Today we're visiting Dancing Crab - Louisiana Seafood, the newest concept by the Tung Lok Group. Occupying what was previously the sparsely-patronized Modern Asian Diner at the Grandstand, this restaurant aims to bring Lousiana style seafood to the Singaporean palatte - with an interesting twist: You're actively encouraged to eat everything with your fingers!
Utensils are optional here - they're not even provided unless you specifically ask. What's even more enticing is that if you order any of the seafood combos, the entire bag is dumped right in the middle of the table (on new plastic sheets, of course) for everyone to just grab whatever they want and lick off their fingers afterwards.
The restaurant itself is a weird East meets West fusion concept. On one hand the food is Louisiana style and you have American Top 40 Pop and Rock hits blasting out of the stereo. On the other hand there's a Carlsber Beer Lady walking around serving Beer, and occasionally a restaurant-wide yum seng toast; If you empty your drink during this toast you get a refill on the house.
Fizzy Lemonade - $4 each
The restaurant is immensely popular, with queues of up to an hour on weekend nights. If you've made a reservation (or are willing to wait), once seated you might try the Grilled Butter Roll ($2) - good for soaking up the sauces that come with the Seafood Combos.
Truffle Fries ($7) were as competent as can be for re-fried frozen shoestring fries sprinkled with truffle-aroma'ed olive oil. Comes with a small sauce plate of dip but we much preferred to just dip the fries in the seafood combo sauce.
We also tried the Garlic Soy Sauce Wings ($9) which were a mixed bag - we really liked the oriental/asian flavour profile and the usage of a tempura-like batter, but thought that the batter absorbed too much oil (or the wings weren't drained well enough) making the wings a tad bit soggy and oily.
Of course, the stars of the show are the various Seafood Combo Bags - we go for the Combo Bag #01 ($80) which comes with a whole ~1kg Sri Lankan Mud Crab, 300g Prawns, 250g Mussels, Potatoes, Corn and Sausages. In your choice of Gravy of course: Signature (Mild, Spicy, Extra Spicy), Herb Butter or Beurre Blanc. Prawns are fresh and have a great solid bite, Crab was delicious with our Signature (mild) choice, but the mussels were strangely and disappointingly small (hardly any bigger than a 20cent coin).
The aftermath of the meal certainly isn't pretty! Thankfully the restaurant provides plastic aprons so you won't get any seafood juices on your clothes.
We really did enjoy ourselves a lot at the dinner. It's a little strange and yet liberating to eat your food directly off the table - and to hell with forks, plates, spoons and other utensils. The amount of seafood that comes in that $80 bag is fairly reasonable, too! On the flip side on weekends the wait staff - comprising mainly of attractive sweet young things (both genders) - can't quite cope with the crowd and as a result service is a little slow and spotty.
Nevertheless Dancing Crab is now firmly one of our favorite restaurants in the Grandstand area - and we'd definitely recommend it. Reservations highly recommended unless you don't mind wandering the nearby Giant or Pasar Bella shopping areas for 30-60 minutes while you wait for a table. Non halal.
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