurant scene. He opened Kobe Sushi Buffet in the McHenry Village shopping center in 2012 and has owned the Asian-inspired restaurant with a sushi conveyor belt ever since.
But Akitaca manager Eden Rodriguez said he wanted to bring more seafood boil options to the Valley so people didn’t need to drive to the Bay Area or Sacramento to get their fix. The restaurant was named after the Japanese city and prefecture Akita, with “ca” added at the end to denote California, he said.
“It’s an experience we brought to Modesto. You get the experience a family meal that you put out in a bag or on paper on the table,” Rodriguez said. “(Lin) wanted to bring this kind of food to Modesto, something new like he did with Kobe Sushi.”
The menu features a variety of seafood boil and shellfish options. You can build your own mix, picking from shrimp, clams, crawfish, mussels, baby octopus, calamari, scallops, lobster tail and a variety of crab (snow, king and Dungeness) served by the half or full pound. Then you pick your spice level and sauce: Cajun, garlic butter, lemon pepper or the Akitaca Special (all three sauces combined). Next it’s boiling time.
Akitaca also has premixed boil bag combos, which range from $24 to $65. For a less saucy option, the restaurant has dry rub family-style specials, which are poured onto the table instead of served in a bag. Those run $75 for a party of two to $219 for a party of four.
Both options require you don’t mind getting your hands dirty and are prepared for a whole lot of cracking. The restaurant provides shelling tools, bibs and hand wipes — and you’ll need all of them. There even are gloves, which depending on how spicy you made your mix are also highly recommended. The top heat level uses the scorpion pepper, which ranks just below the feared Carolina Reaper as the hottest pepper in the world.
For those interested in less of a mess for dinner, Akitaca also offers fried seafood, soups and salads, appetizers and po boy sandwiches in seafood or nonseafood varieties, which run $4 to $13. The restaurant has a full bar, so you can pair your seafood bonanza with a cocktail or bucket of beer and more.
Akitaca currently offers dine-in and takeout, but within the next month or so should also be available on the DoorDash delivery app.
Akitaca Crab Seafood Restaurant, at 1800 Prescott Road, Suite C, is open noon to 9:30 p.m. Wednesday to Monday, closed Tuesdays. For more information, call 209-238-9518 or visit its page on Facebook.
This story was originally published March 19, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
