Eating cheap crabs at the Drunken Cat (Zui Miao) at Peel Road, Kuala Lumpur

If there is a roadsite restaurant that takes the cake for unique names, it is Zui Miao or Drunken Cat at Peel Road, Cheras, Kuala Lumpur. I was told by a friend that they were serving crabs for a mere RM22/kg so one evening, I decided to see how they fared and if one can really get crabs for RM22/kg in the heart of Kuala Lumpur!

Well, the answer is a resounding YES! You can get crabs for RM22/kg in Kuala Lumpur. One kilo gets you about 3 medium sized crabs cooked any way you want. We had 2 kilos just because!

The first style was Crabs in Sweet and Sour Sauce or also known as Chilli Crab (RM22/kg).

The plate had 3 crabs – 1 larger than the other two which was nice. The crab meat was firm which was also good. I detest places that serve you crabs where the crab meat is soft. Its a sign that the crab isn’t fresh. The sweet and sour sauce or chilli crab sauce was a tomato based sauce with a hint of sweetness and spiciness.

Cooked with lots of ginger and garlic to mask the fishy taste of the crab, and thickened with starch and egg, the sauce was nice and thick without overdoing on the starch. You can have it with fried mantou or flour buns, but I opted to have it with plain white rice instead. It really whets the appetite.

We also had 1kg of crabs fried with salted egg yolk RM22/kg.

There were 3 crabs and similarly, one was larger than the other two. I usually like salted egg yolk crab, but I found this one slightly over cooked. The crab was lightly battered which I did not quite like. I prefer when they just fry the crab with the salted egg yolk without first battering the crab. As a result, it was harder to eat and the flesh was also slightly hard. Still, it was nice in that it was not overly sweet. Some restaurants tend to overdo the sugar when they cook their salted egg yolk crabs.

The meal with the 2 dishes above with 1 vegetable (RM8) and 1 plate of white rice (RM1) and a drink (RM1) came up to RM56. Very reasonable in my opinion. The crabs served were “meat crabs” and so do not have a lot of crab roe for those who like “roe crabs”.

For those unfamiliar with the Malaysian style of eating crabs, don’t be surprised when you order crabs and you are brought a nutcracker and/or a meat tenderizer. These are essential tools for eating crabs with! The meat tenderizer or a little hammer is for you to break the crab shell with. Some people use their teeth but this can result in cracked enamel so the safest way is to use a hammer. The nutcracker serves the same purpose but does a more elegant job of breaking the crab shell without injuring the meat inside. I prefer to use the nutcracker for the pincers but I like the hammer for the harder parts of the shell e.g. at the joints.

Zui Miao is situated opposite Queens Park, along Jalan Peel, Cheras, Kuala Lumpur. If you come down Jalan Peel with Carrefour on your right and the food stalls and the Shell Station on your left, keep heading straight after the traffic lights and watch out for the sign above. You can park in front of the restaurant for no charge if you are dining there.

It is a rather ramshackle building by the side of the road and has been there a long time. If you are particular about cleanliness and how a place looks, better avoid it. Otherwise I found cleanliness fair but could be improved. Business is fair and the seafood looks quite fresh as they have their own fish tanks. I haven’t tried their other foods, but I did look at what other diners were having and it looked quite good. I may be back to try some of their other foods later.

Pink Parisian [rating:4/5] for Crabs

Pink Parisian [rating:2.5/5] for cleanliness

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