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2014-10-09
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Some friends of mine wanted to get hairy crabs before the season ended. According to Fuchsia Dunlop, "The 17th Century playwright Li Yu wrote that his heart lusted after , and there was not a day in his life when he had not thought of them." I checked and 8 October is the 9th lunar month of the Chinese calendar, which is when one eats the female crabs. However, upon inspecting some pictures of male vs. female hairy crabs, I believe we got the male ones.I found the menu at this place to be a litt
I found the menu at this place to be a little disappointing. There was only one noodle dish, and no dumplings-- but hey, we're at a seafood restaurant. However, the seafood didn't strike me as very enticing either. It was stuff like "lobster in cheese sauce," which isn't what I'd call a classic.
We settled on these chilis. The menu seemed to say that there were green beans and chilis in the dish, but it was just chilis. However, I quite liked this rendition. The chilis were very firm and not mushy or overcooked, but nicely blistered. They came in a black bean sauce with fried garlic and dried red chilis. The dried chilis were spicy, but I'd have preferred more black beans. Excellent, A-
We did get the one and only noodle dish. It was "soy sauce noodles" and that's what you're looking at: onions, scallions, noodles, soy sauce, punkt. I can't say it blew me away but for what it was it was totally acceptable. OK, C+.
The other dish we got was pork and lotus root. No one at the table complained about it, but we didn't eat very much of it either. I found that the veggies were just cooked to a slimy mush, the sauce was bland, the pork was tough, and the lotus root was just in too large chunks to enjoy. I'd order something like this again at a different restaurant, but I wouldn't order this very dish again. C-
We got only one crab per person. One of the writers for Sassy Hong Kong said it took her 45 minutes to finish her first hairy crab, and we didn't want to be there all night.
You can tell it's male because of the two-part underbelly. On females it's just a big oval on the bottom.If you give the crabs a shot, and you're a noob like me, do read up on how to eat them. I read several primers and still had to get a demonstration from one of the servers. The main thing about the crabs is the roe/ semen (depending on whether you've got a female or male crab). There's meat in the claws and a little in the shell but it takes as much effort to get it as regular crabs, and it tastes about as good as regular crabs. The semen had pretty much the taste and texture of runny egg yolks. I'm sure there's something subtle here, but I'm also sure that faux hairy crab would be made with runny egg yolks.
I read a rant the other day about how Westerners are lazy and want everything done for them by the chef-- they don't like bone shards or shrimp with the heads and shells still on or-- and I thought, "y'know, that is 100% true, at least as far as I'm concerned." Hairy crabs were fun to try once, but the effort is a lot, and the reward is yolky crab semen. I think I'll have a burger next time.
As far as the restaurant goes, I wouldn't come back. But they delivered on the crabs we came for and they were extremely tolerant of our idiocy, so I'm quite happy with the experience at the end of the day.
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