O yeah, that crab meal

Yes, that crab meal in Shanghai w/ Queen of Macau. It's the season to have hairy crabs in Asia. Fall.... Yes, people just want to eat those little crabs that are full of roe and tasty soft meat.

When Queen of Macau arrived w/ her friend, we went hunting. I had a place ready for them. Westin at The Bund has hairy crab buffet nightly for RMB450.00 per person. No, we didn't go there. We ended up going to this restaurant that used to be very famous in Shanghai. It happened now to be at the same hotel complex as my hair stylist. Well, this meal was expensive. It was only crab meat and nothing else. A 5-course set meal. On average, it was RMB1,200.00 per person! Each part of the crab was used to prepare a dish. We had the crawl part as a starter and then proceeded thru the legs, the body, the roe and finished off with a whole crab. In total, each person consumed about 7 crabs. And in order to eat "properly", we had the Chinese wine to go with. It was part of the ritual and to "thaw" the "heaviness" of the meal. During the meal, the Shanghai visitors from Macau finally realized the better way to have hairy crabs were to tear the little things apart ourselves; had a big pile of crabs in the middle and dived in. O well.... They wanted to spend money ;-) One of the guests did not want to break the finger nails so the waiter (a 16-year old boy more than anything else) man-handled the crab, nothing wasted, placed each consumable parts on the plate for her. The meal was too "heavy". But I particular enjoyed the small wonton dumplings that came out as the second last course. The wontons were wrapped with crab meat and veggie. If my recollection was correct, the line up was:

1) crawl meat served cold
2) meat from the small little legs
3) roe in balls with a sauce, rice noodle at the bottom
4) crab meat wonton
5) a whole hairy crab

We also ordered some veggies and plain noodles for the vegetarian eating iron-wife.