In Singapore, the best place to enjoy good quality Hairy Crabs at a good price is none other than Capital Restaurant. The older generation of Singaporeans would remember one particular terrible incident at the old Capital Restaurant back then when it was still located around Everton Park area.
After moving its restaurant the 2nd time (previous location was at Bukit Pasoh), it is now situated under a shop house which is directly opposite of Pearl Centre (where Nam Ho travel agency is). It's quite small, but always full even on a Monday night at 8:30pm. And that is a reason why reservations is a MUST. If not, you can forget about walking in for dinner.
Appetizer of cold duck wings. Nothing too exciting here. But we were hungry and gobbled the entire plate.
The waitress recommended their roast chicken. It's actually old fried chicken. Through the windows, I saw the chef scalding the chicken with boiling hot oil. He must have lot's of experience doing it, as the end product is where the skin is very crispy, while the meat is still juicy. Great skills!
A vegetable dish of 3 eggs and veges. The 3 eggs are century egg, duck egg and normal chicken egg. Nothing too exciting, just that we need some healthy dish before the sinful hairy crab.
A must order at Capital Restaurant - their crab noodles. The thickened sauce is very very flavourful and the noodles is very springy, the same kind as Hong Kong wanton noodles. There are also chunks of crab meat in it. My personal way of eating this, is to add a generous tablespoon of the vinegar used to dip the hairy crab, into the noodles. One word can describe the taste of the noodles - SHIOK!
Here comes the Hairy crab. We ordered the bigger version which is S$25 per crab.
It's very easy to open the crab. Just pull open the top shell from the backside of the crab. After seperating the crab, take out the tiny white blob above the body (it's the heart) and the white gills of the crab.
The roe is creamy and very addictive. The crab meat is also sweet. My parents complained that they rather eat Sri Lanka crabs as they find there are too little crab meat, but I really like the creamy roe in the Hairy Crab.
As Hairy Crab is very "heaty". a cup of ginger tea is served to neutralize the "coldness". Make sure you finish this cup of spicy ginger tea.
Capital Restaurant
No 323 New Bridge Road
Tel: 6222 3938 (Reservations are highly recommended)