Here’s what you need to know about feasting at any of the several Asian-run Cajun seafood houses in and around the San Gabriel Valley — places like The Stinkin Crawfish, The Boiling Crab, All-In Crab, Boat House, The Crawfish Spot and The Spicy Crab Shack: Don’t wear a shirt that you’ll want to wear again. That’s because no matter how carefully you tie the plastic bib (given to all diners) around your neck, something will splatter on your shirt. And no amount of Shout, or Zout or OxiClean will ever get the splatter out. Trust me, I’ve tried. The stains are permanent. Tasty — but also forever.

The aroma of the garlic butter, the lemon pepper and — in the case of either of the Jumpin’ Lobster restaurants in Monterey Park and Alhambra — any of the four sauces (along with the lemon pepper and the garlic butter, there’s the Original Cajun and the Sichuan Mala) remain on your fingers, no matter how many times you wash your hands. The smell does eventually go away. But it can take a while.

That’s part of the pleasure of the Cajun seafood experience — this is food that stays with you, and, for that matter, an experience that stays with you. Though the different Cajun seafood houses have their individual followings, they all guarantee a meal that will be remembered, for days on end.

But Jumpin’ Lobster leaps to a different drummer as well, because this may be the only Cajun seafood shop around that also has a sushi menu. Which seems contradictory and counter-intuitive, for while most of the menu is over-the-top and messy, sushi has a certain comparative elegance. These are cuisines from opposite ends of the universe. And yet, they live together in relative peace, bound by a mutual affection for sea critters. But certainly, there’s no confusing one for the other.

And so, there I was at Jumpin’ Lobster, a lively storefront restaurant in a Monterey Park midi-mall, wearing a Gap T-shirt that was about ready to be relegated to my rag drawer.

Like pretty much everyone around me, I was wearing a bib. And, like pretty much everyone around me, I was confronted with a heaping pile of steaming seafood, corn on the cob, sausages, potatoes and sauce (lots of sauce). Beer, too, which is the drink of choice with Cajun seafood. (Some of the Cajun seafood joints serve wine. For me, it’s beer, always beer.)

I suspect most folks going to Jumpin’ Lobster go straight for the main event — a choice of crawfish, shrimp (heads on, heads off or peeled), clams, mussels, king crab legs, snow crab legs, Dungeness crab, blue crab, squid — and, of course, lobster whole and lobster tail, flavored with any of the sauces, spiced on four levels of fire.

If you can’t make up your mind, there’s a family pack where you choose three critters that appeal the most, along with corn and potato — a good deal for about $44.

But if you need more, there are add-ons at both ends, as apps and side, and Chinese restaurant “chef’s recommendations” as well. The starters run to properly crispy chicken wings — fried, BBQ and Buffalo style — raw oysters, chicken tenders, fried squid, butterfly shrimp, spring rolls, and a trio of fries (french, lemon pepper and Cajun).

The “recommendations” smack of old school Chinese American — shrimp fried rice, chicken noodle, garlic chili shrimp and, just to stay on theme, Cajun fried rice. The Cajun fries are pretty much essential; I like them a lot more than the generic boiled spud that comes in the plastic bag that most everything is served in.

What most of us are here for is the pile of seafood dumped in the middle of the table, ready to be torn to bits. The shrimp are probably the easiest food item to deal with — the shells come off easily, and they’re totally plastered with sauce. The clams and the mussels are pretty easy as well; they usually are. It’s when you get to the crawfish that the process gets a bit (okay, a lot) messy.

I’ve never entirely understood the obsessive love the people of Southern Louisiana have with crawfish. I mean, they’re fun to eat. But you don’t get a whole lot of meat for your effort; just a smidgen really of tasty crawfish meat per critter. And eating at the Jumpin’ doesn’t change my sense — though you are sure to wind up with a lot of sauce to lick off your fingers.

There’s a lot more meat to be gleaned from the crabs. And then, of course, there’s the namesake lobster, which is pricy, but not as expensive as the king crab legs, which when I dropped by were going for $65.99 — a big chunk of change.

The lobster also comes in lobster pasta, a lobster roll and a lobster sushi roll. Which brings us to the sushi section of the menu. I guess the sushi is best ordered as an appetizer; it’s not something you might want to flavor with Cajun spices dripping from your fingers.

And though there’s no nigiri sushi, there are three carpaccios — salmon, shrimp and scallop.

Also, the rolls tend to be overstuffed — a tempura shrimp roll, a Mexi-Cali roll, a mango roll, and ultimately a Jumpin’ Lobster Roll, flavored with seriously spicy mala sauce.

You don’t go to the Jumpin’ Lobster for subtlety. As with this genre of seafood house, you go for eating big, livin’ large. And making a mess. You can be a kid again. And there’s no parent telling you not to eat with your fingers. Here, finger eating is the way to go.

Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email mreats@aol.com.