Baked crabs in Singapore

Dinner at Pasir Panjang Food Centre, ample parking and tables available. What’s annoying is the number of fans turned on at the same time. it creates such a windy effect that I can’t walk through the food centre without doing a Marilyn Monroe.

We ordered from the usual suspects; Seng Huat Hokkien Mee and Heng Huat Char Kway Teow. However this new stall caught my eye. Simply named Ming’s Salt Baked Crab, I knew i had to order them to try. Finally a place in Singapore that serves baked crabs that I always go for at Malacca’s Portuguese Village!

The man who took my order took pity on my struggling Mandarin and switched to English. After that he conversed with me as if he’s more comfortable in English himself. He even popped by our table to ask how it was.

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The crabs were small, about 400-500g. Seasonal price going at $16 / 400g. so the price isn’t too bad. For the spoiled Singaporean who’s used to eating the large Sri Lankan crabs served at No Signboard or Jumbo, they may find these crabs a tad too small for their liking. but then I had specifically asked for small crab so we can get a taste, and they aren’t any different from the small crabs you get at Portuguese Village so I’m good with it. When the crabs arrived, I can smell the charcoal baked smell wafting from the crabs. it’s lightly coated with salt to give it added flavour. Overall the taste is good, the crabs are fresh and the meat is sweet. I wouldn’t mind going back for more, especially it’s just down the road from my office.

Happiness!

Eating Malacca: Restoran Tong Sheng

From our weekend Malacca trip:

Just around the bend from Restoran Keng-Dom is Restoran Tong Sheng. This restaurant is known for its seafood, most importantly Malacca’s well-known baked crab and cheese beehoon. I’ve heard a lot about cheese bee hoon but I’ve never had it till today.

The restaurant was packed with locals, a sure sign that this is a good place with good food.

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The famous cheese bee hoon served with prawns. this is the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten. The only comparison I can find is the crab bee hoon they have in Singapore, but while the crab dish uses condensed milk and perhaps butter, this prawn bee hoon uses cheese. the gravy is watery but very tasty. Bryan and I were tempted to pour the leftover gravy into a bottle and bring home.

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As it was still Chinese New Year, like most chinese restaurants, this one still carried their chinese new year menu, which was rather limited. They didn’t have the baked crab (sadness) but instead they had SALTED EGG CRAB. i was so happy. Lucky me, my table had 4 children and 8 adults, and the others were stuffed so I was left to polish the rest of the crabs. All these years of crab eating training has finally paid off.

Malaysia hands down has the best Chinese food in this region.  Now I have to wait for some Singaporean to copy the cheese bee hoon dish and bring it over.

I Love Crabs

Ban Leong Wan Hoe seafood restaurant (Casuarina Road)
Chili crabs, 1.8kg
famous for their chili crabs but I find the presence of tomato sauce a little overwhelming.

Take me to Malacca: Portuguese Settlement

The place to go for seafood (that I know of) in Malacca is the Portuguese Settlement. located by the sea, it’s a row of seafood restaurants much like the famed East Coast seafood stretch in Singapore. This is our 2nd visit there, the 1st being the day we got together. So yes, we were re-living the moment somewhat.

The place is relatively well-known so any cabbie can take you there for RM15, which is the standard unmetered rate. However, getting back is difficult as it’s out of the way and number of cabs to private cars is akin to 1 is to 100 or something. So remember to grab your hotel number to call back, or get the cabbie’s number who drove you there so you can call back for a pick-up.

The easiest way to spot the best restaurant is the one with the most clients. food reviews recommended the first stall “No.1″ so we naturally gravitated towards it. despite being really busy even on  a Monday evening, they managed to sit us and take our order. The guy did warn us that the wait would take an hour. having been trained by my dad to wait for good food, I calmly waited while enjoying the sea breeze.

the thing about the seafood here is, all the sauces are the same. you have the usual seafood: fish, crab, prawn and squid. and you can have them prepared in a set list of ways: baked, steamed, black pepper, sweet & sour, black sauce or sambal. so to get a variety of flavours in one meal, you just pair whatever you like best. or you can have sambal everything. we decided to have steam fish (prepared with plum sauce), something which Bryan was new to but it’s something I used to have at home quite regularly.

sambal belachan kangkong. frankly i think belachan kangkong is a little overrated. I prefer my vegetables lightly stir-fried with soy sauce and garlic. But this one was pretty good coz you can actually taste the shrimp paste. yum yum.

black sauce squid. nothing fantastic. it was either this or fried squid and i generally don’t like fried food. i prefer grill, steam or baked.

