Regardless of what you think of them, Ministry of Crab Singapore has ball…uh, claws. After years of holding pop-ups around town, the buzzy Sri Lankan restaurant has finally opened a permanent Dempsey outlet to sell chilli crab here, a country that parades the dish as a national icon and squabbles with Malaysia over who invented it. It offers the Crabzilla, a two-kilogram monstrosity that costs S$350 and comes with a t-shirt. Here’s a glass of Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label champagne for S$35, which a local F&B person called, “Four Seasons (hotel) prices.” He’s wrong: Four Seasons sells a glass for S$29, and it’s the fancier Taittinger.
But we’re different, Ministry of Crab Singapore snaps. Our Sri Lankan mud crabs are wild-caught and we fly them in alive three times a week. The chef, Dharshan Munidasa uses enough Japanese soy sauce in his cooking that the Japanese government gave him a medal. We’ve been on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants for nine consecutive years since 2015!
When Ministry of Crab Singapore dials back the pomp, it can be very good. The Pure Crab (from S$75++/500g) is your choice of male or female species, simply steamed and chilled as long as you order six hours in advance. It’s the critter at its culinary finest: smooth and intensely sweet, akin to a fleshy Teochew-style cold crab, enhanced by a zesty calamansi ponzu sauce along with warm butter and a chilli vinegar inspired by the chicken rice condiment.
The restaurant’s signature flavour is garlic chilli, and it worked wonders with the Sri Lankan freshwater prawn (from S$25++/150g). With a dome three times the size of its shrivelled body, it was nature’s version of a bobblehead doll. We were served the smallest portion available, a mere 150 grams, but it greedily absorbed the slick, pungent dressing made with plenty of Italian olive oil and soy sauce. There were a lot of drippings left, which begged to be mopped up by the garlic kade bread (S$7++), a Sri Lankan speciality that resembled a dense shokupan.
Unfortunately, the garlic chilli oil ruined other dishes. The crab chawanmushi (S$15++) was lovely on its own, but overwhelmingly greasy thanks to a thick layer of the seasoning. On the other hand, the oil barely penetrated the 1.2-kilogram Colossal crab (S$190++). It also pooled at the bottom of the dish, enough for my dining companion to remark, “You can make crab aglio olio with this.” Does Munidasa want another award, this time from the Italians?
If you are hoping dessert will bring redemption, look somewhere else. It was a creme brulee (S$15++) served in a hollowed-out coconut shell, its caramelised sugar crust too thick to crack elegantly, the coconut custard too dense and ungainly. The restaurant gave out bibs printed with the words, “Keep calm and crab on,” but dining here only made me crabby.
Ministry of Crab Singapore
Taste: 6/10
Ambience: 8/10
Value for money: 4/10
Rating: 6/10
Average cost for two: S$270
What we liked: Pure Crab, garlic chilli prawn, garlic bread
What we didn’t like: Garlic chilli crab, coconut creme brulee
Wednesday – Monday, 6pm – 11pm (closed on Tuesday)
6 Dempsey Road, Singapore 249683
How to get there: 23-minute walk from Napier MRT Station.
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(Hero and featured images credit: Ministry of Crab)
This article first appeared on Lifestyle Asia Singapore
