Trying to think of a place to celebrate our wedding anniversary this year has given me a major headache. But with hairy crab season drawing a close pretty soon, I decided to check out what's available in the market. One of the restaurants that came highly recommended by bloggers was Yè Shanghai (夜上海) so I quickly rang them up. Unfortunately, due to its popularity, our wedding anniversary dinner had to be postponed for almost 2 weeks before we could lay our hands on these delicious hairy crabs.
While we were all set to order the restaurant's "Fresh water crab set", at least we needed to check out the goods, right?
First up was the snack platter. It came with five little nibbles.
King oyster mushrooms with spring onion sauce (香蔥雞髀菇) – Silky texture and the spring onion sauce was fairly mild. Not bad.
Tea leaves smoked duck egg (古法煙鴨蛋) – I couldn't tell it was a duck egg but the fragrance of tea leaves was pretty special.
Sliced pork terrine served with Zhenjiang vinegar (鎮江肴肉) – Lovely texture and glad that the flavor from the vinegar wasn't over the top.
Broad beans with dried conpoy (瑤柱豆板酥) – Surprisingly, the tastiest among the five snacks. The crispy broad beans were so addicted!
Turnip in sweet soy (醬蘿蔔) – Now, the least delicious one. Tasted like it's been pickled.
Chicken soup with fish maw, matsutake mushroom and wonton (花膠松茸餛飩燉雞) – On top of the sweetness from the chicken broth, there was the unique piney flavors of matsutsake mushrooms. Always good to start off an epic meal with a heart-warming soup.
Look at the size of that fish maw!
Steamed fresh water crab (清蒸大閘蟹) – Now, time for the main event.
Little guy couldn't wait to have a few photos with tonight's main course.
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The size of the crab roes was about right.
Jelloman is a huge fan of hairy crabs so I'll just let her work on the hairy legs of both crabs while I had a lick on the crab roes!
Fresh ginger tea (生薑茶) – After half an hour of hard work (mostly by Jelloman), we finally had the steamed crabs under our belt. As per our usual practice, we enjoyed a glass of piping hot ginger tea to balance out the "cooling effect" from the crabs.
Stir-fried river shrimps with longjing tea (龍井蝦仁) – Very tender and tasty. And there was the lovely fragrance from the longjing tea.
Yunnan ham with osmanthus and honey sauce (桂花蜜汁火方) – I have been trying to avoid getting my hands dirty, even after having my hairy crab. But with this dish, I preferred using my hand.
The steamed pancake looked pretty pillowy. Let's see if they're as good as it looked.
I got a slice of everything, the crispy bean curd, Yunnan ham drizzled in osmanthus and honey sauce and cucumber; and started rolling them up on my pancake.
Pretty tasty.
Baked stuffed crab shell (蟹粉釀蟹蓋) – We had this a couple years back on Chinese New Year's day and thought it was meh.....just way too much egg white pretending to be crab meat.
More crab meat this time around. This was OK.
Steamed cod with Huadiao wine and fermented rice (酒釀花雕蒸銀鱈魚) – Surprise, surprise but this turned out to be the dish that I enjoyed most tonight. The steamed cod fish came with this perfectly silky texture and I thought the aromatic sauce made with Huadiao wine, fermented rice and soy took it to another level. Very impressive and I could only wish I could have a bigger portion.
Steamed crab meat and pork dumplings (蟹粉小籠包) – Little nugget finally got his xiao long bao.
A bit of crab meat mixed with the pork. Not bad but I always thought anything with crab roe (蟹粉) is a little overrated (and overpriced).
Almond cream with bird's nest and egg white (燕窩蛋白杏仁茶) – Something sweet to send us home as happy campers. The thickness of the almond cream was perfect and I couldn't care less about the bird's nest.
The epic crab feast finally came to a close and we were all so stuffed. I didn't count the number of courses we had but I bet it had to be at least 10. That's a really impressive lineup of classic Shanghainese dishes and as much as I wanted to deny it (cuz I was the one settling the bill), it was worthy of the heavy price tag.
Food Rating: 7/10
Price: $$$
Address: Shop 601, 6/F & Shop 702, 7/F, Victoria Dockside K11 Musea, 18 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong
Closest Metro Station: East Tsim Sha Tsui / Tsim Sha Tsui
Tel: +852 2376-3322
Opening Hours: 11:30am - 2:30pm, 6:00pm - 11:30pm daily
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