This is the reason why we come to Portuguese Settlement. the baked crabs. actually when you order this, you ask for the salt & pepper crabs. almost every table has a set of these on their tables. the crabs are lightly covered as such and throw onto the charcoals to cook. this seals in the flavour and makes it really tasty. parts of the shell gets burnt crisp black and the charcoal flavour adds to the taste. YUM YUM.

The last time we were here, we ordered 5 dishes and ate till I had a visible belly under my dress, which I had to hide coz it was unflattering. this time round I didn’t bother since we’ve obviously gone past that stage of the relationship. HEHE

there’s a stall adjacent to No.1 that sells shell fish to compliment whatever No.1 is selling. from cockles to oysters, they sold every sort of creepy crawly fresh off the shore. such as these rock lobsters horseshoe crab (thanks Vix) above. these things look more the Predator had his way with a female crayfish and the eggs hatched into this monstrosity, now sitting on the charcoal grill in Malacca. These things lying overturn on the table were still alive, their legs wriggling crazily if you were to poke them. GROSS.

Happy Burbday: Annual Pilgrimage to No Signboard Seafood (Geylang)

Every family occasion is celebrated at a crab place, more often than not at No Signboard seafood at Geylang. Well almost every except for my brother’s fiancée, who is allergic to seafood. I think I’d rather be allergic to anything else in the world but seafood.

Mixed seafood pot. I seriously wonder what goes into the yummy sauce.

 

Stir fried eggplant. I love eggplant.

 

White pepper crab. My dad likes.

 

Chili Crab. so far I like No Signboard’s chili crab best. Long Beach’s crab is too sweet and caters to the tourist’s palate, Ban Leong one has a tinge too much ketchup, Jumbo’s crab seems more belachan-chili than the orange gravy we’re used to.

 

Fried man tou.

They’ve upgraded their area somewhat. Last time we used to have to loiter around the entrance while waiting for the valet to get our cars. It was kinda uncomfortable coz that is also a walkway for pedestrians and it being Geylang, there were a lot more sleazy looking types walking around. Since No Signboard is unfortunately located on the even numbered lanes of Geylang, which is where the red light business thrive, we looked like street walkers ourselves, loitering around like that. My dad and brother used to have to stand really close to us and glared at the other men.

As we drove down Geylang, Bryan looked around fondly for his beef horfun restaurant and went, “Bu yao le! NAHBEY!”

A week in Phuket: Kata Beach

I thought i’d post pictures of our Phuket trip than start on Cataclysm.

we spent a week at Kata Beach, Phuket at a lovely hotel called Sugar Palm Hillside. Kata Beach is the quieter of her cousins Karon and the horribly crowded Patong. it has a good mix of a quieter neighbourhood and enough night life that you don’t get too bored. as you can tell from the picture, we had to climb a very steep slope every day to get to the lobby. Bryan would always push me up the slope even without me asking.

The last time I went Phuket I was a wee one so I didn’t remember much of it except jumping by the sea screaming everytime the waves lapped my ankles. I’ve never been a beach holiday type of person either until I started dating Bryan and finally begin to enjoy holidays where I do absolutely nothing except snorkel and get a tan.

Our hotel room opens directly to the swimming pool, how amazing is that. My agent actually upgraded us to the Jacuzzi suite but when we saw this pool we decided to stay where we were. even before we unpacked, we got into our swimsuits and jumped right in. There’s a bar at the other end of the pool so we swam over and ordered a Mango Daiquiri. the pool is made of 3 parts where the water will overflow into the one below. Every time Bryan jumped in, there will be an alarming PLOOOMP sound and all the water will flow into the next.

There was a seafood restaurant outside our hotel called Orchid Restaurant. they served only the freshest. it’s very serene to sit by the railing and watch the cars go by.

Down the hill at the junction there are rows of restaurants and shops that you can finish exploring within a night.

my favourite street side food in thailand: Banana Pancakes. they slap the dough onto the sizzling hot plate and throw cut bananas on it before cutting it into bite sized pieces and serving it to you covered with honey drizzle. i could eat this every other day.

Phuket was peppered with shops that sold swimsuits, slippers and floats. I was tempted to get the shark one.

We biked up the beach from Kata to Karon to Patong to Kamala to Surin and stopped at Bang Tao Beach when we realised it was a Muslim town with no naked ladies. along the road was an elephant camp *sad face* with many cute elephants carrying tourists back.