Shanghai hairy crab

[hzrt8w]

Around the Chinese Mid Autumn Festival (Mooncake Festival) is Shanghai Hairy Crab season.

I haven't seen any hairy crab in the Asian markets in the USA. Has anybody? Are they banned for imports?

[jhirshon]

Ah Leung - sadly, they are indeed banned for importation into the US as of a few years ago as they are considered an invasive species and have taken over several waterways in CA.

However, you can find these being sold (supposedly) in SF or possibly Sacramento from 'off-the-street' vendors and caught from local waters - since I also live in the Bay Area, I DEARLY would love to know if you find any place or market area that does carry them.

Do let me/us know if you find such a place!

Good luck - JH

Edited October 25, 2006 by jhirshon (log)

[budrichard]

Mitsuwa brings in cooked Hairy crab from Hokkaido every September.-Dick

[canucklehead]

My aunt is a restaurant owner - and said that they are banned from importation in Canada due to their invasive tendencies (as noted by jhirshon) and parasites in the 'hair' of the crabs.

The penalties are pretty heavy duty - and I have never ever seen them for sale anywhere. Not even even frozen or pre-cooked - let alone live.

[hzrt8w]

No wonder that I have never seen them here.

Off to the substitutes... Hmmm... Dungeness are just not the same...

[jhirshon]

Ah Leung - see this: http://www.wsg.washington.edu/outreach/mas...mittencrab.html

They are apparently fairly common around our area - we need to catch some, do our part to save the local fish population and EAT THEM ALL.

cheers, JH

Edited October 25, 2006 by jhirshon (log)

[hzrt8w]

Yes we should do our part. Too bad the locals don't catch them to sell to the market. They are quite tasty. But perhaps what we have in US soil are not edible?

Edited October 26, 2006 by hzrt8w (log)

[canucklehead]

If they were safe toeat and they were on sale - Chinese people would eat them into extinction in American waters pretty quickly.

[Ohba]

Mitsuwa brings in cooked Hairy crab from Hokkaido every September.-Dick

←

Those should be very different, although the season seems around the same. Hokkaido hairy crabs are sea crabs, different colour, size and look from the Chinese hairy crab. In my own please-don't-flame-me opinion, the Hokkaido crabs are far better. Certainly the crab I had at Ye Shanghai in Hong Kong, if it can be considered at all representative, was not a good introduction (and it's an overrated restaurant, by the way). Cost me HK$400, and it was SO ordinary. That's the equivalent of 6,000 yen, for which in Japan you can expect (and demand) excellence.

There's a photo of Japanese hairy crab in this Tsukiji thread:

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=94730

Scroll down to about photo no. 17 or 18 - you'll know it when you see it. Maybe someone can post a link to Chinese hairy crab photos for comparison. Shouldn't be hard to find in Google though.

[Seitch]

Around the Chinese Mid Autumn Festival (Mooncake Festival) is Shanghai Hairy Crab season.

I haven't seen any hairy crab in the Asian markets in the USA.  Has anybody?  Are they banned for imports?

←

I haven't seen them on sale in California but I do know that they are considered an invasive species. Apparently they've take up residence in the California Delta area and are causing damage to the dikes due to their burrowing habits. However, it's illegal to catch and sell them.

[hzrt8w]

When I was in Hong Kong a few weeks ago, Shanghai hairy crabs were in season (which is around October-November I think?). Unfortunately I missed the opportunity to have a meal on hairy crabs.

On the street of Tsim Sha Tsui, I saw stores selling live hairy crabs at HKD 200 to HKD 300 each (all kept in refrigerators). That's just the consumer's retail price. When eating in restaurants, the price of cooked hairy crabs is, predictably, higher (unless you catch some promotional specials).

I read a commentary on openrice.com that somebody went to Farm House in Causeway (that restaurant that I have been to) and ordered hairy crabs. Farm House was selling the crab at HKD 650 each (which is like almost US$100).

