The last time I had Singapore Chilli Crab was 30 years ago during my last visit to Singapore with my wife. It left such a great impression on her that she insisted that we must try it again during this visit. I am entrusted with finding Singapore’s best Chilli Crab restaurant. After some heavy internet searching I find the best venue close to our hotel is a restaurant called Red House Seafood. It looks respectable, has three sites around Singapore and rates very highly. It is literally a 15 minute walk from our hotel located in Prinsip Street.
The venue looks quite nice (a large converted terrace house in a row of restaurants) and the staff are very friendly and welcoming. My research says you must order the Sri Lankan Mud Crab done in a Singapore Chilli style. The menu does not have pricing and simply says “market price”. I ask the obvious question and the friendly young man tells me it is $90++ a Kilo and the size is roughly 900grams (significantly dearer that the $5 a crab we previously paid). We give the OK and order a calamari entrée and a bottle of wine to keep us happy while we wait for the crab. They give us bibs, hand bowls, a bunch of wipes and the implements of torture to de-meat the crab.
After about 30 minutes a large bowl appears full of luscious red chilli and tomato sauce and a shell reminiscent of the head of the creature in the movie Predator
. The Crab is pre-cut up into pieces and we quickly get to work with our claw crackers and skewers. The taste is sensational. The sauce is sweet mild chilli and tomato and works so well with the sweet sweet meat of the crab. The enjoyment is more the experience than the taste I believe. If say the meat was already taken from the crab and mixed with the sauce and served up in this fashion, the enjoyment level would be much less.
It was certainly an experience that I would recommend. The mess level is huge. At the end of the meal our table looks like a crime scene and we have chilli sauce up to our elbows. Thank goodness for the large bibs as I don’t think these stains would come out easily.
I would also highly recommend The Red House Seafood Restaurant. The staff are super friendly the decor modern and clean and it must be good as it is full of very classy looking Chinese people dining there. Curiously the table next to us has a young Chinese couple and their middle-aged father enjoying a banquet including the same chilli crab. He is smartly dressed and he has this technique of breaking and eating the crab with no tools, no bib and no serviettes without spilling a drop. We almost need to be hosed down HazMat style as we leave the restaurant. Good times.
ClaudeSays – Do It
Red House Seafood Restaurant
Food 15/20
Service 18/20
Ambience 13/20