While we were out at the NAMM Show earlier this year, the father-and-two-sons team from Maag Audio were right behind us with their booth. My boss from Germany had known the owner who started the business for a number of years and I had the pleasure of meeting the guys the day before the show started. They even had one of their guys - more of a friend of the two sons - there who worked part-time in their factory. Of course, we got to talking about food and the guys were effusive of their praise of a seafood restaurant over in Newport Beach. On Thursday, they invited the four guys from my company out to dinner the following evening. One of our guys is vegetarian and seafood isn't on his menu, and the one of the other guys from France has dietary restrictions which discourages rich food like seafood. A quick look at the menu on-line pretty much told him that there wouldn't be anything that he would be able to eat. So, after the day was done on Friday, my boss from Germany and I piled into their rental van for the 30 minute drive from Anaheim out to Newport Beach for dinner at The Crab Cooker.
In 1926, Bob Roubian was born to an Italian immigrant mother and an Armenian immigrant father in Pasadena, just north of Los Angeles. After graduating from high school in 1944, Roubian joined the Navy Seabees seeing action in the Pacific while building bases ramping up to the end of the Pacific Theater of World War II. After coming back home, Bob helped his father in his construction business. On the weekends, they'd go deep sea fishing. They'd cook their catch over an open flame using leftover wood pieces that Bob's father would bring home from construction sites. Bob learned from his father that frying fish cooked out all the flavor.
In the late 40's, Bob Roubian was working on a building that used to be a Bank of America branch whose new owners were turning it into a fish market. Three years later when the opportunity to buy the place came up, Bob jumped at the chance to own his own business.
Pictured right - Bob Roubian. Photo courtesy Orange County Register.
Even though there were more than a dozen competitors in the area serving fresh caught seafood. With the ordinary name "Seafood Varieties" Bob not only cooked the fresh caught seafood, he sold it from counters in his store. Bob started out frying fish since that's what his competitors did. But when he returned to his roots by steaming or grilling his seafood, people began to notice. He set up a steamer in front of the store and cooked crab or locally caught lobster. It got to a point that people would say, "Let's go to that place with the crab cooker." The name stuck and Roubian changed the name to The Crab Cooker in 1954.
To say that Bob Roubian was an interesting guy is an understatement. Bob was called a "renaissance man" by his family after he passed away in December of 2017 at the age of 91. Bob was a craftsman who hand-carved the restaurant's front door. He was a sculptor who made some of the figurines and decorations for his restaurant. He became a photographer who took a number of photos that hung on the walls in the restaurant. And he also took up painting with many of his works of art were on display at the restaurant. He also became a collector of art with much of his collection decorating the walls of The Crab Cooker over the years. It was said that he sold some of his collected artwork right off the wall to Hollywood stars such as Ray Milland and James Cagney.
But Bob was also well-known in the 1950's as a songwriter/performer who wrote songs and recorded 45's for Capitol Records. In 1955, Roubian teamed with country musician Cliffie Stone to co-write and sing a novelty hit "The Popcorn Song" which turned out to be a national hit eventually reaching No. 14 on the Billboard charts. The royalty income from the song allowed Bob to pay off all debts - including a mounting back-tax bill - on The Crab Cooker.
Bob continued to write, record and perform music and even went out on tour to promote his songs with his wife Helen and their two children Robbie and Rhonda (Ronnie) running the restaurant. However, by the end of the 50's, he'd had enough of the travel and gave up the music business to fully concentrate on The Crab Cooker.
The Crab Cooker was a very popular place to eat. It was common to see lines form out the door and around the building. In addition to James Cagney and Ray Milland, celebrities and politicians such as John Wayne and Richard Nixon frequented the restaurant. There was a time when Nixon was president in the early 70's that his advance team came to The Crab Cooker during the height of the evening rush asking Roubian to find space for the president to eat. Bob reportedly said, "He can wait in line with the other people waiting to eat, as would any president who wanted to get in."
Jim Wasko was a 1984 graduate of the Naval Academy and he eventually married Ronnie Roubian. As a reconnaissance pilot for the Navy, the Wasko family moved from base to base for his assignments. When the Waskos moved from Guam to a new assignment at the Naval Air Station at Point Mugo near Oxnard, the family finally got to spend more time at The Crab Cooker. In 1990, Jim Wasko left the Navy and entered into a partnership with his father-in-law to run The Crab Cooker.
Wasko adopted many of Bob Roubian's tried and true methods of cooking fish and running the restaurant. Cooking the seafood over mesquite and lightly - or never - seasoning the fish was a key to the success of the restaurant. In 1993, Wasko opened a second Crab Cooker location in Tustin, about 12 miles northeast of Newport Beach. It, too, became an instant hit with people who didn't have to make the drive out to Newport Beach to enjoy The Crab Cooker.
Pictured left - Jim Wasko. Photo courtesy Medium.com
In 2014, a new condominium building was being built next to The Crab Cooker in Newport Beach. Construction workers accidentally damaged the foundation of the 76-year-old building. City of Newport Beach engineers said that the building was safe for occupancy, but it turned out that they couldn't restore the building's foundation. The restaurant stayed open for four more years even as the building began to list to one side. It was determined that it would be better to evacuate the building and rebuild a new Crab Cooker. Wasko closed the doors to the restaurant at the end of September 2018.
Wasko estimated that it would be a year - 18 months tops - to have the old building razed, then rebuilt on the same spot. But plumbing issues caused by foundation problems effectively pushed back the new opening by 8 months. After an intensive re-engineering of the foundation (it was found the foundation was in unstable sand rather than bedrock), it was late 2019 when the foundation was poured. Then, of course, the pandemic hit in March of 2020 causing logistical problems with workers in the space. No more than 10 workers could be on the property at any time and all had to be spaced apart appropriately. But by the summer of 2021, everything was back in place - including the hand-crafted door and the 12-foot long mounted great white shark that had been caught off the Newport Beach pier in 1960 - and the Newport Beach location of The Crab Cooker reopened for business.
