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My family and I re-visited the Roland Restaurant today since the last one on 15 March earlier this year. We like the food there so we went back to this restaurant to have our lunch on a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

We ordered our favourite Dim Sum, roast chicken and crispy duck today. In addition, we also ordered seafood such as pepper crabs and baked lobsters for the family.

Baked Lobsters :

Pepper Crabs :

I feel that the food there was really very tasty and up to standard. My family and I like the baked lobsters and pepper crabs very much. The serving of the pepper crabs was big enough for a big family.

Before we left the restaurant, my family saw a wooden craft crab was placed near the doorway as decoration. My nephew requested me to take a picture of the wooden craft crab so I grabbed my handphone and did a quick snap.

Wooden Craft Crab :

In my opinion, the wooden craft crab is really a very nice piece of art.

I read the newspapers and get to know from the advertisement that now is the crab season. Many restaurants are promoting the crab feast. One of the restaurants is promoting buffet of crab and durian delights. I think this is something special as I don’t get to see this kind of crab plus durian buffet that often.

I called upon my second nephew who loves to eat crab very much. This little cute and chubby boy was so delighted to see the advertisement which was promoting the crab buffet. He told me immediately that he wanted to go to the restaurant to eat his favourite crabs.

My sister made a booking at the Ellenborough Market Cafe and then we brought our nephews, the 2 chubby boys, to the Swissotel Merchant Court hotel at noon time today. When we reached there, we were surprised to see there was a long queue of people waiting to enter the Ellenborough Market Cafe. Maybe because it was a Sunday.

Despite the world economy is slowing down, many people are still willing to spend money to enjoy good food especially when the restaurants are promoting crab and durian delights. These are the food that we don’t get to eat so often for buffet style.

So, we filled the plates with the crabs of different flavours immediately after we were ushered to our table. The crab dishes include Sri Lanka Black Pepper Crab, Nonya Crab Popiah, Curry Crab, Chilli Crab and so on. The durian creations featuring on the buffet are Durian Creme Brulee, Durian & Mango Napolean, Durian with Red Bean Agar-Agar, Durian Pengat and so on.

Here are the pictures of the yummy food.

Sushi, Mussel, Crabs, Prawns and Fried Rice :

Crayfish, Abalone and Other Varieties of Food :

Black Pepper Crabs :

Black Pepper Prawns and Crabs :

Crayfish, Crabs, and Kang Kong Vegetable :

Prawns, Oyster, Mussel, Crabs, Fried Rice and Bun :

Abalone, Durian Cakes and Vegetables :

Durian Cakes and Pastries :

Durian Pengat :

Besides the crab and durian delights, Ellenborough Market Cafe also serve their usual spread of International, Local and Peranakan specialities. My sisters, my nephews and I find that the Ellenborough Market Cafe is generous enough to serve the different varieties of food in big portions. The tastes of the crab dishes and other food are very delicious. They serve real Abalone instead of mock Abalone in their buffet bar.

We really like the nice and yummy food there. We consider this as value for money. Furthermore, my sister is a HSBC credit card holder so we are entitled to enjoy the offer of “one dines for free with every three paying adult diners”. It really helps to save some money for us to enjoy the good food.

As mentioned in my previous posts, my lovely nephew had bombarded me with his list of questions pertaining to soft-shell crabs. His curiosity has triggered me to search for the soft-shell crab information from the Internet. I think it is an opportunity for me to find out and learn more about seafood so that I would have more knowledge about something that I will be eating next time.

Soft-shell crab is one of the America’s most favourite seafood delicacy. It can be eaten with its entire crustacean. This is a result of catching and cooking the crab shortly after it molts the hard shell.

There are different types of species used as soft-shell crabs. It varies from region to region so the type of soft-shell crabs used in America is different from that used in the Asian countries. For example, the blue crab is typically used in the America. Whereas, the mangrove crab is used in Asia.

