Doesn’t TaZte Like Chicken

Location: Fisherman’s Terrace Seafood Restaurant   
4151 Hazelbridge Way #3580, Richmond BC (Aberdeen Center – 3rd floor)
604-303-9739

Author: My Husband

Going through the gigabytes of food photos we have accumulated over time, one thing became very clear to us. We will never be able to catch up with all the “regular” posts that will be required to share our photos with you, our patient readers.

Instead, we’ve come up with the idea of “Quick Take” posts. From time to time, we will post these “quick takes” that will be short on prose, but will instead focus on photos of foods and restaurants that we found noteworthy. Some quick takes will be on places we have eaten at recently, others from as far as a year or two back. The common thread running through all these posts is that we liked the food (and/or restaurant) and we think it is worth sharing with a wider audience.

So without further ado, I present our first quick take: Alaskan king crab - two ways.

Steamed

The legs were loaded with minced garlic and steamed. In my opinion, steaming is the best way to enjoy fresh crabs (any fresh seafood, really). The carapace is there mostly for decoration, though sometimes there is some creamy roe in it.

The restaurant splits the legs in half for easy access to the meat. King crab shells are pretty elastic, making them much harder to crack than say, Dungeness crab shells.

King crab meat is extremely tasty. It is sweet, with secondary flavours that reminds one of the sea. Texture wise, it is a cross between lobster and Dungeness crabs. One thing to note is that fresh king crab meat is much better, taste and texture wise, than the frozen (and thawed) king crab legs one finds at the Las Vegas buffets.

The broth was extremely tasty, and could probably be used to cook a really mean congee. We just drank it straight up. (And there probably wasn’t much msg in it – we didn’t feel particularly thirsty after the meal)

Deep fried

The body pieces were deep fried “bei fung tong” (避风塘) style. The crab pieces were crunchy on the outside, with the meat perfectly cooked on the inside. The deep fried garlic and salt, plus the heat of chilli peppers, complemented the sweetness of the flesh well. After experiencing the “unadulterated” taste of the crab in the steamed course, the deep-fried course switches things up with additional flavours. The best of both worlds really.

Our dining party of 5 got a 9.5 lb crab, which equated to two plates of steamed legs and a plate of deep-fried body pieces. Along with two other dishes, this meal fully-sated our appetites.