I’ll happily travel for Crab. In fact, I frequently tell my Singapore-dwelling parents that I mainly visit them just for the famous Singaporean Black Pepper Crab that I then proceed to eat in vast quantities of whilst I’m there.
It’s one of my favourite foods and since it’s extremely fiddly to cook, I’m always on the hunt for great crab restaurants. And then I heard rumblings about Claw, a restaurant dedicated almost entirely to this crustacean. They started life as a street seafood stall which I did not know, but now have a permanent home in Carnaby Street.
My parents were in town and they love exploring London’s restaurants so it was time for a little family outing. We’re a family somewhat extremely obsessed with great food, so we don’t waste time on basics like pleasantries and get straight down to the business of eating. Step 1, order warm bread, load it up with lashings of butter and then start ordering.
Warm brown bread with butter
In a crab restaurant, it seemed simplest to order everything with the word ‘Crab’ in it and then quite a few things that didn’t have the C word, just for balance you understand. Almost everything comes in ‘small plates’ but I was pleasantly surprised that these plates aren’t really all that small and allowed for everyone on our table for 4 to have a decent taste.
I had some doubts when we ordered the trout poke but I had to eat my words immediately. This was melt in the mouth and we made sure the bowl was spotlessly clean by the end, mopping up every last bit with the bread.
Trout Tartare
The Crab ‘Mac & Cheese’ was my favourite of the day, it was just as gooey and rich as I could have hoped for, with that unmistakable sweetness of the crab cutting through it to stop it from being too overpowering.
The Crab fries were good, but more akin to what you’d expect from the name, a pile of sweet shredded meat on top of some crispy skin-on fries.
Crab Mac n Cheese
Crab on Fries
The main event was what we really here for though – the whole crab was perfectly sized for 4 and since there’s no place for forks when you’re eating crab, we dived in. It was all conveniently cracked, we got our hands stuck in and dipped big chunks into creamy mayo.
Whole Crab
There were a few other small plates jostling for space on our groaning table, but they were somewhat diminished by the beauty of those crabby favourites.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the crab beignets, I felt they tasted a little too doughy and of not much else, so left them up to the others to devour. While I didn’t love the fennel and grape salad either really, it was a good option to cut through some of the richness of the mac and cheese and fries.
For our finale, we had a few bites of the Miso Steak. This was the smallest portion by far and only afforded a very small bite for each of us, but that flavour was spectacular. I suspect that had it arrived at our table earlier on in proceedings, we would have ordered a few more of these plates!
I didn’t have time to stay for dessert as I had to dash back to work, but the wonderful staff had heard us talking earlier in the meal about celebrating 2 birthdays in one and as a surprise, they brought out some birthday cake for the birthday duo of my Dad & sister! Very thoughtful and a wonderful end to what was a delicious meal that we all really enjoyed.
inher30s 
What happened to all your blog posts and images¿ http://jenikya.com/blog
Looks crab-tastic, Manasi!