The scientific or binomial name for the blue crab is called Callinectes sapidus. This name is derived from the Greek’s calli=”beautiful”, nectes=”swimmer”, and Latin’s sapidus=”savory”. The blue crab is a crustacean found in the waters of the western Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico which is the Maryland State Crustacean.

The blue crabs shed their shells to grow and they grow rapidly from 12 to 18 months from their juvenile stage to adulthood. The length of a full-grown blue crab is about 8 inches long. It goes through several growth stages during its lifetime.

The soft-shell crabs are categorised into 5 basic sizes, ie. whales, jumbos, primes, hotels and mediums. Below is a table showing the size, dimension and weight of the soft-shell crabs :

So, this is the information that I have gathered so far about soft-shell crabs. It might not be complete but it probably helps to explain how the soft-shell crab come about and tells us about its origin. I hope I have answered most if not all of my nephew’s questions regarding soft-shell crabs.

After hunting for a few days, I have finally found deep-fried soft-shell crabs selling in a Thai restaurant located at Serangoon Gardens. My nephew and I went in to the restaurant and ordered two packets of deep-fried soft-shell crabs for take-away.

While waiting for the food to be ready, my 10-year old nephew was asking me a few questions about soft-shell crabs out of his usual curiosity. Questions like : “Why was soft-shell crab less common than hard-shell crab?”, “Where did soft-shell crab come from?”, “Where else can we buy soft-shell crab?”, “How much was soft-shell crab?”, “Why was the shell of the soft-shell crab so soft?” and so on.

Arghhh!!! The more questions that my nephew asked, the more question marks that I have had above my head. Frankly speaking, I have no clues at all. I’m neither an Encyclopedia nor a Wikipedia. How would I know? Then, I noticed that a waiter was standing quite near where we were sitting and overheard our conversation. So, I told my nephew to channel all his queries to the waiter whom I thought might have some answers readily available since he served food to the customer in the restaurant.

Guess what? The waiter returned a funny grin and then walked away smiling. Probably, he found the conversations between my nephew and myself were very funny. I guess the waiter might not know the answers either. We were left alone with our unanswered questions about soft-shell crabs.

The two packets of deep-fried soft-shell crabs were finally ready to be taken away. We took the food and then left the Thai restaurant with many question marks floating above our heads just like a Halo. Well, I’m determined to find out more information about soft-shell crabs when I get back home.

My second nephew loves to eat crabs, both hard-shell and soft-shell types. For hard-shell crabs, he likes to eat crabs cooked in different flavours, ie. the black-pepper crab, black-sauce crab, butter crab, crispy-oat crab but not so much on the chili crab and steamed crab. This is probably because the chili crab is too spicy and the steamed crab is too plain for kids.

Recently, my nephew had been bugging me to buy some deep-fried soft-shell crabs for him to eat. So I went to the nearby seafood stalls hoping to buy his favourite crispy deep-fried soft-shell crabs for him. But to my surprise, most of the stall helpers either had never heard of or were not selling soft-shell crabs. They only had hard-shell crabs cooking in different flavours.

Then, I went to the shopping centres and did my hunting for the deep-fried soft-shell crab at the various restaurants. I remembered that I had been to one of the Vietnamese restaurants that was selling soft-shell crabs so I headed towards its direction. When I reached there, however, I found that the Vietnamese restaurant had already been moved out of the shopping centre. Gosh!

I consoled myself saying that that were still many restaurants around so I continued my hunting for the soft-shell crabs. I walked towards a Japanese restaurant and was delighted to see the picture of soft-shell crab was displaying in their menu. After I placed the order, the waitress came back to me a few minutes later saying that the deep-fried soft-shell crabs had already been sold out. I was disappointed again.

I’m wondering why soft-shell crabs are seemed to be uncommon as compared with the usual hard-shell crabs. Even if you have the money, it just doesn’t mean that money can buy whatever things that you wanted to have. Well, I will try my luck again some other day.