Famous Crab King (Toa Payoh)

If you don't live around the area, you probably wouldn't know this place exists. Tucked away under a HDB block next to the Toa Payoh industrial park, it's easy to get lost especially when you're driving.

Nonetheless, it was a traditional Chinese restaurant boasting good seafood, so how could I resist?

Though it looked like the typical zi char stall, it had an air-conditioned section cordoned off specially for the restaurant. Plus points for comfort!

There were only four of us, but we were hungry and we ordered...

Jin Du Spare Ribs Tender and sweet, I love how it wasn't chewy and average like the other zi char stalls.

Three Type Egg with Kow Kee A dish cooked with normal eggs, salted eggs, century eggs and Kow Kee. The gravy wasn't thick and flavourful enough but it wasn't bad either.

Pumpkin Custard Baked Live Prawn Now this is a dish with an identity crisis. It had pumpkin, it had custard, it had curry leaves... I wasn't quite sure how to react! The curry taste overshadowed the pumpkin taste, and the strange slightly spicy and sweet taste reminded me of Japanese curry. Not a bad dish, but could be better

Chilli Crab How can you go to a restaurant with the name of Famous Crab King and not order crabs? We ordered only one chilli crab, and the plate that arrived was humongous. There was so much gravy that we had to order an extra plate of Fried Mantou. The Fried Mantou was awesome, though. The outside was crispy but when I tore it in half, the insides were so soft and fluffy it was almost cotton-like.

But I digress. Back to the Chilli Crab! The sauce was much more spicy than your regular chilli crab sauce. Loved it to death.

The pincers were HUGE and the shell was so thick that even the crab shell cracker couldn't even dent it. The meat inside was so juicy that the juices keep running down my hands as I was trying to get the meat out in one piece.

My only gripe is that the shell was so huge but the meat inside was only 2/3 the size of it... Paid $51 for the crab itself... The shell was so hard and thick I think we were paying more for the shell than anything else!

While I was there, I saw the next table order things like Suckling Pig and Lobsters and I'm so tempted to try them... I think this warrants a trip back sometime soon, when I have lots of money to burn.