It’s the end of the year where many celebrations and feasts await us.

Miss Bo Jio’s friends invited her (ironically) to a get-together at Orchard Central’s Dancing Crab over last weekend and naturally, Mai 公 tags along, invited or not!

It’s not our first visit but her friends’ so they highly anticipated the dinner and made reservations, which I’m glad they did (look at the long queue out there)!

Dancing Crab is part of TungLok Group which most people should be familiar with. Despite the difference in cuisine, with TungLok mainly serving Chinese oriental food and Dancing Crab serving Creole cuisine, this does assure us of the quality (and the hefty price tag alongside).

Menu are served on a clipboard, radiating a casual yet happy atmosphere with the friendly staff always there to help.

Worth noting is that every branch of Dancing Crab has their own exclusive sauce to go along with your seafood galore. Orchard Central branch boasts of the Spicy Miso Butter (if my memory doesn’t fails, the branch at Vivocity has Lemon Garlic Butter). Other than the store exclusive, every branch has the gDancing Crab signature (comes in mild, spicy or extra spicy), Beurre Blanc (creamy white butter) or Zesty Garlic Butter. Word of warning – the signature spiciness level doesn’t lose out to our famous Chilli Crab!

Given the small group of 4 (and 3 ladies at that), we didn’t really try to stuff ourselves but merely ordered a Combo Bag #02 (S$40++) and with the recommendation of the staff, one 1.2kg Dungeness Crab (S$144++ or $12++/100g). A tad pricey but hey, it’s our first time trying out this crawler from Canada too!

Here’s how Combo Bag #02 looks like, no crabs here but you do get prawns, clams, mussels, corn and sausages all in one. Pretty worthwhile for sharing. You might have heard from friends/families that one speciality of Dancing Crab is having the food poured all over the table (or rather, plastic disposable tablecloth) and diners eat with their hands, the messiness being part of the fun. Why is ours served in a pot then?

We chose the store’s exclusive sauce, the Spicy Miso Butter, and the server recommended for it to remain in the pot given that the disposable aprons provided can hardly save us from the dripping of this oiler sauce off the table. Luckily we did.

 While nothing can be picked on for the freshness of the seafood (refer below for the huge mussel), the sauce is honestly a disappointment. It seems to be a huge misrepresentation since we hardly taste miso but rather, peanuts which gives it a very grainy feel. Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t taste bad but we were just rather disappointed with the lack of miso taste. You would probably love this if you’re a fan of satay, given the similarity in taste between this and the satay sauce.

The huge mussel with the plastic cup to get complimentary iced water (not the San Pellegrino sparking water in the background obviously) for reference.

Next on finally to the highlight – the Dungeness crab. You’re not alone if you’ve never tried this! Fun Fact – although the Dungeness crab from Dancing Crab is imported from Canada, this crab was actually named after a small fishing village in Washington State, North America and typically comes from the West Coast of America.

For the records, we have the live Dungeness crab at the top and the cooked in spicy Dancing Crab sauce at the bottom.

Despite the heavy weight of 1.2kg, typically only 1/4 is meat. The shell is definitely softer, the meat much denser and sweet compared to Sri Lankan crabs that we’ve all become so accustomed to. The meat is slightly akin to snow crab. Although the spicy Dancing Crab sauce is strongly peppery with a tint of tomatoes, it still doesn’t cover the fact that one can know it’s from freezing waters.

I would very much prefer for the Dungeness crab to be served chilled after boiling to taste the sweet and tenderness actually. I trust that it’s more appropriate.

Back to eat? Probably yes, if friends organised a meet-up here.

Dungeness crab again? Guess not. It’s worth a try but not fascinating enough for the premium over Sri Lankan crabs (which taste better with the spices and sauce here in my honest opinion).

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