Update Feb 15, 2014: This restaurant has since shut down.
On this very cold, rainy, windy night, there were 6 that braved through it all, in order to delight themselves with the great taste of the Alaskan King Crab!
Wendy and her family had been planning this for about a week now. Eating Alaskan King crab at Las Vegas buffets (yes, even the venerable Wynn buffet) is nothing compared to how the Chinese chefs prepare them. We went to Ying Kee Hot Pot Restaurant. This place, as the name suggests, is famous for its hot pot dinners. Tonight, we go for the King Crab!
The crab is split among three separate dishes. Traditionally, the first part that comes are the legs. As you can see, the shell is already opened up for each part and steamed in garlic sauce (mmmm, the sauce is so oily, yum). You can easily point out that some of the legs are quite meaty (kudos to my mom knowing the manager and giving us a great 13lb king crab!). It is definitely quite a starter for 6 people (there are 2 plates of these).
The second element to the crab serving, in my honest opinion, is the best part. It consists of the crab joints smothered with fried batter mixed with pepper, garlic and other things that I don’t know. It is SOOO GOOD!!! The sprinkles of fried batter covering the crab is perfect for serving with rice and congee. This is the part that CANNOT be missed out at all.
Let’s move on to the next part.
Now that we are more than half-stuffed, the final installment of the Alaskan King Crab trilogy arrives! It consists of fried rice cooked within the shell of the crab’s body. It is laced with the meat of the crab’s ‘head’.
Looks cool, eh? By the time we finished this, we were basically full but the meal was not finished! To sum it up quickly (as the King Crap was the star of the show), the other dishes consisted of different kinds vegetables, tofu, satay beef and more vegetables. We couldn’t even finish half of the rest of the meal, we had to pack it up for a future feast.
The service at Ying Kee was satisfactory (for a Chinese restaurant, I lower my expectations to pretty much as low as they can reasonably get). Because my mom knew the manager, she came by a couple of times personally to make sure our meal was ok and that the crab was of good size. We definitely enjoyed this meal very thoroughly. Wendy and I have had the fortune to go through three separate Alaskan King Crab meals in the last three weeks. Last time, Ying Kee was the venue of our choice. And we came back this time and did not regret it! Wendy and I are definitely look forward to devouring another King Crab soon! But we probably have to wait until our cholesterol levels return to normal first!
The crab was “on sale” for $9.99/lbs. There are other places that do them for $8.88-8.99/lbs.
Related Posts:
Man……….all I have to say is…that’s baller!
Nice recap of your meal.
We also had the king crab feast in Vancouver last year. I forgot the name of the restaurant, but the preparation was the same. I think the coating that they used for our fried version was a mixture of salted egg yolk and kabocha squash. Yummy!
oooh salted egg yolk and kabocha squash….sounds so yummy!!! You sure you don’t remember the name???
Sorry…can’t remember the name, but i’m heading up to Vancouver again later this summer. Will definitely have the King Crab at the same restaurant again…