In a NUtshell:
Absolutely bowled over by the freshness of ingredients, the expertise of cooking crabs & prawns in terms of retaining the perfect taste, texture & flavours – however, I have surely had better curry made by home chef Pia Promina who does crab & other pop ups at her Bandra home. MOC highly recommended for crab mains – u can easily pass off the rest
Address & other details: ministry of crab
Meal for 2: ₹3000
Cuisine type : vegetarian & non vegetarian
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I rate all the food items & then give a final overall rating which is a simple average of the individual item ratings. What the ratings stand for: 5 = Excellent, 4 = Very Good, 3 = Good, 2 = Fair, 1 = Disaster
Short description- in case u r in a hurry
Ministry of crab was started by Sri lankan cricketer mahela Jayawardene , Dharshan mundidasa, kumar Sangakkara in Sri lanka. It had a high decibel media launch in mumbai india sometime back. We had this in our to do list for some time now & finally were able to make it.
The menu card has ‘the constitution’ mentioned on one side. Its a great read – hats off to the creative person who has made the read beautiful. Some of the highlights – only live crabs are bought by the restaurant. The crab is processed only after a customer places order for food. They claim that all seafood is fresh enough to be made into a sashimi.
They Also claim to be one of the lowest ‘food mile’ restaurants in the world, with MST produce being local & some coming in from Colombo. The manager told us that live crabs are brought by plane from bay of Bengal.
They also maintain that they do not offer farmed crabs.
The menu crab brilliantly explains the dishes & almost reduces the need for any human interaction.
The guests choose two things – the size of crab they want & the preparation they want. There is a light display in dining area that shows which r the sizes that are still available.
The expertise of the chef is in retaining the texture, the juiciness , the sweetness & the softness of the crab even in a curry!!! Not a mean feat, with those giant sized crabs.
Loved the main dishes. Rest were a mixed bag.
Detailed description – in case u hv the time to njoy reading:
Crab ceviche was made from crab meat , coconut milk & leche de tigre ( literally means tiger’s milk). The leche is usually made of lime & herbs. This strong sour liquid actually cooks the raw meat & makes it edible.
The final dish however did not come out as good as it sounded. The proportions were not right I guess, resulting in a super sour ceviche, like never before. Also, the flavours of crab & the sweetish taste if the crab got totally overpowered by the leche!!!! Rate the dish 2/5
Crab liver pate with Melba toast was super fun. The crab liver pate just as it is was intense, robust & excellent – both as it is & with the melba toast. The toast was super thin & super crisp. We were also given an organic trickle honey with no added sugar – it was superb. The flavours of the honey was so good, I cud not stop myself having it just as it is. Rate the dish 4.5/5
We got excited reading about Pol sambol, a Maldives fish preparation. It was served to us in a coconut shell. The dish was scraped coconut, spices , chillies & dried fish. It tasted like a dry chutney & tasted very good as it is. However the fish dud not make its presence felt at all in terms of taste Ir flavor. Predominant flavours & taste was of scraped coconut & spices!!! We let go of half the seving. Rate it 2/5
For mains we had Garlic chilly huge prawn (200-250gm). The prawn was super fresh, YUMM to taste, had the perfect texture & it retained the flavours of prawn beautifully. The sauce was super flavourful with flavours of garlic & prawn complimenting each other. There was so much butter in the dish that one cud develop fatty liver overnight after eating this!!!! Rate the dish 4.5/5
We also had Curry crab large (800 – 900 gm) with kade bread. The crab was brought to us in a casserole , piping hot.
The gravy was rough, textured, robust & had the flavours of crab incorporated in it. It was very good but we have had better Sri lankan crab curry at a crab pop up by Pia Promina at her house at Bandra. Rate the curry at MOC 4.25/5 vs. Pia’s curry at 4.95/5.
The crab itself was the best I have had in years. Have never had it as fresh (that size). To top it, most chefs are unable to maintain the texture as good as the guys here managed to. The sweetness of crab meat was super enjoyable. Amazed how chef managed to retain all this in a curry – a work of art I wud say. Rate the crab 4.95/5
Overall rating of the dish averages out to 4.6/5
For dessert we had Watermelon granita. Super loved it. The watermelon retained its crunch, yet incorporated the added sweetness beautifully. Rate the dessert 4.5/5
We had all this with their traditional wood fired kade bread. It wid hv been great to hv some neer dosa / appams with the curry though.
Overall rating of food at MOC averages out to 3.7/5
Wud surely get bk here to try the butter crab – just steamed fresh crab with some butter on the side. I think it will b best to just enjoy flavours & texture of the crab, by the masters of crab.