Full of Crab

Full of Crab | Moonberry

Last weekend I was a +1 to a dinner at Full of Crab on East Coast Road. It’s a casual restaurant serving seafood in a bag, the sort where you don a disposable apron and go caveman style with your hands cracking shellfish.

Three basic steps to order here:

1. Pick your shellfish (or combo).
2. Decide on the sauce: Cajun, Garlic Butter, Fully Loaded.
3. Decide on how spicy you want the sauce to be: Mild, Medium, Hot.

The item we sampled was the Captain’s Choice (S$98), the star items in it being Sri Lankan crab and shrimp with a choice of either corn and baby potatoes (we had both). We had the Fully Loaded Sauce which is a combo of Cajun and Butter, and level of spiciness was Mild.

At $98 a portion, we got a whole crab and quite a lot of shrimps, which fed two hungry girls just right. I really liked the Fully Loaded Sauce. It had good flavor… herby, garlicky, and complemented the seafood really well. This sauce is a winner, almost – if you can ignore the thick layer of liquefied butter the seafood is swimming in.

Crab was huge, just look at the claw. But with just two seafood items in the bag, the lack of variety became evident after a while and it’d have been nice to have other items in the bag too (and I don’t mean fillers such as corn or baby potatoes). While they aren’t priced into the combo and require a separate ala carte order, you can add on other items in the bag if you want. Which is what I did when I went back again the next evening with my parents. This time around we ordered the Sailor’s Special (S$75) – Snow Crab and Shrimp combo, with Baby Potatoes, then added on Manila Clams (only 8 or so pieces, meh) and Broccoli. Same sauce, mild. Total bill with drinks and service charge etc. came out to S$112 after 15% off discount for liking Full of Crab FB page – a pretty good discount.

After visiting Full of Crab two evenings back to back, I am pretty certain that I must bring my own hardware next time. Other than a crab cracker, a mallet, and a plastic pick, there is no other cutleries or utensils here. It’s frustrating when you can’t get into your crab legs, especially the joints. A pair of kitchen shears would have been really useful for this. Same thing went for the snow crab legs I had with my parents. The plastic pick did the job unsatisfactorily as I couldn’t get past the legs. The tools just weren’t right.

I liked the Fish and Chips ($14.90) served here. Generous portion of breaded and deep-fried fish fillets sits atop a basket of Cajun fries. The deep-fried fish was moist, served with a choice of Tartar, Mayo, Ranch, Veggie, or Tsunami dip. We had Veggie dip, decided it tasted a wee funky so we asked for Tsunami dip which had more of a spicy kick. In the end, we agreed that just a squirt of lemon juice over the fish sufficed without any additional dip. The Cajun fries, even though not very crispy, had been generously tossed in spiced seasoning that’s addictive. I would totally have this again.

There’s strictly no utensils here at Full of Crab, use your hands. A meal here can get messy, but eating with hands is always fun and you kinda have to take your time picking the seafood apart, so be prepared to work for each bite.

For a restaurant where customers get to eat with their hands only, it’s critical that the hand-washing stations are equipped with good water pressure. I don’t think the owners can do anything about this, but the water pressure here is ter-ter-terrible! You’ve been warned, so bring extra wetnaps.