Micro-brews, crab legs, and 85-cent oysters on the half-shell – win, win, win. King Crab has served crab to Chicago for over 30 years, making it the original crab shack of the Windy City. Set across the street from Lincoln Park fine dining legend, Alinea, this seafood dive bar brings quite a different flavor to the table.

King Crab is like a relaxed man-cave with nautical decorations and flat screen TV’s around a horse shoe-shaped bar, where one can catch the game and some fishy bites. The staff is always inviting – the same staple employees are there to greet you, mix your cocktails and shuck your oysters with astounding skill, leaving minimal to no sign of shards.

The menu is well-rounded. Hearty hot appetizers include items like baked goat cheese, crab-stuffed mushrooms and fried calamari; refreshing cold appetizers like little neck clams and shrimp cocktail round out the list. The crab list is priced according to the market, but consistently gives big-time seafood houses like Shaw’s and Joe’s steep competition with reasonable prices. Lovers of these delicious spidery crustaceans know King Crab is the hot spot for traditional leg treats like snow crab and Alaskan king crab. When in season (May), soft shell crab is a hot-ticket item, served fried, saut’ÛΩed or blackened.

Overall, the menu caters to a family environment and has a little bit of everything, even beyond crustaceans, crab cakes, mollusks and fish fillets. Hungry guests can also slurp down pasta noodles, get good and messy over a slab of BBQ ribs or savor the juices of a tender steak.

Perhaps the real game-changer that sets King Crab above the rest is their 85-cent Chesapeake oyster deal, for which you must purchase at least two alcoholic beverages to qualify. But when was that ever a problem, especially with a fully-stocked bar of local and national micro-brews, decent wine and hand-crafted cocktails?

Bottom line:  you may not find 13 varieties of fresh oysters like at Shaw’s, and you may not have the service and cuisine quality that stacks up to Alinea across the street, but at King Crab you get a relaxed atmosphere and quality comfort seafood unmatched by anyone else around.