Garlic... With A Bit Of Crab

I had a relative visiting here for a few days, C. He was inspired to visit many of the restaurants featured in Anthony Bourdain's show, No Reservations. Being the good hostess I am, I accompanied him on all his culinary explorations as navigator and fellow gourmet.

One of the first places we tried was Under Bridge Spicy Crab. (Yes, it's under a nearby overpass in Wan Chai, one of four locations, all on the same block.) Their famous dish is whole crab cooked "typhoon shelter style." As with a lot of seafood in Hong Kong, you choose a live creature for the chef to cook for you. We asked the waitress for a smallish crab because there were only two of us. She then held up a rather limp-looking specimen, which we approved. We also asked for a mild level of spiciness, because I wanted to be sure to taste the crab as well as the seasonings.

A short time later, the waitress reappeared, cleared a large space in the middle of our table, and placed this steaming dish before us:

There's crab and chili pepper and spring onions, but what's that mound of brown stuff? That's like a hundred cloves of garlic, finely chopped and fried along with the other ingredients. You have to love garlic to come to this place!

You also have to enjoy messy eating. There's no way around it -- you have to use your fingers, teeth, chopsticks, and a pair of seafood crackers to get to the meat. By the end of our meal, the tablecloth was covered with rubble: bits of crab shell and garlic, piles of empty shells, crumpled napkins, dribbles from the fingerbowl.

The effort and mess, however, was worth it. It was delicious washed down with tea and accompanied by the tofu-and-vegetable dish we also ordered. The only thing I would change next time is to order it a little more hot and spicy, as "mild" is definitely not very hot at all. I think the heat became buried underneath all that garlic. Not that it was a bad thing, mind you.

Under Bridge Spicy Crab
405-419 Lockhart Road
Wan Chai