We went to Bob Chinn‘s yesterday to help Steve celebrate a birthday. It was a typicaly Bob Chinny experrience: waitstaff in Hawaiian aloha shirts with tropical fish, a huge dining room with the handwashing stations everywhere that were supposed to look like barrels of Myers’ Rum (an ingredient in the famous Bob Chinn Mai Tai) and bits of crab shell and aerosolized drawn butter floating in a fine mist over our heads.

A word not often heard at Bob Chinn’s was used: “traife.” Well, most of us were not concerned with that, and we tried to keep the spray and stray bits from hitting the people to whom it mattered.

A large birthday cake came out with a boatload of candles, and we all sang very heartily. A few minutes later, a young man and woman at a nearby table got engaged, and there was applause from all over the restaurant. The food was good, except that David’s first choice wasn’t as good as he thought it would be, and it was cheerfully accepted by the waiter and replaced with something David liked much better.

Also typical for Bob Chinn’s. The menu is so comprehensive and contains so many little asides that it’s hard to wade through it, so the waiter gave us a crash course in the history of Bob Chinn’s, walked us through the menu, and the only omission was a graded test at the end. Sadly, David missed the caveat about the Jonah stone crabs he ordered – the waiter didn’t recommend them very highly. That’s okay, there was a lot to absorb (fine mist and all).

It was a very successful and fun evening, and then we washed every exposed surface on our bodies. Which is also a typical end to a Bob Chinn’s Crab House experience.