But there’s a reason why the place is named “Crab” Landing, says restaurant owner Andrei Soen.
Gregarious and bristling with excitement, the 23-year-old said the linchpin of his family’s new venture is their native crab recipes adopted from Singapore.
 Cousins Andrei Soen (center) and Marcus Kok (left) are the respective owner and manager of the new restaurant Crab Landing in the Pillar Point Harbor in Princeton. |
Featuring a separate sushi bar, upstairs and downstairs wet bars, an outdoor patio, a 1,200-bottle wine cellar, and seating for more than 250 guests, Crab Landing is among the most large-scale eateries on the Coastside. The décor of the restaurant celebrates the fishing roots of the harbor district with an aquarium, a waterfall and a leviathan mural of underwater creatures stretching up both floors.
“This is, by far, the most exciting project for our family,” Soen said. “Watching this place being built from the ground up, it’s been absolutely thrilling.”
Built on the east end of Harbor Village, Crab Landing overlooks the Pillar Point Harbor fishing fleet, where the restaurant purchases the bulk of its seafood.
The new restaurant, now open for the last two weeks, is an ambitious project for their family, said manager Marcus Kok, Soen’s cousin. The Soen family sold their Mountain View restaurant, Yellow Ginger, to try their hand at opening a new business on the Coastside.
“”We were looking for a new restaurant location when this opportunity arose,” Kok said, gazing out from the second-floor view of the harbor and Surfer’s Beach. “This coast ... I mean, look at this! You can’t get this view over the hill.”
Built like a two-story gazebo, Crab Landing indeed gives its guests sitting on the south end of the restaurant a sensational vista of the shoreline, with Mavericks waves just visible from the edge of Pillar Point. But tables at the other end of the restaurant aren’t so lucky — they get a view of Highway 1 and a parking lot.
Full dinner entrées at Crab Landing range in price from $20 to $40, while lunch prices range from $10 to $20. The restaurant is open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday, and 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., Thursday through Saturday.
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