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Sexy Crab, the stylish crab-centric restaurant at K11 MUSEA, rings in summer with three new seasonal dishes.
We’ve been eying the 23-seater restaurant ever since it opened late last year, and we finally snagged a seat at the cosy, 530-square-foot space to sample some of the menu highlights.
Designed somewhat like a fetishistic night spot with dark furnishings and plenty of glass and mirrors, Sexy Crab features dishes spotlighting crab roe. The names of the dishes reflect the ambience, with blush-inducing names like Sex Swing and Shake the Bed. We don’t think this would be a spot to take the whole family!
Our tasting began with a round of huadiao, or yellow wine, which is the ideal accompaniment to crab; in the world of traditional Chinese medicine, the “warmth” of this wine helps to balance the “coolness” of crab.
The Flirty Go Round ($238) looks like a Turkish delight of small shot cups filled with various flavourings, including ginger, preserved plum, aged orange peel and dried logan. Huadiao is poured from a large central cup on top and trickles down evenly into each of the small cups. A tad overwhelmingly sweet with a strong aroma, the wine wasn’t to our taste, so we instead stuck to the tasty Carbon Brews ginger-infused beer in the hope that the heat from the ginger would balance our crab feast.
Along with the wine came the eyebrow-raising Sex Swing ($568), a carousel of goodies in another elaborately decorated serving display hinting at Arabic origins. The various small bites include grilled Wagyu with crab roe, radish with crab roe and caviar, sea urchin rolled in chicken breast and crab roe and scallop infused with huadiao. Our favourite of the bunch was the seared beef, which was mouth-wateringly juicy and flavourful.
Another dish with a name that’s difficult to swallow (ahem), Hotter and Harder ($368) arrived in a “yin-yang” design, with one side featuring golden crab-roe sauce and the other a truffled sauce mixed with snow crabmeat and topped with sea urchin, all served over a bed of rice. The crab-roe sauce has the “golden ratio” of 40% crabmeat, 25% male crab roe and 35% female crab roe, and the flavours can be further accentuated with a dash of vinegar. We found that the truffle aroma overshadowed the taste of the crab roe, and the sauce was a little too gloopy for our liking. Perhaps the use of less cornflour would be the remedy.
We did not review the seasonal Urchin for More ($688), as the dish was undergoing some revisions at the time, but we did indulge in the signature Sexy Crab ($368), an elaborate tray of rich crab roe and sweet crabmeat with noodles. Both female and male crab roe are included, and diners can create their own bespoke combinations at the table.
The chewy noodles gripped onto plenty of the rich, umami sauce, but this is definitely a dish for those who love the robust taste of crab roe. Others might find the flavour and fragrance too intense, and we highly suggest balancing it with several spoonfuls of vinegar.
The third new seasonal dish has another doozy of a name: Shake the Bed ($88). The elegant ingredients, ranging from bird’s nest, to ginger gelato, to ginger jelly, don’t deserve such a raunchy name. We liked the cleansing heat of the ginger and the gummy topping of peach-tree resin, a collagen-rich ingredient used widely in Chinese desserts.
Verdict
Sexy Crab is a place for crab lovers who want to savour the richness of hairy crab roe minus the work. But if you want to eat just crabmeat, this probably isn’t the best spot to satisfy that craving. We aren’t quite sure about the marketing strategy behind the off-colour names, but they do make the dishes more memorable.
Shop 401A, 4/F, K11 MUSEA, Victoria Dockside, 18 Salisbury Road, TST, 6655 7629
This write-up is based on a complimentary media tasting provided in exchange for an honest review and no monetary compensation. The opinions expressed here represent the author’s.
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