Steamed Hairy Crab

This is what I ate at the weekend- steamed hairy crab. One of the guys from work had been telling me all week about how this was the perfect time to eat this particular dish. In fact he was particularly specific: the last 2 weeks were the best time to eat female hairy crabs, but the ship has sailed on that now and we’re into male crab season for the next fortnight.

Let me tell you anyway, they were probably the best thing I’ve eaten in Shanghai. In fact I’ll be more specific, since that seems to be all the rage these days- the top 5 Chinesey things I’ve eaten in Shanghai currently stands like this:

  1. Steamed Hairy Crab @ 1221 (1221 Yanan-Xi Lu) in fact most of the stuff in there is good.

  2. Xiao Long Bao @ the dumpling place in Yu Yuan gardens where you literally have to queue for 90 minutes to get served. It’s not worth it, because how can it be worth 90 minutes for a few dumplings? They taste like pork chops though.

  3. Yu Xiang Qie Zi @ [it's really very hard to pick one place but...] @ the Sichuan restaurant on Wuding Lu / Yanping Lu (you’ll know the one because it’s got big blue jars outside) even though it almost made me go toilet all over the inside of a taxi the following day

  4. Spring rolls @ 650 YuYuan Lu. I would prefer if they weren’t so hot you could roast Chestnuts on them, but them’s the breaks

  5. Crispy Pork @ Shanghai Uncle, Xu Jia Hui. Although it basically just tastes like English style roast pork so that one might be cheating.

Inside the crab

Here’s what the inside looked like- crab anatomy seems to be 50% shell, 13% meat, 37% weird delicious yellow gunk. No wonder they walk funny.