Singapore Dancing Crab Review

If you’ve been researching about Singapore, or if you have read our Singapore Food blog‘s Best 5 food dishes in Singapore, you would know that one of the must try food in Singapore is our very own home-grown recipe, Chilli Crabs!

Chilli Crab also happens to be one of Alvin’s all time favorite seafood, so needless to say, when we chanced upon this new joint that has fellow bloggers and instagrammers raving about and joining the 2 hours long queue for it, we knew we had to  give it a go ourselves. And we were so glad that they did not disappoint!

Introducing to you, Dancing Crab! This new seafood country-style concept is backed by one of the largest restaurant leaders, Tung Lok Group. Dancing Crab serves unique Creole cuisine, and cooks the crabs in their Dancing Crab Signature Sauce, which is a rich Cajun flavored sauce. The interesting dining concept of this place is that your order comes in a bag and your food is poured onto the middle of the table for all to admire the crab in all its glory, and everyone starts digging in with their hands! Yes hands! Dancing Crab embraces the concept that the the best way to devour crabs, is to take it down with your hands. And in Alvin’s case, that includes using ALL 10 FINGERS!

So, apart from the unique dining concept, the crabs are cooked in Cajun flavored sauce, which is very different from the usual Asian flavors. Nevertheless, they do offer customers a choice of spiciness (from mild to very spicy) to cater to the majority of Asians who prefer spicy flavors, as well as Spicy Miso Butter, Beurre Blanc, and Zesty Garlic Butter for the ones who prefers the savory to the spicy.

Dancing Crab menu is structured in combos, where carefully selected and specially mixed seafood is cooked together in the sauce of your choice. Our choice of order is Combo Bag #01, which offers either Sri Lankan Crab, Lobster or Dungeness Crab (but we’d always go for Sri Lankan Crab and we recommend you do the same!), with a generous mixture of 300g Prawns, 250g Clams, Potatoes, Corn and Sausages. There are other selections of seafood combos as well in their staple menus.

Another must try in our opinion, is the Crab Cakes snacks. This seemingly underwhelming dish to the naked eye may just be enough to blow your mind. When your teeth sink in for the first bite, be awed by the succulent and rich chunks of whole Crabmeats delivered in one mouthful. It really was nothing like most of the crabmeats we tried at other places that really tasted nothing like crabs.

They also have a hearty selection of various other seafood snacks like calamari and oysters if you’d like a variety of flavor for dinner. And yes, the bibs were provided! To top it off, nothing beats having some ice-cold beer to complement your satisfying seafood dinner at the end of a day.

Dancing Crab in this case, also carries an interesting mix of beers from the European continent that is rarely available in local bars. So we’d recommend you to ask for the beer menu, take a look at it and try some unique flavors for yourself! We purposely had two and much preferred the Magic Hat which was more fruity as compared to the West Coast IPA which tasted kinda like stout. If alcohol isn’t for you, do go for one of their freshly squeezed lemonade, which is cleverly concocted into unique flavors, and my favorite, was the strawberry lemonade!

Oh and if you happen to be visiting on your birthday like we did, they served our cake (we bought ourselves) on a little seafood plate with dry ice and sang us a birthday song 🙂

Dancing Crab Price

As per every other place serving Crab, it wasn’t cheap and for the 3 times we have been there, it costed us about SG$30~40 per pax each time.

Dancing Crab Verdict:

Having Chilli Crab in Singapore has always been a very local and a very Chinese thing to do here in Singapore; where you can only usually find it served at Chinese restaurants. Dancing Crab challenged that concept and added the whole western twist to it.

Is it worth a visit? YES! It’s very different to what we locals know about Chilli Crab with the Cajun and dining concept etc. The taste is finger licking good (get it? get it?) and the spices are a refreshing mix to a crab dish.

Would I revisit? Probably! Cause as tasty as it is, I personally still prefer having my Crabs served with Chilli and Man tou. Dancing Crab to me was more of a one time (or once a few months) kinda dining experience that everyone should try at least once!

Should tourist head to Dancing Crab? NO! Most Travelers come to our Travel Blog wanting to know more of a country and have a go at our local food etc. So if you only have one day in town to have crab, you’re much better off at specialty restaurant like Jumbo, No Signboard or Long Beach restaurants, that carries a long history of cooking and serving pippin’ hot Sri Lankan crab cooked perfectly in spicy-sweet chilli sauce, or salt with black pepper. These resturants spend years and years perfecting the authentic Chilli Sauce base that Singapore was made famous for.

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