Conveniently located in central Singapore, we made a visit to Alliance Seafood at Newton Food Centre to try out its rendition of our iconic dish, and find out how it is able to retain its Michelin Bib Gourmand Awards for two years (2016 and 2017).
We were recommended to get the Set A ($65), which included Chilli Crab, Cereal Prawn, Mantou and Fried Rice. This saved us the hassle of ordering the items individually and saved us a few bucks as well!
This set would comfortably fill two to three people to the brim.
Knowing that eating crabs can be a messy affair, the stall had kindly prepared disposable plastic gloves and tissue paper — this just goes to show how much it cares for its customers. Kudos to Alliance Seafood for the thoughtful gesture!
The first dish was the Cereal Prawn ($24, small, a la carte). The fragrant aroma was difficult to resist, and we quickly dug into the dish.
The fried cereal was slightly sweet, which was different from the spicier renditions from the sliced chilli padi that I’m personally used to. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed the cereal and it slowly became addictive to eat on its own.
There were about seven to eight prawns in total. The prawns were large and juicy, and yes, we ate them together with the shells!
You can choose to dip your prawns into the sweet and spicy sauce, but I felt that the sauce wasn’t necessary as the prawns were already good on itself.
The Fried Rice ($5, a la carte) came with succulent peeled prawns, albeit smaller in size as compared to the cereal prawn.
The dish tasted rather plain for my liking, with nothing much to fawn over — perhaps, it was overpowered by the strong flavours of the other food. A big disappointment was that the fried rice was lacking its wok hei flavour.
Finally, time for the main star! The Chilli Crab (seasonal price) came gloriously on a huge plate. The deep red and orange colours of the crab sauce, along with the ribbon bits of egg immediately drew us in.
For those who can’t handle spicy food, you’ll be glad to know that the sauce was mild, and came with a tinge of sweetness as well.
My favourite part of the crab has got to be the pincer since the meat comes off easily in chunks!
Just look at the crab meat in all its glory! The meat was incredibly tender and juicy and tasted absolutely fresh. You will definitely love the texture of the crab meat at Alliance Seafood.
Another one of my favourite things to do when eating chilli crab is dipping the Mantou ($6 for six pieces, a la carte) or fried bun, into the sauce and eating it. Six mantou weren’t enough to go around and I wish we had more.
For the same price, you can choose to have Black Pepper Crab (seasonal price, a la carte) in Set B ($65). But you know what they say, go big or go home, so why not choose Set C ($100) and get the best of both worlds.
All in all, the food at Alliance Seafood is definitely worthy of a try. Visit the stall at night for a more lively atmosphere, and feast on tasty seafood along with a beer or two. Cheers!
Expected Damage: $35 – $100