I haven't had hairy crabs for a long time. Memory serves me... that these crabs are tasty... but... spending US$100 to eat one small hairy crab? A crab would not weigh more than 1/3lb - 1/2lb. One can spend US$200 or so to have a cooked King Crab (US$19.95/lb x 10lb)... and it can feed 6 to 7 people. But instead, US$200 for 2 small hairy crabs to feed 2?

US$100 for a small crab, that kind of price would put hairy crab above abalone and shark fin on the scale of expensive Chinese food items. Do you think they are really worth that price tag? Am I off base?

Also... if hairy crabs can be sold at such a high price, can't someone farm-raise them and make a fortune?

I quote from the following webpage:

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm..._id=&dishes_id=

crazyeatinglover(非會員)    日期: 2007 年 07 月 23 日 

"Yellow Oil Crab"

Very "Lay PO".Reserved 4 yellow oil crabs for Mother's b-day dinner. Two is good, one is borderline and the other one was "dead".How could we tell? the "yellow stuff" is not yellow but in dark brown. Waiter opened the crabs for us and he seems to purposely give the "dead crab" to the youngest of the family, hoping that the youngest one will not notice that it's dead! Dad noticed of course and took up the dead crab. Manager quickly took away the crab but no apology at all. It's $650 per crab, i.e. double the price of a normal restaurant. Bad servce-waiter should not have served to the customer. Ordered a "Lo mein" using "Thick noodle" but gave "Yee mein". For this price, i would never go to this "Lay Po" restaurant again!

是次每人消費約$900元

Edited January 1, 2008 by hzrt8w (log)

[annachan]

Prices have been getting out of hand in Hong Kong. My parents still talks about what a great deal they got on a fish of some sort for having only paid HK$800 (US$100) for it. We're talking about a fish that's less than 2 lbs. They thought it was a steal because they've seen the same fish serve elsewhere for HK$2000.

Personally, I don't understand it.

Also, a warning about hairy crabs. In China, there is a special place here the crabs are the best. In order to sell them for top dollars, some folks actually take crabs from elsewhere, dump them into the water at this place and fish them out after a few days, claiming the crabs are from there. Buyers be warned!

[aprilmei]

Oh dear, you missed out on hairy crabs. Can you get them in the States? I'd expect they'd be even more expensive.

I love hairy crabs but don't eat them that often, mostly because they are so expensive in restaurants. The best are said to come from Yang Cheng Lake. But as annachan says, there's a counterfeit industry of hairy crabs that are just given a brief "baptism" in the lake. Even things like laser printing on the claws and special bands with an ID number on it don't discourage the counterfeiters - they put the same things on the "fake" crabs.

The best way to eat the crabs, in my opinion, is to get together with a group of friends and buy a whole or half basket of them from a trusted vendor. That way you can have as many of them as you want without worrying as much about the price (it's still expensive but not as much as it would be eating that many in a restaurant). No, that's not true - that's the best way to do it in Hong Kong. I was lucky enough to be in Shanghai once during hairy crab season and they were so cheap in restaurants - we were able to order crab roe dishes (somebody did all the work for us!) at really inexpensive prices. It was heaven.

[hzrt8w]

Thanks anna and aprilmei. I am still puzzled at this phenomeon.

Hairy crabs are inexpensive in Shanghai, but why would they be so expensive in Hong Kong? Hong Kong imports many food items from China and we don't see rice grains or choy sum get tripled the price due to transportation. So what makes the price?

Also, to me it seems that cooking hairy crabs would hardly takes any "see fu" (wokmanship - yes "wok"). I mean... who can't handle steaming a crab? So what can set a restaurant to get such a high profit margin while most other dishes they offer are under high competitive pressure (e.g. I had a Peking Duck special for HKD 60 and many dinner specials).

[aprilmei]

I'm not sure why they're so expensive in restaurants because yes, you're right, they're very simple to make. They just have to be steamed (belly up so the "roe" doesn't escape) then served with brown vinegar with shredded ginger. The traditional accompaniment is warmed rice wine with dried plum (to cut the awful taste of the rice wine although I once had them with aged rice wine that was almost as rich as sherry) and then "tea" made with lots of fresh ginger and rock sugar to taste. Not difficult at all - and usually the hairy crab vendor sells all the stuff so you can buy everything at one place.

