The Crack Shack

Across hundreds of articles on this site, you’ll find that around 99.5% of them are unconcerned with the basic safety aspects of visiting a restaurant – in part because we’re willing to visit all sorts of places and try lots of different things. As the only Orange County location of a small San Diego-based restaurant chain, The Crack Shack in Costa Mesa is the ultra-rare exception: It was the only restaurant in memory where we came to try the food and left feeling creeped out by neighborhood tweakers who appeared to be awaiting actual crack (or the opportunity to steal something to trade for crack) while loitering around the front and back of the place.

The reason we visited Crack Shack was to try the spicy fried chicken, which Chick-Fil-A’s success led others (Momofuku, Popeyes, et al.) to iterate the formula a decade or so ago. We ordered six Fire Nugs, a regular Schmaltz Fries, and one Dark Matter Oreo milkshake. Literally everything we tried was underwhelming, and we didn’t think the spicy chicken or the menu was close to as compelling as Cluck Kitchen‘s.