Finger-licking good seafood

Dancing Crab is the winner of Chope Diners' Choice Awards 2015 Restaurant of the Year.
Dancing Crab is the winner of Chope Diners' Choice Awards 2015 Restaurant of the Year.

Dancing Crab is the latest in a spate of eateries serving seafood cooked in a bag and eaten off the table with bare hands. Eating at these places is messy as you dig into everything with sauce-covered hands. But that is part of the fun.

With seafood boils, in which various ingredients are wrapped in a heat- resistant bag and boiled, the sauce which goes in with them is what distinguishes the food.

The first time I ate at Dancing Crab, I ordered Combo Bag #01 (left) with a Dancing Crab Signature sauce, which comes in Mild, Spicy and Extra Spicy. I chose Spicy. The sauce had little character.

I returned a few days later. This time, I had a Sri Lankan Crab in the Dancing Crab Signature sauce, but without the spice. And what a difference it made. Without the chilli sting, the other flavours came to the fore, allowing the palate to detect the piquancy of tomatoes, aroma of garlic and myriad herbs and seasonings which combined nicely with the crab's sweetness.

There were other epiphanies. Matching White Clams with Herb Butter sauce was an excellent decision as the aromatic herbs gave the dish just the right character.

I was glad I did not miss out on the Flaming Moonshine Tiger Prawns. They were like an American version of drunken prawns, with the moonshine - a high-proof distilled spirit - giving the prawns an alluring aroma.

Where: 01-20/21 The Grandstand, 200 Turf Club Road, tel: 6466-3303 Price: Budget about $50 a person

  • This is an excerpt from a review by Wong Ah Yoke published earlier in The Sunday Times.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on December 11, 2015, with the headline Finger-licking good seafood. Subscribe