The flashy local sushi chain Octopus, which operates multiple restaurants in Burbank, Glendale, and Irvine (as Tomikawa), closed its Brea branch last fall. Now a new Cajun crawfish joint has moved in.
The Mad Claw serves the same kind of sauce-steeped seafood as Boiling Crab and others of its ilk. The sauces range from a basic Garlic Butter to Lemon Pepper and a Cajun. And just like all Boiling Crab cousins, it offers a sauce that has all of them combined. The Mad Claw’s is called a “Full House”.
The Brea store (at 375 W Birch St.) opened a few weeks ago. The Mad Claw also operates a restaurant in Rancho Cucamonga, which opened in the Fall of 2014. It’s not the first Cajun crawfish joint to land in Brea. If I’m not mistaken, that distinction goes to On The Hook. But as with poke joints, there’s more of this where it came from.
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.