The Boiling Kitchen

Unique serving style, and the food is great. Service was good. They do have a kids menu.

Awesome restaurant concept! The seafood was great! We had shrimp, crab, and sausage with the medium spiced Louisiana seasoning. We were surprised by how spicy the medium was, so I recommend trying the mild if you’re looking for just a little heat. The service was kind and prompt, and we were even given coupons with our bill. We will be back again!

I love seafood, so I was quite excited to try this place out. I ordered the $ 15 platter of shrimp, clam, and crawfish, with BK special sauce.
The tables are lined with plastic, all the utensils are disposable for easy cleanup. The seafood is served in a plastic bag (as seen in the pictures).
The sauce was delicious! Although I agree with one of the earliest reviews– I wish it were just plastic bibs so you can really dig in to the goodness.

WOW!!! The food was absolutely delicious! We went there for the first time and we completely fell in love! I swear If they offered a monthly pass I would sign up in a heartbeat. Yes it was THAT delicious! My wife ordered crawfish with Cajun sauce and I ordered seafood platter with Louisiana sauce, after comparing both sauces we are happy to report that the Cajun sauce is sweeter and it is in a paste form, while the Louisiana sauce has Cajun and old bay seafood seasoning which comes in a watery form. Depends on which one you would prefer though. WARNING: DO NOT GET THE EXTRA SPICY!!! To give you an idea how spicy that is, I once completed the blazin wings challenge at Bdubs and it set my mouth on fire, and this extra spicy felt like that. My wife and I had to constantly wipe our sweats and tears while eating this dinner– all because we ordered extra spicy thinking it is like any other restaurant, yeah, so much for a romantic night out ;). Also I would not recommend this place as a first date, since you will be given a pair of plastic gloves and eat like a barbarian with sauces all over your mouth. I highly recommend getting the white rice with it because you can pour your spicy juice all over the rice and it tastes like heaven! Also make sure to get sausage corn in it (they charge $ 1.50 extra or something like that). I also loved the fact that this place is ran by recent college graduates from UK, we lexingtonians should certainly show our support to those ambitious young men and women!

Highly recommend to go! I went there a few times, and really enjoyed my experiences dinning in. The food was amazing, and surely to say, Lexington has no other restaurants like this. It is definitely a unique experience. The staff were really friendly, and willing to give recommendations if it was your first time visit.

I give this place 4 stars due to these factors:
The spice between garlic butter and BK special wasn’t much of a difference. The spicy heat is pretty spicy it made my friend sweat, and he’s a person who can handle the heat. The fact that they don’t serve beer with this spicy food is unfortunate because we would’ve totally ordered several bottles here. There should be fillers with the food as the seafood itself isn’t filling. Although, the menu does allow you to order certain sides, for the price, there should be something included. Having some more catchy names would make this place a bit more entertaining. Also, having some cucumber water would be nice to help with the spicy fire you can encounter. Overall, it is a great experience as we all enjoyed our meals. I would highly recommend you come here to check it out.

I went in to get some food recently, but the staff was not able to tell me what ingredients are in the sauces. I was told that the «butter» for dipping, is «liquid butter». Butter is not liquid, even at room temperature, unless combined with other ingredients, and no one seem to have a clue as to what that might be. Obviously, it would be some kind of oil but no one seemed to know or give a hoot about what kind of oil is used.
As far as seafood, in Lexington, I will make my own. There are too many other good restaurants for me to waste my lack of nutrition here.

So excited to have a Cajun/​Asian seafood boil restaurant in Lexington! We went on a Saturday at like three and for a while we were the only people in the restaurant. This meant the server was super attentive and the food came out fast. I’m not so sure it was a full pound of shrimp and crawfish we got (maybe with the sauce?). Seemed a little skimpy. But the sauces were great! The food was so good I’m overlooking the fact that maybe we didn’t get exactly what we paid for. We will definitely be back!

This place is great! I love seafood boils, so when I saw a pictures here on Unilocal,I knew I had to try it. We shared a mixed boil (crawfish, shrimp, and mussels) and soft shell crab. We chose Cajun seasoning at medium heat for the boil. Delicious! The spice was just right. They brought some house-​made flatbread to go with the boil, which was amazing! Trust me, it looks like regular ol’ pita bread, but it has a great texture and flavor. I’d go back just for that, honestly. The softshell crab was pretty good. I’d like to see a nicer sauce to dress it up. I don’t love breaded and fried food, so I’m not the best judge for that.
The service here is great. They’re helpful with navigating the menu, prompt with refills, and very personable. I can’t wait to go back!

