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2013-04-24
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For full write up & photos, please visit my blog: http://www.aspirantsg.com/foodie-food/battling-dungeness-crabs-with-hammers-at-the-cajun-kings/singaporeWhen we accepted the birthday dinner invitation for a close friend, we had absolutely no idea what we were in for. The facts only hit us when we were deliberating over the menu. Choices for mains were amazingly limited and we eventually have to settle for Dungeness Crabs as our staple!Shortly after our orders were taken, small 'pill' containers
When we accepted the birthday dinner invitation for a close friend, we had absolutely no idea what we were in for. The facts only hit us when we were deliberating over the menu. Choices for mains were amazingly limited and we eventually have to settle for Dungeness Crabs as our staple!
Shortly after our orders were taken, small 'pill' containers with salt & pepper mixture and freshly cut green lime were served. Note that this will come in real handy later as a dip for our rather bland crab meat.
There is no escaping from getting into a mess with full hands-on action on the seafood later so we were all provided plastic aprons to protect ourselves from accidental spurts! That's our birthday boy posing for the camera!
We entertained ourselves with finger food (which was pretty yummy) for a good 20 minutes before our crabs got delivered in huge plastic bags! This restaurant is definitely not going to win any environment friendly award in Singapore. The hot escaping steam makes it really tough to capture a good shot. And it proved to be even harder to remove the large scorching Dungeness crabs with its legs getting tangled all over within the bag.
After a few minutes of struggling, we finally got Mr Crabby nicely seated on a wooden board. The crab's rich red tone makes it extremely inviting. In case you have yet to realise, the Dungeness Crab is not Asian. It is a species of crab that inhabits the eelgrass beds and water bottoms on the west coast of North America.
I decided to do the opening act of pulling off the top shell. The crab butter or commonly known as the roe wasn't what we expected. They were runny and tasted rather fishy... not exactly a delicacy. However, a big plus point was that it has a lot of meat compared to its Asian cousins.
To prevent excessive squirting, the trick was to hammer out those juicy morsels while keeping the crab in the plastic bags. Dungeness crab flesh has a faint sweet taste and that's about it. This Ang Mo style of crab cooking has utterly failed to absorb in much of the delectable gravy that it was steamed in. Other than crab, prawns were ordered as well.
The aftermath of Mr Crabby's brutal murder was rather unsightly and the culprits has no intention of hiding the murderous tool.
A quick visit to the wash basin will relief you of the post meal awkward stickiness.
This will probably be the first and last time that I will patronise the restaurant. Not to get me wrong, the service staffs were wonderful and everyone had fun with the hammers and eating crabs out of plastic bags. Compared to asian crabs, dungeness crabs are definitely more value for money. But I am not a fan of the style of cooking, I very much preferred my black pepper, egg yolk and chilli crab anytime. But if you have yet to experience dungeness crabs, I will encourage you to give it a try.
You may also like to check out my posts on other delicious food places here
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