Ministry of Crab (Sri Lanka) ~ rolling writes

Saturday, February 4, 2017

Ministry of Crab (Sri Lanka)

11:27 AM Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka: Colombo, Sri Lanka: Food 0 comments

Ministry of Crab has been included in Asia's 50 Best Restaurants 2016. To round off our trip in Sri Lanka, we visited Ministry of Crab. Try getting reservations ahead of time. We were lucky that we went before the lunch crowd started streaming in and managed to get a table.

Ministry of Crab was set up by former cricketers from the Sri Lankan cricket team and a celebrity chef. Their website is very interesting- which is rare for a restaurant's website. In their Constitution, they state things like "We are proud of the reputation sri lankan crabs enjoy in singapore- thank you singapore! But we're even prouder of bringing the finest institution in sri lanka dedicated to serving you the best of our crabs here in their home country."

Everything about this place felt polished- the location, the decor, the service etc.

We wanted to order a medium crab (up to 800g) only to realise that they did not have such crabs that day. We ordered a small crab (up to 700g) to share which was a little small for two people. On the menu, they had options like chilli crab, curry crab, baked crab and pepper crab etc.

Given that we usually eat chilli crab and pepper crab, we decided to try the Garlic Crab (Rs 4400- small). Needless to say, the crabs were incredibly fresh- the meat was so tender and moist and we concurred that it was better than the ones we ate in Singapore.

This is a wok fried crab and the sauce is a mixture of Italian olive oil, Japanese soy sauce and garlic. Initially, it tasted a little too salty. But after a while, it was incredibly addictive to soak the oil up with the Kade Bread (Rs 320). The garlic taste was just nice, without being too overpowering.

The kade was nicely toasted, with crispy sides and fluffy centres.

After eating the crab, it was a little anti-climatic to eat the Chicken Curry Rice (Rs 1520). We swapped the Japanese sticky rice for Kade bread to dip into the curry sauce. It did not elicit the same kind of joy when dipping the bread into the garlic oil. The curry chicken was decent - it was slightly spicy and cooked well but a little underwhelming after eating the crab.