Other than when we need fast food we prioritize dining at family-owned restaurant, but do have some franchises we frequent at times. I posted last year about how all of a sudden we were seeing the trend of crab places. We went from none to three in a couple of years. The first one is still good (Krab Kingz) and we use them for carryout. They aren’t exactly a sit-down place though and they don’t have wine or coffee. Then a Crafty Crab in Homestead and a Red Crab in Florida City both opened within months of each other. Red Crab is a little closer to us and we tried it first. It was okay, but they didn’t serve coffee so my friend and I tried Crafty next. The menus were almost identical, the ambience was better even though they didn’t serve coffee either. We tried Red Crab a couple more times, then decided not to bother with it again.

Maybe four months or so ago, I saw it was closed and wasn’t surprised. Then about six weeks ago, it looked as if they were open again. I didn’t think anything about it because there might just have been a building issue they needed to take care of. An individual contacted me recently and said friends of theirs owned Red Crab and could I maybe get them some publicity. I cautiously sent a text asking if they were new owners. That was a “yes”, so Hubby and I went for dinner. The ambience was like night and day. They also had an expanded menu and indeed have coffee as regular, espresso, or cappuccino. Service was fine and prices were essentially the same. It was a pleasant surprise and later this summer, I’ll do an interview for a  write-up for the paper. I have another one to do before them.