Don’t you hate the idea that cooked crabs sold at zi char places are usually overpriced and sometimes not very fresh? These are the same crabs that you see packed tightly in those glass tanks, affecting their quality if not cooked in time. 8Crabs, a local company specialising in bringing in Sri Lankan crabs, takes pride in offering fresh crabs to its diners, anytime of the day.

They achieve this by making sure that:

• Their crabs are wild caught rather than farmed. Did you know that crabs prefer to live alone? They also like to travel an average of 500m every night. So when they are bred in crab farms, the confined spaces will inevitably put stress on the crabs there, causing them to produce ammonia (the rotting seafood smell that you may sometimes come across!).
• 12 hours is the maximum time taken from the minute the crabs are caught to the time they reach your table all cooked and piping hot.
• They have a one driver per order policy. This will ensure that you can get your crabs as soon as you place your order, fastest being just ONE hour!
• Because of the high standards they set for their wild caught crabs, 8Crabs is the only company in Singapore to use Grade AAA premium Sri Lankan wild crabs. What this means for you is that the crabs you eat are meatier, tastier, bigger, and less watery! Such a win!

True to their words, the crab that arrived at my doorstep was super fresh and meaty, looking at how easily the shell fell off the crab meat. The salted egg sauce was as legitimate as it can be with bits of salted egg dotted with curry leaves and chilli padi in a bed of golden aromatic sauce. This dish was of course the first dish to be wiped out together with the lightly fried mantou (5 pieces for $6). The crabs come cracked, so you don’t need those special crab tools to enjoy this in the comfort of your own home.

I was impressed with the size of the cereal prawns. 8Crabs was rather generous with the prawns and I honestly struggled between this dish and the Salted Egg Crab dish — both were finger licking good so suffice to say my hands were pretty busy during my meal.

The Coffee Pork Ribs is a pretty standard zi char dish which is a good addition to a seafood meal. As with all pork rib dishes, the highlight would be the sauce that fills each mouthful as you try to wrestle the meat off the bone. For this reason, I would have preferred for this dish to have more sauce for that extra oomph.

I was rather disappointed with this dish for a couple of reasons. First, the one of the beancurd had a distinctively sourish taste as compared to the other beancurd. I alerted 8Crabs to this issue and they have assured me that this does not happen typically but nevertheless will make sure this does not happen again. Second, while I liked the crispy skin (which became a nice layer that soaked up the flavourful sauce just like the Japanese agedashi tofu), the cai po could have been fried a little bit more just to remove that raw preserved taste.

Overall, it is worth ordering from 8Crabs because their crabs are really fresh and reasonably priced. I particularly liked their commitment to delivering fresh wild caught crabs (12 hour turnaround time!) and the fact that they provide deliveries within an hour upon order so if you have a serious craving for crabs all of a sudden, you can trust 8Crabs to fulfil your desires.

Do head over to 8Crabs to order your crabs.
Whatsapp: +65 87250725
Email: order@8crabs.com

This post was done in collaboration with 8Crabs but all opinions expressed are mine.

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