I wonder if they're expensive in restaurants because the diner takes so much time eating them - it ties up the table for at least 30 minutes per crab (sometimes longer), and in the meantime, the diner isn't ordering anything else. Also the ceremony of presenting the crab whole and then the waiter/waitress will separate the shells for you. Me, I'd rather have less ceremony and more crabs. I don't know why more people (including myself) don't cook them at home more often - I even have all the implements.

[CommissionerLin]

I read a commentary on openrice.com that somebody went to Farm House in Causeway (that restaurant that I have been to) and ordered hairy crabs.  Farm House was selling the crab at HKD 650 each (which is like almost US$100). 

I quote from the following webpage:

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm..._id=&dishes_id=

crazyeatinglover(非會員)    日期: 2007 年 07 月 23 日 

"Yellow Oil Crab"

Very "Lay PO".Reserved 4 yellow oil crabs for Mother's b-day dinner. Two is good, one is borderline and the other one was "dead".How could we tell? the "yellow stuff" is not yellow but in dark brown. Waiter opened the crabs for us and he seems to purposely give the "dead crab" to the youngest of the family, hoping that the youngest one will not notice that it's dead! Dad noticed of course and took up the dead crab. Manager quickly took away the crab but no apology at all. It's $650 per crab, i.e. double the price of a normal restaurant. Bad servce-waiter should not have served to the customer. Ordered a "Lo mein" using "Thick noodle" but gave "Yee mein". For this price, i would never go to this "Lay Po" restaurant again!

是次每人消費約$900元

←

Hi Ah Leung,

"Crazyeatinglover" is referring not to the Shanghainese hairy crab ("tai chap hai") but to a group of delinquent Pearl River delta crabs. He or she is referring to a group of badly behaved jenny crabs which the Cantonese refer to as "wong yau hai" or "yellow oil crab" who get that way (ie. turn yellow) ostensibly because they stay out in the sun too long. Well thick carapace notwithstanding, apparently these crabs get their liver or roe or whatever zapped by an overdose of ultraviolet rays with the result that a yellowish "oil?" (anyway some kind of yellow pigmentation) infuses into the entire flesh of these wayward jennies. In Hong Kong (gourmand capital of China) these quirky coloured rarities command a hefty premium over all other crabs including the already impressively priced Shanghainese hairy crab

Is the "wong yau hai" worth its price? Well I would put it this way - they're like white truffles - one can't eat them every day (not only because of its astronomical cost but also because of ephemeral supply). To the crab cognoscenti in Hong Kong it is an annual ritual to be relished like white truffles. To the uninitiated, it is the surest way of getting a heart attack from sticker shock. These crabs seem to be export-proof (I have not seen them on any other menus outside Hong Kong and China) presumably because its price point quite effectively chokes off demand.

[aprilmei]

Oh, I missed the initial post about yellow oil crabs. Yes, they're entirely different from hairy crabs. Yellow oil crabs are larger and completely filled with roe. They're only available for a brief period in the hottest days of summer. The crabs are sunburnt which causes the roe to flood the body.

And unlike hairy crabs, which can be either male or female (I prefer the males), yellow oil crabs are always female. They're much more expensive than hairy crabs.

[Ben Hong]

I love crab, but for the past 20 years I have not ordered them from any restaurant. I do not love them enough to justify the restaurant prices. I usually cook live crabs at home and get my fill.

[hzrt8w]

Thank you CommissionerLin and aprilmei. I didn't realize "Wong Yau Hai" is a different species than hairy crab. That seems to make sense. Still a very high price item to me, but it makes sense why people would pay that price to eat it.

[jhirshon]

I had Hairy Crab 2 Novembers ago in Hong Kong at a restaurant specializing in Shanghai cuisine for my birthday - the restaurant was Wu Kong.

The crab, while small, was absolutely the most succulent I've ever eaten and the roe was to die for - expensive, sure.

Worth it - every penny, at least to me.

Cheers, JH