When 2 of my gal pals visited Singapore last weekend, they were dead set on indulging in White Pepper Crabs at No Signboard Seafood Restaurant. We made plans to have dinner at The Esplanade branch as it was most accessible for all 5 of us.

We were told that the crabs would take about 30 minutes to prepare but were hungry so we ordered a few other dishes to start. We started with a serving of Sambal Kang Kong. The sambal was delicious and the kang kong was crunchy. We enjoyed the dish except that the serving size was smaller than we expected and the dish was a little too oily. For a "medium" sized dish, the serving size looked like a "small" in most other restaurants.

We also ordered the 4 Treasures Vegetarian Beancurd. It consisted of deep-fried egg beancurd topped with Chinese Mushrooms, Golden Mushrooms, Snow Peas and Carrots. It was reasonably tasty and helped to assuage our hunger as we waited for our crabs to arrive.

The wait took about 45 minutes instead. We were still hungry after the first 2 dishes and were elated when the crabs finally arrived. Yes, I know, the pic above shows only 1 crab...so you must be wondering if we only ordered 1 crab for 5 hungry girls. We'd ordered 5 crabs and requested that they be served individually. Boy, did our neighbours look at us in a curious manner when the 5 plates of Sri Lankan crabs (weighing about 1.2kg each) showed up. This was quite an experience as it was the 1st time that we'd ordered crabs in this manner. It was more convenient than having to keep twirling the lazy Susan to get to the crabs.

We enjoyed the crabs very much as the flesh was succulent, firm & well-infused with the spicy flavour of the white pepper sauce. It was finger licking good and we enjoyed swapping crab parts with each other & dipping morsels of crab into the sauce before eating them. I had a good deal because FW doesn't like claws so I had her crab claws in exchange for the legs. However, when we were about 75% done with our crabs, we began to feel very full & decided that we should share a crab between 2 gals instead in future...with the exception of 1 gal, "I", she loves white pepper crabs so much that she can finish a whole crab without any problem.

In spite of our crab-overload, the White Pepper Crabs here are definitely a Must-Try!