I’m not a huge seafood fan myself but my wife loves it so we came here for date night. I ordered half 1lb shrimp/​half 1lb mussel in extra spicy, and my wife ordered fried fish.
The wait staff was friendly and the environment was very clean. Our food arrive quickly and I wasn’t disappointed. Very fresh and delicious… Spicy enough to make me sniffle which is a bonus!
We’ll definitely return and we’d recommend to anyone who loves seafood (or is willing to give it a shot like I was!).

Good food great casual atmosphere! Don’t be afraid to make a mess. You will most likely be wearing some when you leave. Definitely Recommend trying it out for a little different flavor to break up your everyday.

Amazing food and a great addition to Lexington. I lived in Louisiana for many years and have been missing the flavors and seafood from that area. This place reminds me so much of Louisiana cooking and is appropriately priced. My only suggestion would be to play Cajun music and have a Mardi Gras party! I decided to come on Fat Tueaday and was disappointed they had no party theme going, otherwise, superb! Will return.

This is a great hidden gem! The crawfish is fantastic. They do Cajun right. This is a new place and worth checking out. Great prices too & very friendly.

I am going to give this place 5 stars but it currently is probably 3.5. I give it 5 because it is the only place like this in Lexington and I want it to succeed. However, it is a new place and you can tell they are still in startup mode and not fully at their max potential.
This is not your down south Cajun type place, it is an Asian take on Cajun. My wife is Vietnamese from Southern California and we frequent the Cajun restaurants there. The premier place in Orange County is The Boiling Crab and I recommend to the owners that they take a visit. That place has a line out the door every day of the week in a land of amateur food critics.
I recommend a few changes to the current setup:
— this place needs to work on the condiments as they have no dipping sauce for the seafood. Every Asian Cajun joint has a little plastic container of salt and pepper that they give you and they dump a bunch of limes on your table. You squeeze the lime juice into the salt/​pepper to make a delicious and cheap dipping sauce for crawfish tails for example
— they give you plastic gloves but what they really need are plastic bibs. Not only is it practical but it adds to the experience of going to a place like this. It is supposed to be messy, food all over the table – organized chaos. You can’t have that when you are unprotected from the juices within those delicious crawfish.
This place has potential, and they will learn. Give it a chance to improve before you crush it on Unilocal

Nope. They will never get my money again. When this place first opened my boyfriend and I went there twice in one week because we enjoyed it so much but somehow they have hit rock bottom in the course of two weeks. It seems they have changed everything from how you can order the food to the food quality itself. I took my daughter last night and as we were eating our clams, we began to notice we were also eating copious amounts of sand as well. The fact that we had been served, and were eating dirt and sand was enough to make us lose our appetite for the rest of the meal. I informed the waitress, she said «oh» and asked if we just wanted the bill. I assumed that, like any respectable customer service establishment, they would remove the uneaten food from our bill which still would have contained a $ 14 appetizer that we did eat, and drinks. The waitress brought the bill back and told me, still without apologizing, that 10% would be taken off. Are you freaking kidding me? You feed us dirt and still want me to pay for 90% of the uneaten dirt and sand ridden clams? You screwed up, you take the loss, but I ended up paying anyways just so I wouldn’t have to keep arguing with them and could get my daughter something edible for dinner before bedtime. Enjoy that 33 bucks, it’s the last. These people must be out of their minds if they think that insulting customers in such a way will grow their business. They absolutely lost 3 yesterday and anyone whoever asks me about the place. What an absolute shame.

Awesome. Legit crawfish boil. They give you gloves too, so you can re-​enter society without taking a shower :). Will be back.

Gave this a try by walking by and seeing menu through the window. Great idea. Got a sampler of a few things. Seafood was all well cooked. Not a complaint but a bit of a warning, their heat levels were a bit higher than most KY restaurant levels. Order at least one level below your normal. Another heads up. This is a messy eating experience. Be prepared for it.

The best seafoods restaurant in Lexington. Clean, quite, and tasty.
Absolutely loved the food. Freshest seafood I’ve had in a long time.
Highly recommend «Crab Legs» and «Crawfish» with lemon pepper flavor. I go there with my girlfriend twice a week.
Average cost $ 15-​$ 25.