We finished the day at the NAMM show and one of the guys from Magg Audio had left early to go get their rental van and to meet us at a lot near the Anaheim Convention Center. It was about a 20 minute drive from where we were picked up and the front of The Crab Cooker located at the corner of Newport Boulevard and 22nd St. (see map) We were let off at the front door while our driver took off to find a space to park in just around the corner on 22nd St.
There was a line that stretched back to the door when we walked in. But it seemed to be moving fast. As we stood in line I noticed all the fresh seafood they had on sale in a case by the front door. And the seafood wasn't cheap. Large salmon and mahi mahi filets were $19.95 a pound. Whole Dungeness crabs were $25.95, and King crab claws were $74.95!
When one of the guys checked in at the hostess counter, he asked if we could have Caroline as our server. They had been there a couple days before and Caroline waited on them. Turns out Caroline was a perky blonde with a great sense of humor. She was more than accommodating and very patient with six guys who were constantly changing their minds or asking for something after they forgot to ask for it before.
We were seated at a long table in the front dining room. It was an interesting mix of artwork, photographs and kitsch with the great white shark hanging from the tin-plate ceiling. The shark was facing my boss who looked up at one point and said, "Jesus, he looks like he's coming after me!"
Behind windows in the front dining was the kitchen area where a large kettle grill that was used to cook the seafood. I couldn't tell if it was one of the Weber industrial kettles that I've seen at one of their Weber Grill restaurants, but it was definitely at least 42" across. A flattop grill next to the kettle grill was in use making their famous Romano cheese mashed potatoes. The potatoes are put on the grill to give them a crispy edge maintaining the fluffy inner core of a combination of potatoes and cheese.
The back dining area was bigger than the front and not quite as gaudy. More historic photographs, artwork and stained-glass windows were on display in the room. It also seemed a little more quiet in that room, probably because it had a vaulted ceiling with wooden beams over the dining room.
Caroline had given us menus to look over and a couple of the guys already knew what they were going to get - the lobster skewer. But they also had other seafood varieties on skewers - shrimp, scallops, and oysters all cooked over mesquite. They had a salmon filet that tempted me, but I knew I couldn't eat cooked salmon. They did have a smoked salmon appetizer that I damned near ordered, but we were guests and I didn't want to appear to be taking advantage of our host's hospitality. Crab cakes, King crab legs, and soft-shell crabs were also part of the dinner menu.
Appetizers on the menu included the aforementioned smoked salmon, but they also had smoked albacore tuna, as well. Shrimp cocktails, oysters and clams on the half-shell (I'd never had clams on the half-shell), and calamari were also part of the appetizer portion of the menu. But our host insisted that we try The Crab Cooker's clam chowder. It was a Manhattan-style clam chowder in a rich and somewhat spicy tomato broth. I spiced it up even more with a few shakes of Tabasco into the chowder. It tasted wonderful and went very well with the Hazy IPA from the Harland Brewing Co. out of San Diego. Some of The Crab Cooker's famous Fisherman's bread had been ordered and I dipped some into the broth after spooning out the meaty clams that proliferated the chowder. Crispy bread sticks, crackers and these little bread bites also came with the chowder.
After we all had ordered, Caroline had come out with paper plates and plastic utensils for us to use. Now, this thoroughly confused my boss from Germany who had probably never eaten on paper plates and used a plastic fork or knife at a sit down restaurant before. I had to assure him that a lot of the seafood "shacks" I've eaten at in the past were like this. It wasn't like I had to talk him down from a ledge, but I told him to just go with the flow. Once he understood what was going on, he was good with it.
When our food came out, I don't think anyone cared what they were served on. I went with the wholesale recommendation of the lobster skewer. Two sides were also included in the meal and I went with the Romano cheese potatoes and the cole slaw. The cheese potatoes were excellent, but cole slaw was sort of "meh!" I also had the choice of rice pilaf or sliced tomatoes. I should have gone with the tomatoes.
And the lobster skewer was everything the guys raved about beforehand. The grilled lobster meat had a bit of a char on the outside, but it was tender and juicy on the inside. It was about 8 to 10 ounces of lobster meat and it was great, but it was - oh! - so rich. I was definitely full after I finished the skewer and the potatoes. (And I continued to load up on the Fisherman's bread. It was killer. They make about 600 loaves of it a day.)
One of the other guys got the shrimp and scallops skewer. I looked long and hard at that on the menu before I made my final choice of the lobster skewer. It featured pieces of shrimp and scallops that were spaced apart by little slices of bacon. "I've had the lobster skewers before," he said. "But this is out of the world. The bacon just adds some kick to the overall flavor of the shrimp and scallops." A small tub of melted butter came on the side with the skewers. We had Caroline running back to the kitchen to get us all more butter about halfway through our meals.
Of course, Caroline tried to tempt us with dessert, but by the time we were done we'd all thrown in the towel. The richness of the seafood skewers just put us all back in our chairs patting our stomachs. It was an outstanding meal. We were all pretty quiet as we drove back toward our rental house where they graciously dropped us off and continued on to their hotel for the night.
The next day, we profusely thanked our hosts who took us to The Crab Cooker the night before. They were ecstatic that we liked it so well. How could we not? The Crab Cooker is one of the more popular seafood places in Orange County, the food was outstanding and the service we received from Caroline was A+. It was no wonder those guys asked if she could wait on our table after she had taken care of them a few nights before. The Crab Cooker turned out to be one of more memorable visits to a restaurant I've ever experienced.
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