Of Crabs and Shark's Fin Soup

My Dad (Aiden's Tok) was in town so he decided to take the whole family out for a treat. A seafood treat to be exact. Also, he hasn't seen Aiden for quite a while now. Since I have the most extreme fixation on crabs, he told me to pick a place. In the end, we ended up choosing Fresh Unique Seafood in Petaling Jaya (my vote for Fatty Crab was turned down due to the limited available parking space, *sob*sob*).

It was my first time in Fresh Unique Seafood. Parking was a breeze since they provide valet parking for their patrons. There were about a hundred fish tanks right in the middle of the restaurant. All filled with sea creatures, in which half I have never even seen before! So you can actually pick and choose which crab you want to be cooked. It certainly lives up to its name of being fresh and unique. You cannot get your seafood any fresher than this.

Aiden and Uncle Boy Boy posing in front of the fish tanks.

I honestly have not seen this ever before. Is this really a duck? Geoduck Sashimi is apparently very popular (and very expensive).

You can choose to order ala carte or the sets meals which starts at RM500++ for a family of 7 or more. There were about 10 of us so we went for the set meal. And surprisingly, they were very accommodative when we wanted to change certain dishes within the set. In the end, we settled for a hot and cold combination, shark's fin soup, fried chicken, salted egg crab, steamed crab, butter prawns, vegetables and fried rice.

Aunty Awien placing the order while I picked which crab I wanted cooked for our dinner.

I chose this smiling crab. (Alahai, kesian la pulak imagining the smiling crab dead and cooked when I look at this picture!)

Can you imagine how much it would cost to maintain all these fish tanks??!! Kolam ikan at our current house pun kami tak terjaga!

Look at those small but expensive crabs!

More expensive crabs! Makes me miss my Sakhalin days when I used to bring giant sea crabs home. Wrapped them up in layers and layers or newspaper and placed them in my suitcase (while praying hard that the Singaporean authorities won't catch me smuggling crabs in my luggage while on transit).

Gambar selingan. This is the size of the giant crabs that the Sakhaliners would sell by the road side. Huge ain't it?

It was minus 5degC and yet this Russian lady was selling crabs without even using any gloves!

Don't be fooled by my clothes. I jumped out of the 4WD, rushed out for a picture in the freezing cold and jumped back in to warm myself. (This picture was taken 2000 years BC (before child), so even with the layers of clothes, I look selim melim!)

But these are the crabs that I used to smuggle home. Readily packed and available at the market. Russians usually throw away the body of the crab and eat the legs instead.

My MIL used to help me cook it (cos i'm a hopeless cook!) and she would make scrumptious ketam masak lemak with these. Eating half of the leg is enough for a whole plate of rice!

Anyway, back to Unique Seafood, Aiden was definitely enjoying this new experience.

And the best part of it all, he got his first taste of Shark's Fin soup! After inheriting Mummy's craze for durians, hopefully he'll go crazy over this other obsession of mine as well. Okay, this boy definitely loves Shark's Fin Soup!